Lessons for Rebuilding After Major Catastrophe: Re-Imagining Housing Policy

• In Event: 1451 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 6. Insecurities

Abstract

Disasters and the landscapes they leave behind are unique. There exists a distinct need to construct a set of appropriate actions, a “‘best-fit’ solution for temporary accommodation[s] [that] must consider two specific elements the potential of the particular community’s human and financial resources and the possibility of the temporary accommodation strategy to assist in mid to long-term recovery after the disaster” (Johnson, 2002, p. 2). Nigg, Barnshaw, and Torres (2006) maintain that housing issues in post-disaster urban centers would be better addressed by stepping outside of our “comfortable” conflict or functionalist perspectives and employing the Weberian notion of “ideal types” when considering the post-Katrina housing crisis New Orleans (p. 114). The adoption of a Weberian construct affords scholars the opportunity to envision protocols that lead to best practices while questioning what is needed and must be developed together with how quickly or slowly reconstruction can occur. With this in mind, the ideal type is fairly simple. An ideal typology for housing would include a systematized design whereby displaced hurricane evacuees would move through a series of stages until they are reinstated in their permanent (rebuilt) domicile. This process has begun to be theorized by disaster researchers Phillips (1992, 1993) and Quarantelli (1982, 1991, 1995) but their respective rubrics through which housing should be reinstated must be re-evaluated to ascertain the unique needs of each post-disaster population of evacuees. This paper takes the next logical step in post-disaster housing issues and theorizes where we go from here, particularly where vulnerable populations are more at risk than more affluent white counterparts.

Author

• Dana M. Greene, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill