CHAPTER 6

Logic of Response versus Services

The main object of the long-term recovery group is not to make people better off than they were before the storm, but to bring back people to some stability, where they were before the storm.

—Reverend Dennis, Brooklyn pastor, disaster responder

My conversations with disaster responders from both governmental and nongovernmental organizations across Brooklyn and The Rockaways revealed that there is an orientation in disaster response that only “sees” acute trauma, occluding chronic trauma from consciousness (Erickson 1976). These conversations reveal that a logic of services that cater to the chronically economically deprived had given way to a logic of response that prioritized those disaster survivors who only momentarily were without access to their personal resources. I was often amazed at the assumptions and what seemed like a lack of awareness among well-meaning disaster responders that many “disaster survivors” or “disaster victims” were in fact severely economically deprived before Sandy. These discourses and practices of disaster responders together form what I am calling logic of response versus logic of services, which prioritizes and promotes “victims over vulnerable,” “middle-class bootstrap,” “color and class blindness,” “primacy of homeownership,” and “self-employed invisibility.” In particular, the “victims over vulnerable” logic of response was the most dominant discourse across two FEMA-run disaster response centers, one NGO-run center, an NYS-run center, and one long-term recovery group community meeting for local Brooklyn churches, local businesses, and nonprofits responding to the disaster.

Victims over Vulnerable

The victims over vulnerable disaster response logic reoriented definitions of need and deservingness to include anyone impacted by the storm. This tendency conflated the chronically economically deprived with the economically privileged disaster survivors whose plight was only temporary. Disaster responders use references such as “disaster survivors,” “disaster victims,” or “impacted residents” in discussions. This results in a linguistic displacement of the truly economically deprived. However, this displacement is more than just semantics. Claims making for securing disaster aid is also about proving that one’s economic standing is the consequence of the disaster event. I illustrate this victims over vulnerable disaster logic of response in my conversation with Reverend Dennis at the end of a long-term recovery group meeting held at his Brooklyn church, with several Brooklyn area local churches and nonprofits. Reverend Dennis explains:

REVEREND DENNIS: The main object of the long-term recovery group is not to make people better off than they were before the storm, but to bring back people to some stability, where they were before the storm.

SM: But when you think about people in the neighborhood who were already in bad shape before the storm, what are the alternatives for them if you’re not going to be putting them in better shape?

REVEREND DENNIS: That is a question that case management has to deal with.

SM: Case management. So, tell me more.

REVEREND DENNIS: In fact, the case management will be able to help them assess their circumstances. See what their needs are and see where the resources to bring them back to a better position than they were before the storm can be. For example, they might be able to direct them to social services or to other services that can help them move from where they were before the storm to a better place.

Here, Reverend Dennis is demarcating a line between the concern of disaster response and that of social services. However, this line also represents a demarcation of logic of services versus logic of response, where the latter does not imagine a disaster victim as being already unstable before the disaster. There is an arbitrary line between a disaster survivor and the chronically economically deprived. This logic also surfaced in my conversation with Bob, a mental health counselor with Resiliency Is Us in The Rockaways. Bob explains the role of the NGO:

It’s important to remember that we are a disaster relief operation. So, we’re not necessarily here to provide psychotherapeutic or longer-term counseling services. We are here to assist people in overcoming and dealing with the immediate crisis. So that they can marshal their resources—both the personal and community in order to allow their own personal resilience to kick in.

The statements of both Reverend Dennis and Bob illustrate what I was hearing when speaking with Always With You volunteers on The Rockaways, regarding the plight of chronically economically deprived survivors. That is, the needs of the subpopulations that are most vulnerable to the disaster event are not the business of disaster relief and recovery, but that of other social service agencies, churches, and other private organizations.

This orientation was also an outgrowth of the post-Katrina emphasis on resiliency. Reverend Dennis and I along with representatives of twenty-five or so Brooklyn organizations had just sat through a meeting where “resiliency” was the resounding theme and was discussed as a strategy to competitively position this newly forming long-term recovery group to receive Sandy relief. Attendees at the meeting of small local churches, businesses, nonprofits, and a large NGO echoed Reverend Dennis’s statement, with hardly any rebuttal.

Reverend Dennis and Bob were also making assumptions about survivors’ personal resources or social capital, which are important for these disaster survivors to achieve this desired “resiliency.” The prevailing disaster logic of response is that the imaginary “disaster victim” is someone who is at the very least not economically deprived and is well connected or supported by a well-resourced family and community. Also, both statements illustrate that these disaster responders are not providing the kind of help that would benefit those who lack the pre-disaster resources because such help is not the mission of “long-term recovery” nor of shorter-term disaster response NGOs.

Another aspect of disaster response that reflects an orientation toward the logic of response is the spatial organization and operations of FEMA-run disaster response centers. These centers can become a revolving door for disaster survivors needing critical services. The physical layout of these centers resembled a job fair setup, outfitted with rows of staffed tables with small signs in a large vacant building or church. If a disaster survivor needs services outside of what these tables offer, there are flyers and brochures with the appropriate agency to contact for their specific need, but the onus is on them to call and make contact.

The design of these centers resembled a one-stop shop. However, the experience for the disaster survivors is that they go in to see one state governmental organization represented at a table, only to be sent to another table, and another, and another. Each successive table is closer to the exit door. For those who do not receive the needed assistance that they are seeking from any of these tables, they make it to the exit door and onto the streets with unmet needs and are visibly frustrated, distressed, and despondent.

This was the case with Marlene, the seventy-three-year-old retired seamstress and Canarsie homeowner on a fixed income from Jamaica. I met Marlene when she was leaving the FEMA-run disaster response center, with a look of frustration. I introduced myself, told her about my research, and asked if she had a few minutes to participate in an interview. During the course of the interview, she broke down crying profusely. She began to say that she woke up that morning knowing that she was going to jump off the Manhattan Bridge if FEMA did not help her that day. FEMA did not help her that day. I immediately turned off and put down my recording device to empathize with her and to dissuade her from these suicidal thoughts. Surprisingly, she said, “No, no, I want you to turn it on. I want everyone to know what has happened to me.” At that moment, I was torn about whether to keep recording, but she affirmed that the very process of telling me her experience was cathartic and an empowering experience for her.

Marlene relayed that she was seventy-three years old and that she had become temporarily homeless because her basement, where she lived, was flooded. She said that all she was walking around with was her bag, which she revealed only had two pairs of “panties” or underwear. She said that the night before she had slept at a friend’s apartment near Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn and was not sure where she was going to sleep that evening since she had been displaced from the basement, but she rents out the upper floor of the house to be able to pay her mortgage.

Marlene had made several trips to FEMA and had been directed to the tables represented by FEMA, NYS, SBA, HUD, and more at the disaster response center. Yet, she felt that all these bureaucracies that were set up to help her did not really hear her pleas for help. Recording the interview validated her experience and her way of creating recorded history as if to say, “Yes, this really did happen, and it happened to me.”

Because Marlene had revealed she was having thoughts of taking her life, I sought assistance from one of the tables and was given the crisis hotline number. I then called the crisis hotline to connect Marlene to mental health services using my cell phone. I spent forty-five minutes listening to several automated options, bumped from one menu to another before getting a live person on the phone. I was finally able to give Marlene an address to go to, based on what the operator relayed to me.

I called Marlene the next day to see whether she had received assistance. However, she told me that she had taken the bus to the address, but when she arrived, she discovered that it was an abandoned building. The information was obsolete. I went through the entire process again before she could be seen. Marlene also gave me permission to share her needs with other community disaster responders in another area, and I was able to find a team to help her with mold remediation.

Before this, Marlene had been trying to battle mold in her basement by herself by using bleach she bought from Home Depot, only to find that the mold grew right back. Since she had communicated her mental state, I wanted to minimize her stress as much as I could. It was at this moment that I realized that this disaster response bureaucracy was a huge referral system that did not allow the time and opportunity to really “see” and meaningfully assist people in Marlene’s situation. It was just too easy to slip into the chasm between the logic of response and the logic of services.

There is a fundamental problem with establishing a bright line between a logic of response and a logic of services. It is equally problematic when the former displaces the latter. The reason is that the chronically economically deprived who rely on social services are also those who are most socially vulnerable to disasters. This means that when these disaster survivors walk into a disaster response center for assistance along with everyone else, they cannot disentangle their needs along a false dichotomy.

My conversation with Caroline, a site manager of an NYS-run response center, illustrates how from the earliest period of official disaster response, the logic of response displaces the logic of services. This displacement of logic relegates the latter to the position of an afterthought. Caroline’s account also sheds light on the tangible, negative impact of disaster response in the absence of a thorough integration with social services. Prior to managing the NYS-run disaster response center, Caroline had been stationed at an evacuation center. She laments over her own observations at the evacuation center regarding the “areas of service that were missed.”

Well, it was, uh, it was emergency management, um, that really needed to link up with social services. Whoever came up with the plan just didn’t link us. And so, we were all there, but there was just no linkage. And so, the people were brought out of the storm. There was transportation, which was fine. It was hot, and it was warm, you know. It was safe. There were cots, but there were all those other service opportunities that I think, um, could have been addressed so much more systematically as opposed to what’s going on. Like, “Oh, my gosh. The people need that.” And then doing it informally. I think that, systematically, we’ll probably learn from our experience with Sandy and be better prepared in a different way, not just with the stuff, but with the, you know, with the systems in place to do a better job the next time.

Caroline’s vision of a systematic integration of the logic of services with the logic of response was different from that of the disaster response site managers with whom I spoke at the FEMA-run centers. Her vision of integration shaped many aspects of the way she managed her disaster center. However, in order to achieve this, she constantly had to advocate for more services for the disaster survivors coming into her center.

I’m always thinking about the agency, what we should be doing. You know, I’m in this project now, so this is my agency, you know, and it’s important to me that it works as effectively as it possibly can. And so, either they love me or hate me because I’ve always got an idea about what would make it better, because I sit here and I watch, and I don’t think that, with all the money that was being put into making this work, anybody should miss services or not get what they need, because nobody said anything.

Caroline was indeed an anomaly. To offer some context, Caroline is a licensed social worker who has worked with the social service agency for over thirty years. She told me, “Social services is kind of in my blood.” She explains that her own mother was a social worker who worked with the agency. She acknowledges that exposure to this world from an early age has profoundly shaped her worldview. She has also worked in a homeless relocation program that connected these clients with services and local community-based organizations around their new home. She laments the decision to end that program.

Unlike the other two site managers in the other FEMA-run centers, Caroline brought in a community-based organization to provide on-the-spot counseling beyond the regular referral system. Her team was racially diverse and mostly local. My conversation with her also reflected that she was culturally aware when she noted that Caribbean, African American, and Latinx disaster survivors don’t tend to ask for mental health services. Then she demonstrated her responsiveness by identifying them and connecting them with the therapist, even closing off an area from the open warehouse setup of the center.

Caroline’s integrated approach is a great model for disaster response. At the institutional level, NYS-run disaster response centers are more equipped to effectively serve the local community. Disaster response decision makers need to select site managers from a pool of local applicants with a similar record of accomplishment in social services. Leaders with a social services perspective are ideal for informing a disaster response model that is more responsive to the needs of the chronically economically deprived and marginalized urban disaster survivors.

Middle-Class Bootstrap Bias

In addition to their displacing the economically deprived, the elderly, and those needing long-term mental health services, there was an assumption among governmental disaster responders that the ideal disaster survivors were those who were the early comers pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Middle-class bootstrap bias surfaced in my conversations with FEMA staff and state field site managers across Eastville, Westville, and Canarsie. Several studies have shown that institutional expectations tend to align with middle-class ideals or “cultural capital” in ways that they don’t with the ideals and cultural capital of the working class (Calarco 2011). I saw and heard examples of middle-class bootstrap bias in the way responders spoke favorably about disaster survivors who they thought were being “proactive.” Contrastingly, it was also apparent in their assumptions of survivors’ lack of initiative as explanations for unfavorable outcomes. In some cases, these were personal ideals among responders, but often these were also woven into institutional practice independent of personal ideals as illustrated below.

Through my interviews with low SES Canarsie and Eastville survivors, who were at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder, it became apparent that poorer and newer immigrants and the racially minoritized heard about programs a lot later than White middle-class residents in Westville—the more affluent community on The Rockaways. As I alternated my presence at different sites, I realized many times that the Canarsie and Eastville disaster survivors were just hearing about a program that White disaster survivors in Westville had talked to me about several weeks before. In fact, in some cases, Eastvillers and Canarsie residents were learning about programs from me.

Both in Canarsie and Eastville there was a lot of displacement of those who lived in basements and who lived in coastal areas. Displacement interrupts the flow of information because of the fragmentation of informal networks. Ferdinand at the Canarsie FEMA disaster response center mentioned that initially Haitians had low representation in the earlier flows of resident applications coming to the center. He noted that more recently a lot more had begun to come in. He attributed the recent increase to word of mouth among Haitian immigrants. Through conversations others learned that being part of a mixed immigration status household would not negatively affect the applications of legal household members.

It is also important to note that Ferdinand was also critical to this reconstituting of what later became an informal informational egocentric network that formed around him, largely because he was also Haitian. Lots of Haitian immigrants had incorrectly assumed that they did not qualify for disaster assistance, but his presence as an embedded actor at the disaster response center legitimated him as a trusted source, although he later told me this placement was quite by accident and not a matter of design since he had been scheduled for another location before this one.

This late emergence of a network is not surprising, given that we know that information tends to diffuse in social capital networks of ethnic groups. In the migration literature, Alejandro Portes (1998; Portes and Sensenbrenner 1993) confirms the importance of the social capital networks of migrants and ethnic enclaves by stressing the importance of this homophily principle on the basis of shared ethnic identity. A common identity through national origin and migration experience forges strong affect, trust, and solidarity among co-ethnics, which facilitate reciprocal exchanges of obligations and fulfilled expectations. Immigration scholars think of the social capital residing in these immigrant networks and enclaves as a response to social inequality due to discrimination in the formal labor market and exclusionary communities.

Color and Class Blindness

Other disaster responders did not possess Ferdinand’s awareness that there are socially determined, external factors that may explain the lag time among some of the Canarsie survivors. Beverly, a White disaster responder under his supervision, who staffed one of the service desks with which residents interfaced, explained her work process of mold remediation as a class-blind, color-blind approach to support provision. I asked Beverly:

SM: Can you just tell me a little bit about your experience here in terms of what you noticed about the community, the people who came, and the types of issues that you’ve had to help with?

BEVERLY: I talk about mold issues and insurance and how to stop the mold in its tracks. That was initially. Then as it progressed it got to people who did some work and then didn’t do anything or they did. It just got overwhelming. . . . Now what I am getting is people—it’s been two weeks—who have not done anything—the basement or anything at all, have not [removed] the Sheetrock, have not kept up with the mold.

SM: What sense do you get about these people? Any differences that you discern between those and those who came earlier?

BEVERLY: No. Well, the ones that came earlier are a lot more proactive. You know, they knew they had a problem. They knew they needed to register with FEMA. They knew they needed to get some funding. Hopefully, some help from us, and they knew that they were going to have a problem because of the type of flood water this was. It was pretty nasty water. So, they knew that. The type I’m getting now are not.

SM: So, you think that probably reflects socioeconomic status, education level or any—[Interruption]

BEVERLY: I’m not saying that. But then you know I don’t see that. I don’t see any of that in people and I don’t recognize it and I don’t ask it. So, I don’t see, I couldn’t tell you.

SM: Oh, so once they come to you—[Interruption]

BEVERLY: They come to me just clean. I have no information about them. When you register with FEMA over here [pointing to the first intake table], they take information. I don’t have any access to that. Know all of our computers have different securities. Um, so I’m just dealing with them one on one.

SM: Okay.

BEVERLY: The ones that are coming in now just seem to be, um, too relaxed. They’re not as worried about the health issues as they should be.

SM: So, from what I’ve encountered from the different people that I’ve spoken to, I’ve started to see a pattern among people who are probably with less education probably, they’re just not aware [of the dangers of mold]. They just know it’s an annoyance, but they’re not aware that it’s a health risk.

BEVERLY: See, I don’t know that because I don’t, like I said, I just talk one-on-one to the person. I just listen to what their dilemma is and then try to walk them through that. You know, I never ask them what they do for a living, or you know.

Unlike Ferdinand, Beverly did not consider the possibility that those coming in later were just learning of the presence of the disaster response center or their eligibility and how their social standing may have influenced their access to relevant information in a timely manner. In fact, she continued to reiterate that she was blind to socioeconomic, educational, or any other differences. As she stated, the people who came to her were “clean,” so she dealt with everyone in very much the same way, considering only the needs that were induced by the disaster and nothing else.

Beverly recognized residents who came in earlier as being “proactive” and those who came in later as being “too relaxed” and not as worried as “they should be.” Another favorable description of the early birds I heard from Andrew, a Black manager of a FEMA-run site at a Rockaway location: “First you get the needy, then you get the greedy.” Both comments reflect a lack of awareness of the impediments to early arrival at the disaster response centers. Both statements also reflect either the survivors’ need for greater personal responsibility or the undeservingness among the latecomers, common tropes used for the racially minoritized and the economically deprived. Andrew’s perception that the needy would be the first to arrive runs counter to everything we know about the most marginalized and their ability to be first in line for anything, and certainly not before the most privileged.

While Beverly’s and Andrew’s statements reflect their own assumptions, there is also a degree of institutional culture and practice at play as well. Federal and state operations, protocol, and technologies that organized and compartmentalized social identities and prior socioeconomic status effectively strips residents of the recognition of their social vulnerabilities.

Although FEMA collected some of this personal information, the data was not immediately accessible across the different stations that residents encountered. I confirmed this by asking the workers at the various stations. At each table a resident approached, they became a clean slate and nothing more than a disaster victim. On its face this seems admirably equal, but race scholars have long argued that “color blindness” (Bonilla-Silva 1997), and in this instance I would include class blindness, actually has the opposite effect. These practices and cultures of color and class neutrality definitionally occlude the possibility of truly being able to see inequity and consequently address it.

Primacy of Homeownership and Built Environment

Another disaster response logic was the progressive steering of services toward the needs of homeowners and the simultaneous scaling back of services for low-income and nonworking economically deprived survivors. During disaster response, there is great emphasis on the built environment. Therefore, catering to the repair needs of homeowners is paramount to the operations of disaster centers. This was evident in my interview with Caroline, site manager of an NYS-run disaster response center on The Rockaways, who stated:

Rapid Repairs [the State-subsidized home repair program] was one of our highest service areas—you know, one of the service areas with the highest numbers because, you know, a lot of residential owners experienced damage. Right now, that is the big piece that’s going around this agency, and this operation is making sure that landlords can connect to contractors and get Rapid Repairs to deal with some of the issues like boilers and, you know, mold and basement damage. That’s a major thing.

When I asked if data collected at the NYS-run disaster response centers was used to target the needs of residents, Caroline responded with a similar logic as did Beverly:

There’s no targeting at this point, um, not through this operation. This operation is, we are here, and we are manned, and we try to have every service that we think would support someone who needs disaster assistance. There’s city, state, federal, and community organizations that are here, and, um, our central office is in contact with us daily to find out what kinds of trends we’re seeing, what types of services are we seeing. There’s been a change in the, uh, the types of services that were placed here, because there was no real need for them, you know, beforehand. Well, for a point, NYCHA [New York City Housing Authority, which oversees public housing]. They were here just for a short while, but no one was really utilizing their services.

When asked how they determined the needs of a community, Caroline responded:

The need, you know, is based on the numbers because we’re growing numbers every day and based on the activity with them. So, they know we’re here. You know, so there are agencies that we didn’t really need here. And so as, as we report on numbers, the central office would make decisions on that service is not really needed. And if there was a service that was needed, then they would bring that agency in.

Here Caroline does mention that she reports to her superiors, who scale back or add services based on her assessments of need, which she and they base on “numbers.” This bottom-up approach to collecting data and providing services seems like a good practice, although it was not clear to me that low “demand” for services that cater to the economically deprived was necessarily a reflection of a lack of need in the community. Once again, the unstated, but problematic underlying assumption was that everyone had access to information about the services offered and was equally able to make it to these centers in a “timely” manner.

If we return to another statement by Beverly, there was also a race and class habitus mismatch regarding basement apartments, a common feature of New York City living, particularly among the working class and new immigrants. Beverly explains her confusion about these living spaces and the people who choose to make these their home:

The sad part is, here, that most people are living in basements, and basements are not what the government ever considers what a person should be living in. I mean, I don’t know because I’m not from New York, but it seems that everybody rents a basement out, so many of them are illegal to rent out. Um, I mean, I don’t know why people live in basements. It’s kind of dark down there but they do, and they are very content. They have huge apartments in these basements. I know I always thought these were like a small basement. There are big homes down there. So, it’s very different. It’s very different. Each disaster in each state is so different.

Because I had been a working-class immigrant New Yorker who lived in the boroughs, basement apartments are not weird to me at all, but hearing Beverly talking about them in this way felt uncomfortable. I lived in a New York basement apartment with my mom and sister for years, so her statements made me hypervigilant of the difference between our class status. While basement apartments are not ideal, they are common and usually the most affordable unsubsidized housing option that one could find in New York City.

Beverly’s statements did reflect sympathy for these disaster survivors who resided in basements, but they also reflect the cultural bias stemming from living within a White middle-class habitus, an environment imbued with White middle-class cultural tastes (Mayorga 2014). This was an unfamiliar environment for her. She told me that she is from a midwestern state in a middle-class neighborhood with single-family homes and where residents don’t live in basements. It is therefore hard to relate to residents who live in basements. This idea of a mismatch in habitus was also relevant to the issue of nonlocal adjusters of different racial demographics, devaluing the losses to property in basements of Black immigrant disaster survivors as discussed in chapter 4.

Invisibility of the Self-Employed

Yet another example of a disaster response logic was toward formal employment. Self-employed disaster survivors did not receive compensation for their trade tools, such as a DJ’s CDs and records or a mechanic’s tools, because the application did not provide a means to categorize these correctly. Similar to discussions in chapter 4 about the inspection of adjusters subcontracted by FEMA, a common complaint from low-income basement disaster survivors was that their belongings did not receive the correct valuation. Many felt that adjusters were of a different race and different socioeconomic status, and that these differences colored their subjective judgments about the value of the survivors’ belongings and what they ought to be able to do without. This mismatch in race and class of responders and residents led to distrust of subjectivities that potentially obscure the assessments of survivors’ circumstances.

Naquita, whom we met in chapter 4, explains that FEMA’s IHP program, although it covered loss of personal items, did not cover her husband’s losses associated with his self-employed status. In this instance, Naquita explains that her husband is a DJ:

NAQUITA: All of his thousands and thousands of music [are] completely gone.

SM: Did you put that in your application?

NAQUITA: Yes. And FEMA is like that’s not their responsibility. It’s just to get you started again.

SM: But did you mention in your application that he was self-employed?

NAQUITA: Yes, yes.

SM: Okay.

SM: And nothing?

NAQUITA: Well, a colleague of mine has a family member that works for FEMA, and I spoke to her on the phone, and she also said, ‘You need to make sure when you appeal, they know that he is self-employed and that’s how he made his living.’ And, you know, I spoke to the FEMA representative here—

SM: They said the opposite, right?

NAQUITA: Yeah. He was just like, ‘Oh, you need to take that all out.’ He actually crossed it off of my letter.

SM: Yeah. [nods]

NAQUITA: So now we just wait and see what happens.

SM: One more thing, how long after the storm did you put in your application?

NAQUITA: The next day. It happened—the Monday, I think it was. Tuesday morning, when we came home, when we saw what was happening with neighbors, we actually put it on that same day.

Naquita’s final statements reflect that despite beginning her application process early, holding a master’s degree in organizational psychology, and possessing social capital that affords her informally transmitted information through her friend’s relative who works with FEMA, she was still caught in the labyrinth of appeal, discussed in chapter 4 and via her husband, the exclusionary logic of response along with the latecomers who are not as endowed with capital as she is.

Ricky’s Story

What happens to a fifty-year-old Black man who is chronically economically deprived and precariously connected to State services through a drug rehabilitation program after disaster strikes? What does it mean to his life that an ecology of inequity had ushered in a logic of response that displaces the logic of services? Ricky had lived in a three-quarter house in a pocket of deep poverty in Eastville, where, as Ricky describes, when food from the grocery store washed out onto the streets with the fast-moving toxic floodwaters, “people were actually picking those hot dogs up and eating them.” Although my interview with Ricky took place in East-ville only a few days after Sandy floodwaters displaced him from his dwelling, follow-up interviews with him took place at the Resiliency Is Us disaster response center, where I encountered him again.

There is a bit of irony in Ricky’s story, in that even before Sandy, Ricky was already living in transitional housing. FEMA offers transitional housing to disaster survivors who had experienced displacement. He became homeless and spent much of his time going to the Resiliency Is Us Westville disaster response center to keep warm and have a meal, keeping his appointments with social services counselors and caseworkers and interfacing with FEMA. The part of Ricky’s story I was able to capture ends with him back in transitional housing.

Ricky’s experience illustrates how chronic crises become enmeshed with acute crises during a disaster event and how taxing it is on the most economically deprived survivors. Although Ricky is in contact with FEMA immediately after the storm, his social location presents several obstacles to receiving resources in a timely manner. A governmental program would later transfer Ricky to transitional housing, exactly where he began. He was swept into a cycle he had almost prophetically described to me earlier in great detail.

Through his own words Ricky talks about the cycle of poverty and his frustration and lack of confidence in “the system” that he sees as not really designed to help him find a permanent solution to his housing precarity, not just for him but for countless others like him. His story also shows how ill-equipped disaster response is in dealing with persons caught in cyclical socioeconomic resource deprivation and displacements. The first time I met Ricky was on a street corner in East-ville, as he was helping load a soggy mattress onto a truck from a damaged halfway house tagged as condemned after Sandy’s storm surges had engulfed it. I asked Ricky how he was affected by the storm, and he indicated that before Sandy, he lived in transitional housing as part of a drug rehabilitation program. Like everyone else, he incurred losses due to Sandy. However, experiencing Sandy would be more consequential for him than those who are not Black, male, chronically economically deprived, and substance dependent.

Sandy has made him homeless due to his housing precarity even before the storm. Although he started the application process early, he is having a tough time getting into a FEMA hotel, although his White girlfriend, who is similar to him in all other respects except race and gender, is staying in one. Because he can’t stay there with her, she comes out to keep him company, and so they walk the cold streets together. Ricky and I discuss his situation. Ricky tells me:

RICKY: That’s a three-quarter house. You know, water damage, everything, got done to it. So, I lost my clothes. I lost stereos, everything. So yeah, I’m really affected by it. And I’m still looking for, you know, [housing] placement. Because every time, you know, I try to go, you know, to the FEMA hotel, they don’t have any. And I’m, and I’m really stressed out about this, you know. And, um, I’m walking the streets, and I don’t like to do that. That’s not me. That’s not me.

SM: And you lived in that house.

RICKY: That’s where I used to live at.

SM: Okay, describe what type of housing it is.

RICKY: It’s a three-quarter house, I guess, for like people that have drug problems, you know, trying to get their life together. And that—that’s what I was doing, you know. I’m still doing it. So, I’m doing outpatient for all that. I’m not going to give this up. Because, you know—actually, I’m tired.

SM: So, when you say you tried to get help, when you go, do you call them?

RICKY: Yeah, we call. I call and there’s no hotels open, right now. And, you know, some of the shelters are full. So, me and my girlfriend, we walks the street, you know? I don’t like doing that. I mean, I feel bad. I’m the man, and I can’t—I don’t like to see her out here with me. And that really, that really stresses me out.

SM: They’re saying that all the shelters are full?

RICKY: When I call, they say they’re full and whatnot. So, you know, I’ll just deal with it right now.

SM: They told me that FEMA actually was out here. Did you actually see anybody?

RICKY: Yeah, yeah.

SM: From FEMA?

Ricky had his first encounter with FEMA almost immediately after the storm because they were physically present near where he lived at the time, but now they relocated somewhere else.

RICKY: They—yeah, I seen—I did the application. They came to the house. They seen everything that was damaged and whatnot—to my room and all that. And I qualified for just about everything.

SM: Okay, good.

RICKY: So right now, I’m waiting on them.

SM: And how long is the wait? Did they tell you?

RICKY: Uh, probably about seven to ten days—about five to ten days for the money or whatever—replacement money. It ain’t gonna be much, but it’s something to get me on my feet. You know?

SM: Right. And then, during that time, they didn’t say what else you can do?

RICKY: Eh, no.

SM: It’s just waiting?

RICKY: Yeah.

SM: And how long did it take for FEMA to actually come out here?

RICKY: It took them like—it took them—they came out quick, I mean like three days, four days. Yeah, three days. It took them—they came.

SM: But it’s just the process of having to wait for them?

RICKY: So, in the meantime, you see what I’m doing. I’m helping. Helping to keep the money in my pocket, you know? Other than that, I’m good.

SM: Do you know any other residents who were displaced as well, and they’re looking for a place to—

RICKY: Well, my girlfriend, she’s on the next block. She’s a White woman. You can talk to her. Tell her Ricky sent you. Her, her, her—I call her my wife. [Smiles] Just tell her that her husband sent you. [Smiles]

Two months later I met Ricky at the Resiliency Is Us disaster response center. At this point, he is still homeless. He explains the issues he has been experiencing with his FEMA application despite starting the process so early. Many of the interruptions relate to his chronic conditions of poverty and his recent homelessness. First, he has issues accessing mail. The FEMA application process assumes that an applicant has a mailing address. I asked Ricky what happened since his FEMA application and reminded him that he was waiting to hear back since we last spoke. He tells me:

FEMA did give me a runaround. They haven’t sent me my check. I mean they sent it to the address, but it went back. So, what I gave was—I changed the address to a drop program with my outpatient program. And they said they sent it and it was supposed to be there. I went there today to find out from accounts. Say I need an additional hold on the thing. He said, “If you can do it like that, it’s only one time, because it’s like an emergency.” They allowed my mail to come in.

Ricky continues to explain how both acute and chronic crises dovetail in his life. Even after two months, little about his circumstances have changed. He is still homeless and hopes to find permanent housing for him and his girlfriend, who he shares is now expecting a baby. He describes his feelings of powerlessness having her on the streets with him and not being able to secure housing for them and their baby. He explains the psychological toll his housing situation is taking on him. He said he was experiencing frequent triggers that lead to violent outbursts of which he is not proud. Ricky attributes this to his disaster experiences, which left him traumatized. He and his girlfriend had witnessed the wall of water that came down the streets of The Rockaways. He tells me:

RICKY: Right now, I have nowhere to live. Okay, you know. I’m not ashamed to say it, you know, ’cause I’m still waiting on this money. This way, I can get me an apartment, right along with my fiancée. This way, we won’t have to be out here in this cold. I’m not proud of what I’m doing, you know. She’s out here with me, and, and that makes me feel small, and she’s pregnant.

SM: Oh no.

RICKY: That—that makes me feel like this [holds thumb and index finger together indicating ‘small’], you know. I don’t like that. I’m still going through the bad experience, you know. I’ve had some time—sometimes I have attitudes, you know. She says something to me, I snap. Maybe I don’t mean to.

SM: Is that happening more after the storm?

RICKY: Yeah, more after the storm. It’s just—I don’t know how to deal with this. I ain’t never went through these storms before. Where I’m from in New Jersey, we don’t have this type of stuff.

SM: Right.

RICKY: This was a shock and a surprise to me. I didn’t even think it was really going to happen like it did, but it happened.

SM: All right. Did you get to see the storm happen?

RICKY: I was out—I was out in the storm. Me, me, and my fiancée was out in the storm.

RICKY: With the water?

SM: Yeah, watched the water come right past us, you know, and—

SM: Do you remember that a lot?

RICKY: It’s still on my mind, yeah. Next day, you wake up, you find everything destroyed. Tables floating down the street, uh, people’s homes destroyed. Hot dogs floating down the street.

Using his FEMA voucher becomes a complicated process because the FEMA process makes several underlying assumptions about applicants that do not apply to people experiencing the level of poverty and marginalization that Ricky has. One assumption is that applicants have access to a credit card and a state driver’s license or identification card. Many economically deprived African Americans do not own these forms of identification. Owning a credit card is certainly out of reach for many of Eastville’s economically deprived, including Ricky. Credit is also a function of race. Ricky mentions that his girlfriend has a credit card. Despite her being in many similar circumstances as he, owning a credit card and being able to stay at a hotel are two things she has access to that he does not. I ask him about his current housing situation:

SM: So, you told me you were not sure where you were going to be able to stay after. Did you find a place to stay?

RICKY: Well, FEMA they do the hotel. Okay, they set you up with a hotel. Any FEMA hotel. They’ve got a deal with FEMA. They can tell you they’re gonna pay for the room and taxes. But what they don’t tell you that when you get to the hotel, you have to pay a deposit out of your pocket. They don’t tell you this. So, you get there without the deposit, they not going to let you stay in the hotel, regardless if FEMA is paying the money—you know to stay in the room. And I, just in case you wanted to use the bar, or the snack bar, or the phone, or something was wrong with the room, they [can] keep that money. But, you know, you use nothing, they give you that money back. Being that I don’t have a credit card like she does [points to his girlfriend], or I have a picture ID, but my picture ID is coming from my benefits, like from HRA [Human Resources Administration].

SM: You don’t have a driver’s license or a State ID

RICKY: No, none of that. No, I don’t have none of that.

Yet, another underlying assumption of FEMA is that an applicant has access to communication. Keeping minutes on his phone was an issue for Ricky. He expressed that he wished FEMA had maintained their physical location in his community. This would have facilitated a smoother follow-up process and would have reduced his bureaucratic burden significantly. I ask Ricky:

SM: And you still haven’t heard from FEMA yet?

RICKY: No, I haven’t heard from them yet, but eventually it’s going to come.

SM: And you’re calling them via phone?

RICKY: No. Right now I have a free phone, but I haven’t got any more minutes. So, when I do get this, I’m planning on getting an unlimited phone, so I don’t have to worry about running down the minutes. If FEMA was here [in a physical location] now, I would go talk to them, see what’s going on. I’m good right now. [self-motivating talk]

SM: Okay.

RICKY: I’m dealing with it. [self-motivating talk]

Ricky describes the point at which disaster response and social services collide, transitional housing. He is accustomed to having to navigate short-term deadlines and the precarity of knowing that he may be back on the streets at any time. He makes it clear that all FEMA will do is give him extensions and a check. His own longtime quest for permanent housing, which is not a mission of FEMA, is what determines what he does with this money. His vision is to use it as a stepping stone into a permanent place to live.

SM: So right now, you’re still at the FEMA hotel. How long can you stay there?

RICKY: Huh?

SM: How long can you stay at the hotel?

RICKY: Maybe through January 13th or 14th.

SM: And by then, they’ll give you something more permanent?

RICKY: They’ll give me an extension. They’ll keep giving me extensions until I—well when I get the money [inaudible], it’s called transitional housing—I’m still going to be able to take that money and go find an apartment. That’s what I plan on doing. I’m not planning on going and blowing it on nothing else. I’ve got to get out of the cold, you know. I can’t stand this cold. Like I said, after, you know, after, the alcoholism departments will, you know, drug, alcoholism, supposed to help you get your, help you with an apartment, you know, find housing. But sometimes they do, and they don’t.

Ricky mentions that after thirty days, one graduates from these drug rehabilitation programs, in which he is enrolled, so I ask him what typically happens after thirty days. He expresses his disbelief that after these men who enroll in these programs get to their graduation milestone, they end up back in shelters. He explains that spell of homelessness occurs because the city had not yet found them permanent housing. He indicates that some opt to go back to the streets and start using drugs again. He stated that they do so because they become despondent when they learn they will not receive permanent housing, especially after working so hard toward that goal:

RICKY: Um, after the thirty days, if you don’t have nowhere to go, they’ll refer you to a shelter like Bellevue Shelter—which I think is really crazy, because the fact is these counselors down here supposed to be helping with this. We’re supposed to be able to have an apartment by then. HRA will pay for this until you get on your feet, but they just do what they want to do sometimes. Like VNS. Visiting Nursing Service. Now they’re real good people. They stand for who they say they are. They don’t leave you out in the cold. I had them at one time.

SM: What happens with a lot of people who don’t get permanent housing after the thirty days?

RICKY: They hit the streets.

SM: And then you think they go back to—?

RICKY: They go back to what [they] was doing—using again.

SM: Okay.

RICKY: Because they can’t deal with it.

Ricky illuminates that this theme about finding permanent housing is a never-ending quest for economically deprived men who enroll in these drug rehabilitation programs. He skillfully explains the relationship between unfulfilled promises to the economically deprived and the cycle of homelessness, drug addiction, and relapse. Ricky launches into full advocacy for himself and others in his situation, who are yet to find permanent housing through their drug rehabilitation programs. He feels like these State programs continually make promises to the economically deprived, only to repeatedly fail them. He sees himself and others in this system, as treated as mere cogs in this machine:

But you [would] think they was getting help from these people [housing services staff]. These people let them down, and they ain’t got nothing else to worry about. [So] they say, “Bump it. Hey, I’m going back to doing what I’m doing” just to repeat the cycle all over again. You go back out here, and you go back to detox. Go back to these houses or they just keep on moving saying, “It’s no use going back to these places.” I can’t—I’ve never been to that point, but you know if you’re going to help, if you say you’re going to do, be real for what you’re going to do. Okay? You going—you’re saying you’re going to help these people, you say, “Look, I’ll try to get you, you know, permanent housing by trying to graduate,” make sure that you help these people get these permanent houses. You know? Don’t wait till they graduate, then after they come out [of] the house, they got thirty days to leave the house, and then they got nowhere to go but to go on the streets and then they go back to using again. So that’s why I sometimes I believe in the system, and sometimes I don’t. That’s how I am. It’s out of my control.

Ricky then explains the elusive process of finding permanent housing. He explains that because the $2,700 he will get from the FEMA grant will only cover the first month, it doesn’t quite get him to permanent housing, his end goal:

SM: Do you think this storm is going to help you speed up the process with helping you get permanent housing?

RICKY: Um, I can’t say. Maybe, maybe not.

RICKY: If I have to do the footwork on my own, I ain’t got no problem with it but the money, if my FEMA comes, I’m banking then see what I can find underneath that—in that new—that range, $2,700. I mean, they expect me to find a property with that type of money and expect to keep it? Come on, that’s one month’s rent. That’s one month’s rent! What are you supposed to do after that, go back to the streets? I don’t know, but in the meantime I’ll find something, even if it’s a basement apartment to start out. I don’t care. We’ll find something even if it’s a basement apartment, I don’t mind. I’ll start out small and work my way up. Yeah it’s only $2,700.

SM: And you have to figure out how to pay the rest of it?

RICKY: Right, right. Even FEMA says well, if you send in the rent receipt to them, they’ll pay it, but I don’t believe that. You’re a fool. You ain’t going to make me believe that. Come on. You can pay my rent until I get on my feet? Come on, uh-uh it’s hard for me to believe that.

When I last contacted Ricky, he still had not found permanent housing. He stated that a government program had transferred him, along with several others, to a motel in Brooklyn. He had not found his version of the American dream, which was to no longer be homeless. He wanted to be off the streets and out of the cold. He wanted to be free of the cycle of drug rehabilitation programs that traps you. He no longer wanted to be in transitional housing but instead wanted a permanent, modest apartment where he and his girlfriend could welcome their baby and be off the streets. He also still had the dream of upward mobility, thinking he could work his way up out of poverty.

I later lost contact with Ricky, as he did say his phone was one of those pay-as-you-go phones. I don’t know if any of the aspirations he had for himself ever materialized. I don’t know whether the logic of services or logic of response rescued him from chronic poverty, substance dependence, and housing insecurity. From our past conversations, he believed that both were failing him in important respects. If he never makes it, it won’t be for a lack of trying. I do know he had extraordinarily little confidence in the system that has let him down and so many others like him, whether it be the services arm or the disaster response arm of the state. It is unclear at what point his persistence ceases, if ever.