Housing After the Hurricane - WNC Health Policy Podcast Ep. 12
Image credit: NCDOT Communications
On September 26 Hurricane Helene tore through Western North Carolina, destroying homes, businesses, roads, and entire towns. Recovery has been ongoing in intervening months, but there are still years - perhaps decades - of recovery ahead of the region.
One crucial need in the wake of the storm is housing. Already dealing with housing shortages approaching crisis levels in some areas, prior to the storm nearly 42% of renters in the region were spending more than 30% of their income on housing, and the impact of the hurricane has only exacerbated the problem.
Policymakers and communities in Western North Carolina need to think and plan strategically when it comes to restoring housing in a fair and equitable way across a region already struggling with wage, housing and resource disparities. In today’s podcast, we hear from Andreanecia M. Morris, New Orleans housing advocate and Executive Director for HousingNOLA, about what Western North Carolina can learn from the lessons of communities who’ve fought hard to come back from similar disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, to ensure that our region is able to truly “build back better” by creating a housing environment that is WNC Strong, both for the immediate future and in perpetuity.
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About the WNC Health Policy Podcast: In each installment, we speak about different public health strategies for improving health and well-being in Western North Carolina (WNC). The WNC HPl is a collaboration between the NC Center for Health & Wellness at UNCA and MAHEC, with generous support from the Dogwood Health Trust.
Individual opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast are those of the author(s)/interviewee(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the WNC Health Policy Initiative or its host institutions of the University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA), Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) or our funders.
Transcript
AR: Andrew Rainey
AM: Andreanecia M. Morris (HousingNOLA)
Resources:
“The impact of hurricane Katrina on the mental and physical health of low-income parents in New Orleans” by Jean Rhodes, Christian Chan, Christina Paxson, Cecilia Elena Rouse, Mary Waters, and Elizabeth Fussell
“Good intentions gone wrong: Maconians sound alarm on excessive debris removal.” Smoky Mountain News
“Firm lost one recovery contract, then got another. NC officials defend decision.” Raleigh News and Observer
“How a disaster recovery firm pitched itself to North Carolina, years after losing prior contract.” NC Newsline
HousingNOLA: https://www.housingnola.org/
[Sounds of water flowing overlaid with banjo music]
INTRO
Andreanecia Morris: We've got to find a way to get community to understand that you don't have to accept this crap, that it happened to us, that we weren't able to stop. It does not mean it's inevitable for you.
Andrew Rainey: You're listening to the Western North Carolina Health Policy Initiative podcast. A collaboration between the North Carolina Center for Health and Wellness at UNCA, and MAHEC, with generous support from the Dogwood Health Trust. I'm Andrew Rainey. In each installment, we speak about different public health strategies for improving health and well-being in Western North Carolina. Individual opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the view of the Western North Carolina Health Policy Initiative or its host institutions of the University of North Carolina Asheville, Mountain Area Health Education Center, or our funders.
Recorded on the flickering Internet waves of mountainous Appalachia, in this installment, we're talking about housing policy after a natural disaster, learning from post-Katrina New Orleans to guide Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS POST-KATRINA
AR: Before Hurricane Helene hit, much of Western North Carolina was already in a housing crisis. Nearly 42% of renters were spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Helene didn't cause the crisis, but it made it worse as more than 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed from the storm. Housing is closely linked to our health. After Hurricane Katrina, one 2006 study by Jean Rhodes et al. found increased mental illness, PTSD, stress levels, new health diagnosis, increased obesity, and lower overall health status as a result of the disaster and impact on housing.
As natural disasters become more frequent and severe, we have a chance to learn from places like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, including the impact on health and policy opportunities. Today we talked with Andreanecia Morris, New Orleans housing advocate, about what lessons Western North Carolina can take from Katrina's aftermath in crafting housing policy.
AR: Hi Andreanecia. Thanks for talking with me. To start us off, could I have you introduce yourself?
AM: So, I’m Andreanecia Morris, Executive Director, HousingNOLA. I lead what we call the Put Housing First Triad.
AR: What is HousingNOLA?
AM: Housing NOLA was an initiative that we started 10 years ago now to address the second half of the city of New Orleans' recovery from Hurricane Katrina. And despite having basically all the money we could ever imagine for the housing crisis that was created by Katrina, and that really the people of New Orleans lived with before the hurricane and the flood, we found ourselves almost 10 years after the storm, almost out of money and there being still a huge need and really severe inequities in the housing market where there had been all of this amazing investment, this amazing redevelopment.
People were able to come home, but we were still down over 100,000, mostly African Americans who have not been able to come back. An affordable housing crisis that was completely out of whack with wages and you know, the most severe misalignment that we had seen in quite some time. And recognizing that that misalignment had nothing to do with what you see with affordable housing crisises in other places where it was supply and demand.
AR: So money was going towards New Orleans, and unlike some towns like where we are in the mountains, there wasn't a supply issue. It sounds like y'all would have everything needed to get housing together after the storm. Can you unpack more of what went wrong?
AM: So there was plenty of room. There was still plenty of homes that needed to be rebuilt. There's still plenty of vacant land, oodles of blighted and abandoned property. There was room for everyone who could come who wanted to come back. The people of New Orleans and made it very clear they wanted to come back. They fought to rebuild. Congress and the world responded and poured resources into it, but all of those resources were deployed without a plan. And worse than without a plan, without a recognition of how deep systemic biases are around housing.
AR: To zoom out for a minute, that deep history of bias and housing has been well studied and is relevant nationwide, whether in the mountains or the Gulf coast, and include policies like redlining, segregated public housing, urban renewal, and highway construction zoning laws, mortgage and appraisal discrimination, and the way federal aid and insurance payouts tend to favor wealthier, insured and often white homeowners over renters, the working class, rural Americans, and Black and brown folks.
In New Orleans, I remember hearing stories about the poorer work of contractors hired by both the Bush administration and city administrators and doing their jobs well.
AM: That's right. Even after disaster that was exacerbated by federal foolishness - the collapse of our levy system - which was proven to be the fault of contractors who put the levies in decades before, and that the levies were always going to feel this. It wasn't just climate change, it wasn't just [that] we were below sea level, it wasn't just the things that people like to blame New Orleans for in response to ecological issues and environmental issues that we as a planet have responsibility for. People like blaming the folks in Louisiana and the people who live along the coast for, “You know where you live and you're running that risk and maybe you should leave. But you stood up and said you wanted to come back, so here you go, Here's your help.” There's some naivete of, yeah, there was money expressly for folks in the lower 9th Ward who were victimized in so many different ways by the storm itself, and then ten years later, that community had not come back. Forget about equitably, just had not come back. And federal money appropriated in their name going anywhere but into their homes, and they're being lawsuits that said, hey, this program was not managed well, and they're still not being strategies and accountability.
AR: And this is where housing NOLA comes in?
AM: That's right. Well, we sat down and worked over the course of about 14 months with community and with the partners responsible and lending institutions and banks and everyone who had a stake in the game and said, “What is set of action steps that we can take to make this investment work?” And we want to be able to have people agree to take their part inside of it and then be able to hold them accountable. And so HousingNOLA came out of that. We called the process HousingNOLA and the organization that was responsible for handling the accountability piece. We do an annual report card, and other partners have been developed and put online to address some of the power shifting that's necessary.
AR: Could you give an example of what you mean by power shifting and how you're doing it?
AM: Like in response to a disaster, we have systemized the idea of the rugged individual. Like, your government's going to get all of this money, but you don't really want your government giving you this money. It's OK if you have to work for it.
No, it's not. What are you talking about? You have money to help me? It's my money that you have to help me. Why should I jump through hoops? Especially when you look at the contractors who are coming in to administer, the disaster profiteers who show up to help manage the money because they know how to manage federal contracts. Except they don't know how to actually help people. And so they're not held to that standard, but the community members, in the name of making sure that the money isn't going to the wrong people, it's fraud, waste and abuse.
The hysterics that we see right now, you know, fast forward - that continue not just here in Louisiana and in New Orleans, but are American - need to be combated. Because what those folks are actually saying to you, while victims of these disasters are saying, “Well, yeah, I don't want somebody else to get too much.” You are saying that there's some question about your neighbors’ validity, and that also includes you in that. And you don't mean that, you're like, “No, I know what I need. I know that I've suffered. I know that I need help,” and you're saying that saying well, I want to make sure that the help doesn't go to the wrong people. We've got to get real clear about our definitions of “wrong people” and how for most Americans, that's being applied to them mainly by some of their local officials, right, in the name of partisan foolishness, ideological nonsense, or the federal government, or this member of this political party.
And it's like, “Hey, I'm sorry...can you help me fix my house? Hey, I'm sorry. Can you help me make sure that I will keep my lights on? Hey, I'm sorry. Can you help me make sure that my house can withstand the next catastrophe that is coming? Because I didn't do too well in the last one, and so I'd like a home that can withstand the next disaster. I’d like to have access to water and food. You know, the basics. Can you help me with that?” And when they start the gobbledygook...”TIME OUT! Can you help me or not?”
That's what we do at HousingNOLA and the rest of the Housing First Triad is we've designed this process for the people of New Orleans to hold their leaders accountable and those leaders to explain themselves, and to be honest and transparent about their commitments. It irritates some of our policymakers who sat eagerly 10 years ago around the table to have this conversation in the run up to the 10th anniversary. Everybody was really eager to participate, less so over the last few years as they have realized that we were serious about this being an ongoing process, that we were not just simply trying to put together a pretty picture book to put on a shelf and say, check.
We actually did a plan. It's why initially HousingNOLA was a process. A process of engaging community, educating community. And housing becomes one of those issues where community often finds themselves inadvertently contributing to the disinvestment that their government is going to perpetuate against them. They're going to say, “Yeah, I don't want you helping low to moderate income people," not understanding that they are low to moderate income people by the definitions that the federal government and the state and local governments follow. They're like, “I'm hard working. I go to work every day. The welfare people are not me.” And it's like, well, when was the last time you went to work seeing as your home and your job place have been destroyed? Well, I haven't been to work in a couple of months cause, you know, blah. blah. So you are NOT working currently.
AR: And right, so we're talking collective power made through accountability actions like HousingNOLA is trying to do, to replace these narratives that many of the people who need support after the disaster don't deserve it.
AM: That's right.
AR: Looking at some of the report cards you all had created for this process over the years, I couldn't help but notice the big fat F for how New Orleans has been handling housing. Could you talk about that and the policy efforts working on changing that grade?
AM: Yes, for the last several years, we've been feeling consistently to do that and we've not just been reporting on that we've been talking about helping community figure out how they addressed that. And I'm proud to say that we've taken a step in the right direction. After years of failing grades, we were able to organize and put a ballot initiative on the November 5th ballot that passed overwhelmingly, 75%. We have a Housing Trust fund where we're dedicating 2% of our general revenue towards housing in perpetuity. So it's going to almost more than double the amount of money that New Orleans has for affordable housing annually. And it's a transparent process that frankly, puts some of the bad actors like the current city administration on notice that they will not be allowed to mismanage these dollars. There's a transparent process that goes through the City Council and that the dollars right now are going to be deployed to agencies that have a track record for getting dollars out the door. But they're going to be given direction from an advisory committee and the City Council, after hearing from community what the dollar should be for, and we're going to be working on that for the next year. So we think that that's going to help improve the grade a little bit. And part of the reason why people are like, you know, the F's don't help. But you do understand we're just documenting what's happening, right, like...
AR: Yeah, you have to know where housing isn't working. If you want to make an improvement. And I guess these issues are all up and down the ladder of government, right?
AM: Right. It's not just local government - state government, federal government also have roles to play, and we are quite clear about where they have fallen down where they are. The private sector, also. Lending banking investments making funds available for not just first time home ownership opportunities that a lot of our banking institutions like to lean on when you know they're looking at their community reinvestment act metrics, but also making loans available for mom and pop landlords, helping people refinance their homes.
And then you move on to the other very related agencies like the insurance Commissioner. Here in Louisiana, we have developed quite the insurance crisis as a result of the disinvestment, as a result of the fact that we're below sea level, we are in the Gulf, we have not made substantial change as a planet toward addressing climate change, so we are at more risk. Which again, when you talk about regulation, our insurance companies – as y'all are going to be more and more familiar with in Western North Carolina - are going to pencil whip you, put in new policies - the named storm deductible, right, which is something that was unheard of before this era of disaster that was kicked off by Katrina, right. The insurance companies creating the named storm disaster, so that, you know, when people buy insurance policies and they think about what they can save, and then they pick the insurance policy that - OK, I think I can say it for $5000 deductible, I can put that to aside and I could find that - and that all be obliterated at the worst possible time, right? Like a major disaster like a hurricane. Especially the ones that we've been seeing in recent years, you know, these hundred year storms that are coming every five years. You're going to be displaced and scraping together $5000 is going to be a challenge, and now your named storm deductible is 10% f the value of your house. So instead of $5000, it’s $20,000 right? Like so. OK, I can't get that.
AR: I'd like to pause for a second just point out, you know, we're in radically different places - New Orleans a city and Western North Carolina region, we have different climates, geographies, histories, cultures, population sizes.
AM: Yes. All are as high and we are low probably [laughs] in the South.
AR: But I also think it's important to note the similarities: both tourism destinations with pre-existing housing issues [AM: That's right], gentrification, low wage jobs are common, and the increasing risk of natural disasters.
AM: Right. For me, we say put housing first. Not to say to someone who's working on something like education reform or healthcare reform or anything like that, that they're wrong. We know that the failure to guarantee housing, the failure to have a functioning housing system, is a root cause for all of the other challenges that we have in our society. It's one of the big problems, is that instead of being a need, everybody thinks that housing is a measure of your character. And while we're talking about communities, people forget that in order to be in a community, it means that you have to live together.
And so your housing is so fundamental to all of these conversations. And instead of thinking about the systems that keep it away from people, that deprive people, that push people out, we tend to get really myopic and tribal in a way that's not helpful, right? You can't have pride in Asheville. You can't have pride in New Orleans. And why are you scornful of the unhoused in those communities? How do you not recognize that, rather than it being a choice that they have made, it is a systemic failure?
AR: The way I'm entering this conversation, I'm seeing housing as a health issue. But I know that doesn't always turn heads and gain interest as we might hope. How would you recommend folks to think about housing policy to move it forward?
AM: It is absolutely health issue, it's an economic issue, it's an education issue, you name it, it's one of those issues. And we've been doing some research to get people to think about housing as an economic indicator, rather than simply a moral issue. Because the moral issue is so stuck in the welfare queen stereotype, the rugged individualism stereotype. Heck, manifest destiny, right? Like the idea of you could go out and blaze a path and help this country expand from sea to sea. We don't need to repeat that. We need to make sure you can keep your home. We need to make sure that your neighbors can find a new home if the worst should happen, and they get to remain your neighbors, if they want to, and you get to remain a part of your community, if you want to. That you're having choices. That housing should mean choice and it should be power, as opposed to a measure of your worth as a citizen. And so we want people to have those conversations again.
Unfortunately, a hurricane, a disaster, is a time for people to open to that, to hear that, because you're not homeless or you're living in a home that is substandard. Anybody who's ever sneered at a homeless person, sleeping outside, or sleeping in an abandoned building, or sleeping in their car - over the last 19 years, more Americans are familiar with that particular challenge. And it it's an opportunity. Instead of promoting fear, we need them to think about, “OK? I don't want this to happen to anybody, much less me so is that possible?” And we're here to say, yes, it is possible. Here are the people who are responsible. They are elected officials who appoint policymakers who are using the money that we give in our taxes to our local, state and federal government.
And fun fact, they all have a mandate to do this. A lot of them are skating on the fact that we low-key don't think that they should be doing right? So, a big part of what we're talking about with HousingNOLA and the Put Housing First work is that government must work, especially in light of a disaster. Government has to work. Mistakes can be made, human beings are inside of these systems, that's fine. But these systems cannot be designed to fail, and many of them are.
BREAK
[Musical humming with cricket sounds in the background]
AR: Hey there, this is Andrew. You're listening to the Western, North Carolina HPI podcast, a show exploring health issues and policy impacting Western North Carolina. We're a production of the North Carolina Center for Health and Wellness at UNCA, and MAHEC, with funding from the Dogwood Health Trust.
In this installment, we're speaking with HousingNOLA's Andreanecia Morris about post-disaster housing policy, and some of what we can learn from New Orleans after Katrina. We'll return to the conversation in just a moment.
[Musical humming with cricket sounds continues]
AR: That was Asheville based Appalachian ballad singer Saro Lynch-Thomason humming the old shape-note-style ballad “Evening Shade.” You can learn more about her work and regional music traditions at sarosings.com. And now back to the show.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM KATRINA...AND SOME RED FLAGS
AR: Given that you all in New Orleans have had a lot of experience with natural disasters and housing issues, unfortunately. Could you talk about some of the red flags you've seen in post-disaster New Orleans housing policy that we in Western North Carolina might be able to learn from.
AM: Oh God yes. God, yes. God yes.
As I said earlier, when we launched HousingNOLA, it was nine years after Katrina. We were coming up on the 10th anniversary, and one of the reasons why we felt compelled to move so radically was the fact that there was a notion that there was going to be cause for celebration - people were going to want to land on an aircraft carrier talking about mission accomplished, right? And we were like, mission is not accomplished, what are you people talking about?
If I heard it once, I heard it 1000 times, consultant saying [that] before Katrina, we had a soft real estate market. Because before Katrina, we had a real estate market, I'd imagine similar in some ways to Asheville probably 20 years ago, where 60% of the homes for sale, for example, were valued at $100,000 or less. Even 20 years ago, that's a significant part of the housing market at such a low value. But it was actually a market that was in alignment with the income of the folks who lived there.
The reason 60% of the homes were valued at $100,000 or less was not that they were poor quality. That's what people made, and that's what most people could afford, if you wanted to own your home. And homeowners - in New Orleans is where we're different from a lot of places, we've been a majority renter city for quite some time and still are - and so the homeowners were the minority. But the people who managed to become homeowners were middle class, they did not make a whole lot of money living in the city. Same thing with rents. Our rents were most of the market. You could find a decent home to rent for $750 or less. Right?
And so, when we launched HousingNOLA, those numbers were a dream. And you had people thinking about the “right kind of people” coming into the city that, these numbers, this dramatic change in numbers where, you know - again the same amount of homes that were worth $100,000 or less were replaced with homes starting at $200,000 - and that meant that in order to be a homeowner, you had to make enough money to do that, or that you actually had a home that you couldn't afford, that you're about to lose, or no one was buying houses, actually, right? They weren't looking at the impact of those changes, that rents where the same amount of people who were spending less than $750 a month were now spending almost double that, and no one's looking at eviction rates. And we were looking at the fact that, saying, hey, it's been 10 years, 100,000 people still haven't come back. The city is growing, but it's not sustainable.
And in fact, that has borne out in the last 10 years, we predicted this - the growth that we saw ten years after the storm, which was people coming back, and fighting to get back, we're losing population. We peaked about 2016, and now we're going down. We're losing population. And it's not just New Orleans, it's Louisiana. One of the only southern states that's losing population, particularly post-Katrina. And it's because of housing.
So going back, well, I would say to you all is be really clear about what you want. Be ready to say you want Asheville to be stronger, and you want it to be stronger for the people of Asheville and figure out what do you need to do in order to bring that about. And don't let anyone tell you that what you want is a “better class” of people. And that's what some of the people who drove the recovery, particularly in the early years, were looking for. You had people who came to help, who wanted to be a part of this, right. We talked to people all the time about this, we help people all the time. But we tend to help folks from a let's help you figure out what you need and what you want and how you articulate that, instead of telling you how your community should look. Other than the fact that my only analysis of a community's health is how severe the housing crisis is, that's it. Because I think the Community should get to decide for itself. The other pieces of it that makes it their home right?
We will say, hey, your housing and security is severe. This isn't working, it's not sustainable. and that's just math. It's not a judgment. It's justy'all are in trouble, this isn't sustainable, you're headed for a crisis, and we like to help you figure that out. And we like you to think about how you can pivot that and then keep the other things because those other issues, whether you're proud of - tourism, you're proud of, you know, the culture that makes it the delicate ecosystem that it is, your people, your football team, whatever it is that you're proud of. That's going to be jeopardized by your housing prices. You’re a college town, whatever. Not my place. We will say that it's not going to survive. In its current form, if you don't address this.
AR: As both New Orleans and Western North Carolina have a tourism economy that attracts retirees, remote workers and folks who have wealth not based in the community who are now stepping into and often on top of folks who have lived here for generations...
AM: That's right.
AR: ...how are y'all thinking about whose voices are coming in and leading that accountability and decision making, as in HousingNOLA.
AM: So your question is a great one. One of the things that we prioritize is, you know, there's an equity conversation, is a power conversation, that we can help with. Again, conducting those analysis and just having our [unclear] “This isn't working, it's not sustainable.” And we can show you how you can do models and show that because of that inequity that is going to only get worse, you're going to have issues with workers, right? And it's all a system. Until we're ready to have the AI and the machines take everything over from us, and God help us for that day. But until that day, we are still in relationship with each other in ways that a lot of people aren't comfortable with all the time, right? For every gentrifying neighborhood where a wealthier person who remote works, they want to go and sit in a coffee shop and work from there because they don't want to work at home all day, their needs to be people who are working that coffee shop. If you getting your groceries delivered, there still needs to be a clerk there. There still needs to be someone who's going to go out and pick up your groceries. You're a part of an economy, right? And there are people who pepper that economy, and those people need to be able to get to work.
And what you can't do is in tourism economies, particularly those of us who are from the South and we're in the Deep South (New Orleans was, you know - and North Carolina took it away from us at one point - New Orleans was the slave capital, the biggest slave port in the country. Or on the continent because it was before it the US. And then North Carolina took that title.) We can't go back to there being a slave class of people who are just available for those things, right? We all agree that that's not appropriate. And this is where you can have the conversation in homogeneous communities. New Orleans is majority African American. So yes, we're talking about mostly black people, but we're still talking to mostly black people about black people. In places like Asheville, you're talking about mostly white folks, about other white folks. The barista and your regular local coffee shop is likely going to be reflective of that majority homogeneous population.
AR: When you mentioned a slave class, I can't help but think of the labor trafficking and worker exploitation being done now in our area, both with gig workers and of course how immigrants, documented or otherwise, make up the hard working low wage jobs in our community like construction, agriculture and behind-the-scenes food industry or factory work.
AM: You know, that's something too that we saw, an influx of Latinos, some undocumented, some documented coming to help rebuild post-Katrina, right? And we remain incredibly grateful to those folks coming here bringing their skilled labor to help us rebuild the community, and some of them have stayed and become a part of community. That's the deal, right, is that you can come here as a transplant. You can come here as someone to help. What you've got to be ready to do is not just squat and impose your worldview on an existing community. If you're here to help, if you're here to become a part of, that can be worked out. And you put you find yourself in the middle of the system and you may have more money, but you can participate in that system.
Still, you can't just sit there and say, “Oh, I'm sick of the fact that I can't speak English at my favorite coffee place,” or what other nonsense that you tell yourself as you manufacture a culture war. And then when you'd have to deal with the consequences of that. Because you'll be like, yeah, let's just get rid of all of “those folks” and then Americans can take those jobs. Because I guess those are supposed to be black jobs in some of those people's minds.
And you know, you get there, and it's like you're breaking this, you're not actually making it better. And those people I find are the biggest whiners there ever were. Like, “This is not working. I can't get my coffee. I can't get my food delivered. Yada, yada, yada, blahdy, blahdy, blah.” And what are you investing? Right. Well, how are you contributing to this? Or are you simply extracting? Or are you simply a culture vulture? And those people you got to. Kick him in the butt and get them out of the way.
And the good news is, is that in community, the folks who are ready to fight for those communities outnumber the vassal class who would seek to perpetuate ideological and rhetorical battles to cover for their failures on both sides of the aisle. You know, they start yelling catch phrases and things like that that aren't practical, that aren't actually enforceable, that aren't actually desirable by anybody. As opposed to let's do the work. Let's rebuild this community. Let's make it stronger. Let's ensure that the next time something happens in Asheville, the people of Asheville are ready. It's going to be bad. People are going to be displaced, but they'll be able to come back home, we'll be able to save people's lives, you'll be able to rebuild your community, And you just get ready for that. And you can have those conversations frankly and honestly.
And what we spent a lot of time doing is getting people to understand their power. When we first started this work, you know, we learned from veteran organizers and folks that you don't talk about empowering people because in our system, folks actually do have power. They do. And we can talk about the systemic issues that make it hard for folks to navigate those existing structures. But at the end of the day, the community, the people of Asheville are the only ones who really can ensure that these systems change, and that change is in perpetuity. They're the only ones who can do it. I can't come in and do it. No federal administrator can come in and do it. No state enforcer can come in and do it. The people of. Asheville can do it. And they want to do it so the roles of people like me, who might come in to help or consultants who might come in to help, they've got to come in and say we've got some expertise to help you figure this out. We've got some tools. We've got some resources. Like, you know, if you're coming to help, you got to bring some money sometimes, and the ability to deploy those dollars in service of communities’ goals. Not enriching yourself like, oh, “I'm going to bring money, I'm going to bring a contract down to get myself paid, and then I'm gonna head on back to wherever I'm coming from you.” You see a lot of disaster profiteers thinking like that.
And you can also teach folks how to build that capacity locally, so that they can access those dollars. Sometimes you're talking about federal programs, sometimes you're talking about state programs, sometimes you're talking about city programs that nobody was paying attention to, right? That no one knew was there, and that has a lot of resources, and it's just not functioning correctly.
AR: Can you talk a little more about the disaster profiteering that goes on and how you've seen it in New Orleans so that we can be on the lookout in our policies and contracts?
AM: Oh yeah. So we had a series in Louisiana and in New Orleans, a bunch of people came down to help and then they moved on from here to other disasters, right? Some of them are nonprofits, most of them are companies. And some of them are individuals that have moved from crisis to crisis, like people who were in New Orleans ended up in New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy. Then they ended up in Maria, they went to Puerto Rico after Maria. They went to Texas after Harvey - that's their shtick, is that they're like, “Oh, we've done this, we've got this experience in these other communities.” And I remember being in a meeting in Texas after Hurricane Harvey and hearing from the community that the contractor that Louisiana has fired and sued, twice for their mismanagement of our homeownership recovery program, was the only contractor that HUD offered to this community as the administrator of their program.
And I'm like I...and I flipped my wig. I was like, wait, I'm sorry. Have y'all not been listening to us talk for the last decade. I mean. But yeah, I mean, at that point it's been more than a decade, OK? Have you not listened to us talk about how these people suck?
AR: According to a 2006 CorpWatch report, some of the companies described as disaster profiteers that showed up on the Gulf Coast after Katrina and other storms included Kenyan International Emergency Services, Service Corporation International, Halliburton (with their subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root), the Shaw Group, AshBritt, Americold and Carnival Cruise Line.
AM: And there were people in that room, some national nonprofits who had been with us in New Orleans, and they were there helping. And I turned to them and I said, “Why didn't y'all say anything?” They were like, well, that was the only name HUD gave them. And I'm like then you should have said to them HUD’s just handed you a blank piece of paper, because that group is not qualified to do this. And you know why we know that? Because they made a mess in New Orleans and they made it in Louisiana, and they've made a mess in Puerto Rico. Don't let them come here. Make them find someone else. That's what you all should have said. So I would say to folks, look at what's happened. Look at the patterns.
AR: And it seems like we might be repeating that pattern in North Carolina with Helene recovery already. Two companies who have had concerns raised about their practices in the past, both during Katrina recovery and in other states, are now contracted in North Carolina for Helene work in Western North Carolina. That's Florida-based company AshBritt and Mississippi based company Horne LLP.
Ashbritt contracted for debris removal, apart from criticism and other disaster recovery work during Katrina and elsewhere, most recently reported in the Smoky Mountain times to be over clearing debris and destroying riverbanks in their work, leaving ecological damage that could create greater risk for future natural disasters. Horne LLP, according to NBC News Line and the Raleigh News and Observer, is a repeat disaster housing recovery company that allegedly had poor case management and worked in East North Carolina after Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, and was also ordered to pay $1.2 million to the federal government over allegations they received improper payments of federal disaster recovery grant funds in West Virginia.
It sounds like we gotta keep a close watch on how this goes down in Western North Carolina.
AM: Again, it's not about fatalism, right? That's the delicate balance. We've got to find a way to get community, to understand that you don't have to accept this crap. That it happened to us, that we weren't able to stop it does not mean it's inevitable for you.
In fact, part of what we do is, one, we show this is how New Orleans has, after way too long, started to pivot and chart its own path, and we've needed support to do that. We've needed the path cleared for us to do that. We’ve needed to talk about wielding our own power, building our own power, and that's something a lot of people are often uncomfortable with, right? Community members building and wielding power. I'll be the first person to tell that 15 years ago, I was like, look, especially with housing. When you run into these NIMBY folks...
AR: …NIMBY being not in my backyard…
AM: ...who are struggling with an issue and are inadvertently contributing to that issue being worsened in their own lives because they're afraid of the unhoused, they're afraid of public housing, there’s all of this fear. And you're like, do you understand that you're shooting yourself in the foot? And it becomes easy to get frustrated with those folks and say, “You're an idiot. You don't know what you're doing. Let me just do it for you.” That's not sustainable. That's not sustainable. You've got to make the investment and you've got to build trust with community so that ultimately they can set their own chart. They have to. That's the only way this is going to work. That's the only way it's going to work long-term.
It's not like bringing everything down like we're eliminating all hierarchies. It's like, no, you need folks to show up and play their role, which is that the election booth, and be able to make good decisions. And also you got to make sure, they actually have good choices that they have leaders who have come from their communities, who get it and are ready to accept responsibility. And more importantly, not be so thin-skinned that an evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses prompts the kind of whining we hear a lot when our annual report cards comes out. It's like I have a radical idea here: You could stop sucking at your job. You could stop failing, like demonstrably, failing, quantifiable.
Our grading system is really simple. It's based on: Here are the action items you’re supposed to do this year? What percentage did you do? You know, you get an F if you're below 60%, which is generous in any grading system. [laughs] For the last couple of years, we haven't accomplished more than 50% of the things that we're supposed to do. So it's like, yeah, you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. What we need to happen with this community needs to have happen for this housing market to progress...And again, we're not even talking about impact we're talking about did you make the step? We're sitting in a dark room. Did you flip the light switch? We don't even know if there's a bulb in there, like the bulb might be burned out. Did you flip the light switch? We're talking about how many flips did you make? Much less get... The light didn't come on. Well, is there a light bulb? Oh, the light bulb needs to be changed. We got to go change the light bulb. Crap, the building doesn't actually have power. Why doesn't the building have power? Right? So that we're not sitting in the dark. There's a lot of steps to do that.
AR: So when we're talking about our health and well-being in Western North Carolina, our communities do have some opportunities to learn from New Orleans about housing. Whether it's organizing like you'll have to build a more accountable governing process for contractors rebuilding in Western North Carolina, developing a process like the ballot initiative for a Housing Trust fund, exploring policies addressing banking and insurance challenges, or something completely different.
I know there's a lot more we could talk about with housing [AM: Correct!] but Andreanecia, thank you for taking the time with me, sharing your experience, and giving our listeners more to think about as we consider one of our biggest determinants of health, both before and after Helene.
AM: No, Andrew, I wish all the best of luck. Anything that we can do to help, we would be happy to help talk to folks, and support folks, and just blow off steam with. All right. Take care, Andrew. Bye.
AR: You too.
OUTRO
[Jazzy music plays]
AR: You've been listening to the Western North Carolina Health Policy Initiative podcast, a collaboration between North Carolina Center for Health and Wellness at UNCA, and MAHEC, with generous support from the Dogwood Health Trust. The CorpWatch report mentioned earlier in the show is called “Big Easy Money: Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast,” prepared by Rita J. King in 2006, and linked in the show notes. You can learn more about some of the cited health impacts post Katrina and Jean Rhodes et al.’s 2006 publication, “The Impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mental and Physical health of Low-Income Parents in New Orleans,” available on PubMed. See our show page for links to the cited Smoky Mountain News article about AshBritts's presence in Macon and Transylvania counties, as well as the Raleigh News and Observer and NBC Newsline pieces on Horne LLP.
To listen again or learn more about public health issues in Western North Carolina, check out the website at wnchealthpolicy.org, or listen to more of our shows on Apple Podcast or Spotify. If there's a Western North Carolina health issue that you'd like to hear more about, speak about or have comments about anything you've heard on an HP I podcast, feel free to send us an e-mail at info@wnchealthpolicy.org, or write a comment on wherever you listen to podcasts.
Another big thanks to Asheville-based Appalachian ballad singer Saro Lynch-Thomason, for humming the old shape-note-style ballad “Lady Margaret” in the mid-show break. You can learn more about her work and regional music traditions at sarosings.com.
Other music in this podcast includes old ballad “Little Margaret,” performed on banjo by Kath and Phil Tyler, found on the Free Music Archive, is licensed under an Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 United States license. Additional music on the podcast included the track “Some Nights End,” “Strong Creek,” “When the Guests Have Left,” “Lover’s Hollow,” and “Night Watch” by the Blue Dot Sessions. These tracks are found on the Free Music Archive under license Attribution International CBY 4.0.
Be sure to check out the website for more HPI podcast episodes and other resources at wnchealthpolicy.org. Thanks for listening.
