The Disaster Equity Data Portal (DEDP) was created in partnership with Texas Appleseed, Ayuda Legal in Puerto Rico, Fair Share Housing Center in New Jersey, The Houston Organizing Movement for Equity (HOME), and Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center to monitor the FEMA Individuals and Households Program and ensure that funds are reaching the hardest hit areas and people. This data transparency tool offers affected communities and advocates the chance to understand the impact and coordinate the implementation of local recovery across the United States.
DEDP compiles and visualizes disaster-specific FEMA data regarding the number of applications filed, the household demographics of applications, and the status of those applications. This kind of information is vital to understanding the disparities that exist between white households and households of color, wealthy households and low-income households, and the policy that must be constructed to ensure that all households receive help prioritized by need and as quickly as possible.
The reality is for many Americans, weather-related disaster is a natural part of life. But that does not mean we should sit idly by waiting to recover. Disaster recovery is a racial justice issue, an economic justice issue, an environmental justice issue, and a climate justice issue. It is upon us to make recovery more equitable and to show our leadership that we need them to have capability to manage multiple disasters at the same time and focus on protecting people from disasters instead of just responding when they happen.
Recently, we have updated the DEDP to include applications from Hurricane Beryl in Texas. The sheer number of submissions is massive at 900,000 applications, which surpasses the number of applications submitted to FEMA after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The dashboard was created to combat the impacts of structural racism and structural economic inequality that have placed these communities in the most vulnerable areas, denied them protective infrastructure, and produced a disaster recovery system that leaves families without the help they need to recover and with less protection from the next disaster. By creating a tool that provides data transparency and easy-to-understand visualizations, households in disaster-prone areas are now equipped with knowledge about the extent of need in their area in order to advocate for critical disaster recovery funding. Disasters have historically hit low-income communities and Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other communities of color the hardest, and these families and communities receive the least help to recover.
The data collected in this portal tells the story of exactly why we need policy at the federal level to ensure that aid following a disaster is delivered quickly and efficiently, as found in the Reforming Disaster Recovery Act. DEDP shows the results of how a lack of planning can result in government gridlock that leaves homes unfinished and families waiting for help that could have arrived much sooner. With the data in this tool, we are armed with the history and knowledge necessary to not repeat our past mistakes, but build a better recovery.
View the Disaster Equity Data Portal here and click here for the Texas Storms Data Dashboard.
