For all of the uncertainties that await Houston and coastal Texas, we can be reasonably sure about one thing: Many of those flooded out by Hurricane Harvey will watch their investments and savings collapse into debt and bankruptcy. And the heaviest burdens, of course, will fall on the shoulders of low- and middle-income residents.
Preliminary estimates put losses from the storm at $30 billion to $40 billion. If past disasters are any indication, those numbers will only grow in the coming days and weeks. Whatever the ultimate figure, the losses will represent, in part, the aggregation of hundreds of thousands or more individual financial calamities. When the waters recede and Houstonians and others hit by this storm return home, with all their pluck and determination, to muck out and clear debris, many will learn too late that their homeowners’ insurance does not cover flood damage.
Even for the lucky 15 percent of homeowners in Houston and surrounding Harris County, who have a federal flood policy in place, collecting claims will most likely be a protracted and contentious process. (Hurricane Katrina and Sandy victims have stories to tell about fraudulent or erroneous claims adjustments, delayed payments and their homes being unlivable for years.) Many of the other 85 percent were not required to have a flood policy because they were not officially at “high risk” on the region’s flood maps — maps that President Trump no longer wants the government to pay for.
Those homeowners will be forced to fall back on some combination of disaster relief, loans and savings. Although homeowners with government-backed mortgages will be able to hold off on payments for at least 90 days, eventually they will have to honor mortgages on houses that are uninhabitable or even swept away. Renters may never return home.
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In short, many Texans will be starting over economically.
As the legal scholar Michele Dauber has shown, President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood the relationship between “ruined landscapes and ruined lives.” Roosevelt likened the Great Depression to the devastation of the Dust Bowl, tornadoes in Georgia, and floods on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to build his case for the huge public investments and assistance programs that transformed the fates of Americans who were also starting over.
In the last several decades of American policy making, however, we have seen those protections and provisions eroded, along with divestments in the kinds of public goods like knowledge and infrastructure that help us to live safe and secure lives, in good times and bad. The outpouring of solidarity and support we have seen from ordinary people during Hurricane Harvey is not matched by programs that institutionalize a commitment to collective flourishing. This has been for many Americans its own kind of slow-motion disaster.
A recent report by American scientists concluded that the effects of climate change are already with us. In a world of more Harveys, rising sea levels, heat waves and droughts, what do we owe each other? The political trajectory we have been on suggests that the answer is, “Very little.”
Congress and state legislatures disburse emergency funds, which are then offset in budgets with cuts to social services and public spending. We are seemingly in a permanently reactive mode, with money often going to rebuild “back to normal” as though this is proof of bravery in the face of tremendous uncertainty. Recovery from previous disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, has had regressive effects, heightening the disparities between rich and poor and perpetuating systemic racism.
Certainly, the hurricane’s victims need all the help we can provide. But this historic storm, like the Great Depression, should also motivate a reconsideration of our broader social contract: a new New Deal.
Environmentalists and scholars have sometimes called this a “green New Deal” or “environmental Keynesianism.” We should invest in science and public education to train the next generation of engineers who will build safer homes and infrastructure. (President Trump promised us infrastructure but, just weeks before this storm, rescinded an Obama-era regulation that required structures built with federal money to take sea-level rise into account.) We should expand and enhance programs that make adaptation to climate change possible for ordinary Americans, helping them to retrofit their homes or relocate to safer ground.
We should plan recovery and rebuilding projects that address local poverty and exclusion, rather than line the pockets of developers. We should commit expenditures to the kinds of projects that mitigate climate change, like clean energy and public transportation. And we should strengthen our safety nets so that when the next storm’s victims are picking up the pieces, they are not also worried about job insecurity, rising health care costs and precarious retirements.
How we respond to Hurricane Harvey and the floods to come will demonstrate who and what we value. We care for one another — that much is clear from the rescue efforts. A new New Deal commits us to caring for one another after the disaster has passed.
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