- Black families in Houston say they lose generational wealth every time a storm hits.
- After hurricane Harvey, Black homeowners say they were left on their own, despite the promise of federal aid.
- Many were ineligible for aid from FEMA and other agencies due to strict paperwork requirements.
The hole in Sylvia Scarbrough's living room floor appeared in a spot near the front door five years ago when Hurricane Harvey tore through Houston. It's through this hole that a couple of feet of water came rushing into her home.
In February, Scarbrough, who's in her 70s, pointed at the hole. "Look at that down there, that's the earth," Scarbrough said. She keeps it out of sight by covering it with a brightly-colored rug.
If you move a rug or peek behind a picture frame, remnants of the hurricane, which went down as the heaviest rainstorm in US history, can be found hidden all over Scarbrough's home.
Located in the residential Kashmere Gardens neighborhood of northeast Houston, Scarbrough's home looks like an ordinary single-story three-bedroom home built in the 1950s. Wind chimes sing from her front porch. Inside, a golden portrait of Cleopatra hangs in her living room. There's a warm and inviting ambiance.
A few piles of paper and a large, clear filing cabinet are stacked on top of Scarbrough's coffee table. They offer a window into what the last five years have been like for her. The papers include every document she submitted and all correspondence she's had to secure money to fix her house.
Up until now, she's been awarded $1,800, which is a fraction of what she believes she's entitled to. It's also far less money than she needs to make all the repairs to return her home to its pre-Harvey state—which is why there's still a hole in her living room floor.
Still, Scarbrough's paperwork for the house is incomplete, and that has made her ineligible for a lot of support.
"I'm tired. I've been working to get this fixed since Harvey hit," Scarbrough said, taking a deep breath. "All these programs don't make sense. It doesn't make sense."
It's especially frustrating because a damaged home means it's a less valuable home to pass down to her kids.
Five years after Hurricane Harvey, and the $125 billion in damages the storm left in its wake, many Black homeowners are still living in homes with mold, which can cause long-term respiratory problems, and other damage. These homeowners talk about wasted time and lost family wealth. Insider spoke with six Black homeowners in the Houston area, as well as nonprofit executives and environmental justice advocates, and found that Scarbrough's story is fairly common. Black homeowners in Houston were largely left out of recovery efforts.
Many Black homeowners are rejected for government aid distributed by agencies like US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) because they don't have costly flood insurance, or the right paperwork, or because the paperwork exists but they can't supply it quickly enough. And contrary to many white Americans who might have wealth in other places outside of their home and car, most Black Americans solely rely on government recovery aid.
Only 31% of homeowners in Scarbrough's predominantly Black area were eligible for FEMA insurance aid after Harvey, according to a West Street Recovery survey. In three neighboring zip codes in northeast Houston, which are also predominately Black, less than 26% of homeowners were eligible for FEMA aid, according to a West Street Recovery survey.
A Kaiser Family Foundation and Episcopal Health Foundation survey from July 2018, almost a year after Harvey, reported that 60% of Black Houstonians said they hadn't received the aid they needed, a complaint made by just 33% of white Houstonians.
After Hurricane Harvey, 887,557 individual housing assistance applications were made to the FEMA but only 372,626 applications were approved. The total payout of $1.6 billion was a fraction of the estimated total damage.
Just after Hurricane Harvey, an Oxford Academic study revealed growing wealth inequality tied directly to FEMA aid following natural disasters. In areas like Kashmere Gardens, the average racial wealth gap between white and Black homeowners widened to $87,000 from 1999 to 2013 because of natural disasters, the study said.
In a statement to Insider, FEMA gave vague explanations for how Black and brown homeowners were deemed ineligible for relief based on its homeowner paperwork requirement and how it quantifies damage after a disaster. FEMA said in part it can't "pay for home repairs" if the homeowner receives funds from their insurance or elsewhere.
A changed neighborhood
Kashmere Gardens and Houston's broader fifth ward, a historic area a few miles northeast of Houston's downtown area, looks very different from how residents remember it 20 or 30 years ago. Its southern zydeco culture, which could be felt through the music and the food offered by shops all along Calvacade street, has been sucked out of what was a lively African American neighborhood.
Some of that can be attributed to the displacement of hundreds of families that have followed major storms. Kashmere Gardens sits in a flood-prone zone and during Harvey, a staggering 79% of homes there flooded. And before Harvey, there was Hurricane Ike and Rita and Tropical Storm Allison, which flooded Houston in 2001.
"They need to stop building barriers and start building bridges," said Doris Brown, a Black Houston homeowner who didn't receive FEMA aid after Harvey. "They have preconceived notions about Black and brown communities, but the fight will continue."
With the extra moisture in the air, warmer oceans temperatures, and higher sea levels, climate scientists warn that events like Harvey, a category four hurricane, are the new normal – and we're woefully unprepared, especially when it comes to less economically robust areas.
In an article in the Guardian, Penn State climatologist Michael Mann argued that climate change had "exacerbated several characteristics" and "worsened the impact" of Hurricane Harvey, leading to more damage and loss of life.
The 'high burden of proof'
By car, roughly 10 minutes northeast of Scarbrough's home is Doris Brown. She, too, lives in a historically Black neighborhood in northeast Houston and says she didn't receive federal or state aid after Hurricane Harvey.
"They come into low-income, marginalized communities with the idea – assuming things," said Brown, a grandmother in her 70s.
In August 2017, Brown was alone in her one-story house as Hurricane Harvey closed in. As the winds picked up and water began to seep into one of her back bedrooms, Brown felt the house shake and sought cover toward the front of the house.
Within 15 minutes, parts of the roof in the living room had caved in and so much water had entered the house that it reached Brown's knees. After the storm, Brown said she felt lucky to be alive.
A few weeks later, a FEMA officer arrived at Brown's door with a clipboard. Brown had by that time made an insurance claim for the crumbling roof and the damage the flooding had done to the floors and living room furniture. After inspecting Brown's home, the officer assured her she would receive assistance soon.
But in the claim that Brown had filed with FEMA, she had not included the deed and title to the house, which would prove that she was the owner. Brown had moved into her home as a teen with her parents, and they never switched the deed or title to her name before they died. The house was hers — she pays property taxes every year — but she didn't have the paperwork to prove it.
As far as FEMA was concerned, if she couldn't verify ownership, Brown wasn't entitled to a pay-out.
"Before he could even cross the outside steps to leave, I got a notification from FEMA that they had denied me," Brown said.
Homeowners, on average, have to submit 37 unique documents, which favor those who bought the property and over those who inherited it.
Brown suspects that she might have also been denied aid due to FEMA's "safe and sanitary" rule, which allows the agency to deny aid if a home doesn't meet a certain living standard. As the agent moved from room to room, Brown recalled him asking pointed questions about what condition the roof and sofa had been in before the storm.
Brown thinks the agent assumed she wasn't being totally forthcoming.
"They come in with their already preconceived notions that this is previous damage," Brown said. "No, it's not. That's what they use out here in the Black and brown community."
This was a common complaint among Black applicants for disaster relief, says Ben Hirsch, co-director of West Street Recovery, which helped repair Brown's home.
"If you don't have money to be doing upkeep on your house, then you get penalized when a storm does happen," Hirsch said.
"If someone said they had a leaky roof before Harvey, and FEMA says this is flood event, not a wind event, so it shouldn't have a damaged roof. Any water that came in from the top is a deferred maintenance problem, not a Harvey problem," Hirsch said.
Like Brown, Scarbrough moved into her home as a child, and her family never formally transferred the home's paperwork to her name.
A FEMA officer never came out to her home to survey the damage, and the agency only approved $1800 to fix her caved-in roof, mangled foundation, and tilted deck in the front of her home. It wasn't enough. She was also denied HUD-sponsored Homeowners Assistance relief under the Texas General Land Office.
So Scarbrough's son, Danvale, stepped up with $4,000 to pay for a new roof. Volunteers fixed the wood panels on the side of her home and rebuilt her patio deck.
"They're not listening to the people. They're not helping the people," she said."These programs need complete overhaul," Brown said.
Unaffordable insurance
All around Scarbrough's neighborhood, it's a common sight to find a ditch in the front yard of people's homes.
Scarbrough has one, too, and, during Hurricane Harvey, she believed her ditch was supposed to catch overflow water. She didn't need to purchase flood insurance. At least, that's what she was told.
Instead, bayous like Hunting Bayou near her neighborhood overflowed, which contributed to the flooding of her home.
According to Fitts Law firm, which represented homeowners in the Houston area who were denied FEMA aid, residents with flood insurance received on average $100,000 more in aid following a disaster than those who don't.
Flood insurance policyholders were found to have a median income of $82,000, according to a 2018 FEMA study, whereas those without a policy had a median income of $55,000.
In Houston, which sits below sea level and 45 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, flood insurance is not affordable, Hirsch said. Flood insurance here can run homeowners as much as $2,500 a year, and on average cost more in Black neighborhoods, which are in the lowest-lying parts of the city.
Hirsch said that is not feasible when most of the families they work with make less than $25,000 annually.
The lack of flood insurance can also impact homeowners' ability to receive HUD or FEMA aid. The Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act allows FEMA and HUD to deny natural disaster aid to any applicant if they received government aid during a previous disaster and did not maintain flood insurance on that structure.
"What's crazy is, if you look at these inherited homes, that rule is with the structure, not the person," Hirsch said. In other words, the law targets poorer homeowners who inherit their homes.
"That is a huge barrier for lots of people," Hirsch added.
Trust in government
With all the stress Scarbrough and Brown have carried over the last five years, they say they have no faith in FEMA or HUD to deliver any reparative aid when the next powerful storm hits the Houston area.
"I don't trust FEMA, GLO [Texas General Land Office], none of those programs. They are not concerned with us," Scarbrough said.
Broadly speaking, white homeowners do not share this frustration with the government's aid response after a natural disaster. A New York Times analysis found that white applicants are the most likely to be approved for FEMA disaster programs.
As history goes, white homeowners are not concerned with systemic hindrance in public policy and natural disaster recovery, Zack Rosenberg, the founder of nonprofit St. Bernard Project, said.
Rosenberg started the St. Bernard Project after witnessing the devastation in New Orleans' ninth ward and St. Bernard Parish after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005.
Longstanding practices that have harmed Black families, like redlining, predatory lending, and other obstacles, had eroded trust over generations.
Even if white families are denied natural disaster aid, Rosenberg said many can liquidate a business, retirement account, or other assets to pay for repairs.
In the case of Hurricane Harvey, more affluent white neighborhoods in urban and suburban areas were the quickest to recover because they received federal and state aid.
"There's just different pressures on different families depending on where their wealth or lack thereof is, and for folks of color whose wealth has been artificially repressed through redlining and intentional allocation or hindrance of other federal resources, it just hits harder and worse," Rosenberg said.
Evaporating wealth in Black communities
West Street Recovery repaired Brown's home, but it took a full year.
When it comes to water damage and mold, getting ahead of the damage in the first days and weeks can be crucial, Rosenberg said.
"For people whose only net worth is in their house, the longer you delay, they lose all leverage,'' Rosenberg said, adding that families can be "forced, often, to give up family equity because they can't sustain a gutted house and somewhere else to live at the same time."
Even if an organization like his eventually helps the homeowner, they will still have to find some place to live. That requires cash. For many people of color, that is not financially feasible.
"If we're paying attention to this racial equity disaster in housing along with healthcare and education, it has to be the top three societal pillars of intentional structural racism," Rosenberg said. "There is a legacy of impact that needs to be recovered from."
In Brown's case, she was forced in the months after Harvey to crash on her son's couch for almost a year until her home was back in a livable state. Once West Street Recovery began to repair her house, they offered to pay for a hotel room for Brown, but she declined.
"I was grateful," Brown said. "But truthfully and honestly, I figured they'd spent enough money fixing my house."
Billy Guevara, a Latina homeowner in Houston, spent months after Harvey living on friends' couches as she scrambled to find funds to fix a moldy kitchen, wet sheetrock, and buckling wooden floors.
She was only approved for $8,000 from FEMA to repair more than $20,000 of damages. Ultimately, the St. Bernard Project stepped up to fix her home.
"The people in other affluent parts of town don't have any trouble recovering," Guevara told Insider. "They recover way faster than Black and brown people. And a lot of it has to do with the government red tape that is involved."
FEMA's Response
Harvey wasn't Brown's first experience with a hurricane, or with the frustration that comes from applying for disaster aid. After Hurricane Ike, Brown said she was skeptical of the agency because of their internal scandals. FEMA has been accused of delaying aid payments, underpaying claims, and executives misappropriating federal relief funds.
Last year, FEMA acknowledged systemic issues in their recovery responses in communities of color, but didn't list specifics such as the number of unique documents homeowners must submit to be eligible for aid.
And in November, FEMA's National Advisory Council, a group of emergency-management experts selected by the agency, released a report stating that FEMA failed to meet its legal commitment to assist disaster victims without discrimination.
The agency rolled out two programs focused on equity in disaster recovery in the last year. And it tossed out the homeowner deed requirement, now allowing other forms of identification when applying for insurance claims following a Washington Post investigation last July. Applicants can present vehicle registrations, legal documents, signed statements from a benefit provider, social service organization, or mobile home park owner in their insurance claim application.
However, Brown and Hirsch said while this is a significant step for FEMA's insurance claim process, it doesn't go far enough. Rosenberg echoed those sentiments, adding that all programs should be succinctly streamlined into one app so that applicants aren't so overwhelmed that they give up requesting help that could be avialable to them.
As storms like Harvey become normal, Scarbrough said she knows the government response needs to become equitable. But in the short term, she is focused on getting her foundation and floor fixed. "I want my house fixed more than anything," Scarbrough said.