Environmental Displacement: A Longitudinal Analysis of Time to Stable Housing following Hurricane Katrina

• In Event: 2462 - Causes and Consequences of Housing Instability and Gentrification

Abstract

This study examines time to stable housing among individuals highly affected by Hurricane Katrina. It uses the Gulf Coast Child and Family Health (G-CAFH) Study, a longitudinal cohort of 1,079 randomly-sampled Mississippi and Louisiana residents exposed to Hurricane Katrina. G-CAFH is one of the longest-running disaster cohort studies, which makes it ideal to examine the time needed for displaced residents to find stable housing, as well as factors associated with time to stable housing. The purpose of this analysis is twofold: first, we determine whether time to stable housing is dependent upon particular theoretically relevant variables including, sociodemographic, household, and structural factors; second, we examine the proportion of residents in stable housing since Katrina struck. We apply survival analysis to describe patterns of event occurrence (i.e., stable housing), compare patterns among groups, and examine factors affecting time to stable housing over time. While 88 percent of G-CAFH respondents reported that they were in stable housing at the most recent wave of data collection (2017-18), median time to stable housing for this cohort was 1,082 days or over 3 years. Additionally, younger age, lower income, being a renter, and being single were all independently associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing longer median time to stable housing. Social support was the only protective factor associated with decreasing time to stable housing. These findings suggest that long-term environmental displacement and housing instability after Katrina follow patterns similar to other durable forms of housing instability, including eviction, frequent moves, difficulty paying rent, and homelessness.

Authors

• Alexis A. Merdjanoff, New York University

• David M. Abramson

• Yoon Soo Park, University of Illinois-Chicago

• Rachael Piltch-Loeb, New York University