Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches

Author(s): Mary C. Comerio

Source: Cityscape , Vol. 16, No. 2, Form Follows Families: Evolution of U.S. Affordable
Housing Design and Construction (2014), pp. 51-68
Published by: US Department of Housing and Urban Development
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Disaster Recovery and Community
Renewal: Housing Approaches
Mary C. Comerio
University of California, Berkeley

Abstract
How we understand and measure success in disaster recovery establishes the policy plat-
form for how governments prepare for future events. In the past two decades, observers
have recognized that the return to pre-event conditions is often unworkable—not only
because the pre-event conditions were hazardous, but also because the disaster has created
a new normal, requiring new ways of thinking and planning. Disaster recovery means
more than restoring physical infrastructure and reconstructing housing and commercial
buildings. Recovery is now linked to the concepts of resilience and community renewal,
with social, economic, institutional, infrastructural, ecological, and community dimensions.
Recent research has helped to identify the linkages among several factors: the welfare of
individuals; the welfare of households; business and civic recovery; and the importance of
health, education, housing, employment, and environmental conditions in recovery. The
capacity for renewal, reorganization, and development is critical for ultimately going be-
yond recovery to community resilience. The range of approaches to the recovery process
after recent earthquakes in Chile, China, Haiti, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, and other
countries offers insights into successful policies and challenges to integrating housing and
recovery at the human and civic levels.

Introduction
Jobs and housing are often cited as the key elements of disaster recovery. Individuals and communities
struck by an earthquake, hurricane, or other calamity cannot “return to normal” unless people have
means of supporting themselves and places to live. For residents and for the community as a whole,
however, normalcy also requires that community services such as roads, bridges, and the utility infra-
structure be functional; schools, health care, and social services be available; and banks, businesses, and
governments be functioning. The way recovery is defined, the way it is financed, and the metrics used
to evaluate its success or failure are critical to the kinds of assistance policies governments devise.

Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research • Volume 16, Number 2 • 2014 Cityscape 51
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development • Office of Policy Development and Research

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Comerio

The concept of disaster resilience can be defined simply as the capacity to rebound from future
disasters. Several efforts are under way in the United States and globally among researchers and
policymakers to develop the means of measuring and monitoring community resilience. Although
no single model can quantify disaster resilience, the growing consensus is that resilience is a mul-
tifaceted concept, with social, economic, institutional, infrastructural, ecological, and community
dimensions (NRC, 2010; Peacock et al., 2008). Several sets of resilience indicators or attributes can
serve as baselines for measuring recovery progress and outcomes after a disaster event (Bruneau et
al., 2003; CARRI, 2009; Cutter, Burton, and Emrich, 2010; Miles and Chang, 2006; Norris et al., 2008;
Twigg, 2009). Community functions such as infrastructure, housing, economic viability, and social
conditions are typically listed as performance indicators. This excellent work on resilience has advanced
understanding of the multifaceted components of recovery and provided metrics for measurement, but
there is a need to translate academic concepts into programs to help people in affected communities and
local governments and to redefine policies in agencies at the national government level.

Theory, unfortunately, is way ahead of practice. Even with the Federal Emergency Management
Agency’s (FEMA’s) development of the National Disaster Recovery Framework, several problems
make implementing forward-thinking ideas on resilience and recovery problematic.

1. Lack of preparedness for recovery. With the exception of a few cities in Japan and California,
most jurisdictions and most individuals are not prepared for any major disaster or national emergen-
cy. Not only are individuals unprepared, communities are largely uninsured and have unrealistic
expectations that government will make them whole. Jaffee and Russell (2013) identified four
major trends in the economics of catastrophes since World War II: (a) the number and severity
of catastrophic events is increasing; (b) insurance markets that cover these risks have steadily
disappeared; (c) government relief has expanded significantly; and (d) public- and private-sector
actions to mitigate risks, including avoiding development in risky areas and reinforcing structures,
has been limited. Although many societies invest a great deal of effort in teaching the basics of
emergency preparedness (such as “duck and cover”), those same societies have invested little
in serious planning for recovery from disasters.

2. Lack of local implementation capacity. Like individuals, local governments are pushed beyond
their capacities during and after a disaster. In normal times, cities collect taxes, manage traffic,
repair potholes, and balance the concerns of residents and businesses. None have financial re-
serves for disasters. City government agencies know how to regulate for planning and building,
but most do not have the staff to think in terms of redevelopment, economic development, or
new housing models—all of which are critical after a disaster. City governments often lose their
tax base after major disasters, and they struggle to provide basic services while attempting to
negotiate national government funding and manage a recovery process for citizens and business.

3. Lack of funding. In the United States, the national government supports the restoration of
highways and public infrastructure, but government funding to assist with housing—which
typically represents 50 percent of the value of any disaster loss—is very limited. Funding is also
lacking to support the human effort needed to implement a truly coordinated recovery effort.
In both developed and developing countries, disaster recovery aid is often narrowly targeted
toward building physical facilities, particularly infrastructure, without comprehensive housing,
social, and economic development efforts.

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 Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches

4. Antiquated and inflexible government programs. Most countries that have disaster aid legislation
will find that it is based on historic events that do not reflect current social or economic
circumstances or levels of urbanization. In the United States, for one example among many, the
Stafford Act1 allows only for the federal government to provide “temporary housing.” As a result,
an idea such as the one for the Katrina Cottages—small starter homes designed in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 at a lower cost than temporary trailers—could not be funded under the
Stafford Act. Although an Affordable Housing Pilot Program, or AHPP, responsive to the Katrina
Cottages idea was implemented in different ways in four states after Hurricane Katrina, only a
relatively small number were built, and the idea of cost-efficient and permanent government-funded
housing would not be possible in the future without special congressional authorization.

5. Poverty and dilapidated public institutions. Whether in Haiti, Latin America, Africa, Asia, or
parts of North America and Europe, health care, education, clean water and other basic public
services are simply not accessible for the world’s poor citizens. Disasters in these settings cause
what Farmer (2011) calls “acute-on-chronic” problems that humanitarian aid cannot begin to
resolve.

Recognizing the problems with disaster recovery implementation is a first step to thinking about
how to operationalize resilience ideas. Scholars involved with resilience in relation to complex
adaptive systems increasingly avoid the use of the term “recovery” and prefer the concepts
“renewal,” “regeneration,” and “reorganization” (Bellwood et. al., 2004). If resilience is considered
as an approach to disaster recovery, it can become a valuable tool for policies that support sustain-
able redevelopment.

Housing As a Core Element of Recovery and Renewal

Housing is a core element of daily life and a critical component of any disaster recovery effort.
In most parts of the world, housing is privately owned and, as such, housing recovery is managed
differently than recovery in the public sector (roads, schools, hospitals, and government and cultural
facilities). Housing recovery, however, is critically interdependent with recovery of those public-
sector facilities. Until the 1970s, no U.S. disaster assistance policies provided any funding for
housing recovery. Later, small programs were designed to assist homeowners with Small Business
Administration (SBA) loans and modest FEMA grants for limited repairs, but national policies
assume that private funds, insurance, or both will be used for housing repair (Comerio, 1998).
In the United States, limited U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development involvement in
public housing repairs and block grants for rental housing repairs are insufficient to meet the needs
in contemporary society.

In the United States, policymakers assume that the private property market will adapt in post-
disaster situations. Economic conditions since the financial crisis of 2008, however, suggest that
markets alone would not be able to solve postdisaster housing reconstruction. The nation now
has 10.8 million homeowners (heavily concentrated in disaster-prone regions such as California
and Florida) whose home value is less than their mortgage (Zillow, 2013). These homeowners are

1
Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. Public Law 93-288.

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Comerio

not likely to have disaster insurance—only 11 percent of California homeowners have earthquake
insurance (Jones, 2014)—and, should a disaster occur, they would not qualify for SBA loans. Typi-
cal FEMA individual assistance programs would not cover their repair costs. Without assistance,
would homeowners abandon their homes? Where would they go?

U.S. policies furthermore assume that renters can find alternate rentals, but, in what has become a
highly urbanized society, multifamily losses will leave many renters homeless while building own-
ers make investment decisions that may not include replacement housing. In the San Francisco
Bay Area, after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, it took 10 years to replace 75 percent of the
affordable housing lost. It took 4 years to rebuild middle-class apartments lost in Los Angeles after
the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and it took 7 to 10 years to rebuild housing in Kobe, Japan,
after the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. In New Orleans, the recovery since Hurricane Katrina
made landfall in 2005 has been extremely uneven, with high out-migration, limited home repairs,
persistent vacancies, and very few new rental units replaced (SPUR, 2012).

In San Francisco, where 75 percent of the city dwellers are renters, 25 percent of the city’s housing
would be rendered uninhabitable in a magnitude (M)7.25 earthquake on the San Andreas Fault.
The city does not have enough shelter capacity, much less interim-housing capacity, for that popula-
tion (SPUR, 2012). This shortage is not unique to San Francisco. In urban settings around the world,
renters and squatters make up 30 to 70 percent of the housing market (Mukherji, 2011, 2010)
and have limited capacity to find alternate housing after disasters.

Everyone who loses their home in a disaster has needs greater than shelter. They need to replace
their possessions—clothes, medicine, car, bicycle, documents, and so on. They need to know if
they have a job, if their children will have a school, if an injured family member can get medical
care, or if health care will be available for chronic and routine needs. If they are homeowners, they
depend on rulings from local government regarding the safety of their dwelling and permits for
repairs, if they can finance the repairs. Legal renters have to find alternatives (with some federal as-
sistance), but shadow renters (families who double up, those in short-term single-room occupancy
rentals, squatters, immigrants, and so on) also need alternatives and have no status in government
programs. They can seek help only from churches and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

All those who lose their homes, however, need to decide whether to stay (rebuild or find alternative
accommodations) or to leave the disaster area, and they all need information. What they need is
an understanding of what help is available to them and what public decisions will affect their
private decisions. Individuals’ capacity to stay in a disaster-affected jurisdiction is as much about
their jobs and the availability of services as it is about how to solve their shelter problem. Will
the incentive to stay be greater if individuals and families are engaged in a community process?
Will the programs enhance individual and community resilience? Examples from Chile and New
Zealand, discussed in the next section, represent two different approaches. In Chile, the national
effort to rebuild low- and moderate-income housing is an attempt to improve housing standards
and to promote community empowerment and economic development. In New Zealand, the avail-
ability of government insurance is funding repairs at the same time that government policies are
focused on regulating land use and improving building standards to inform individual decisions.

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 Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches

Lessons From Chile and New Zealand

Comparing the disaster losses and recovery programs of different countries is extremely difficult when
local conditions make each situation unique, but some generalizations can be made. The greatest loss of
life tends to be concentrated in developing countries, whereas substantial property losses typically are a
result of urban disasters in developed countries. The scale of housing loss is a combination of the disas-
ter’s intensity, the level of building code enforcement, and the quality of construction. Housing recovery
(and recovery in general) is often a combination of a proactive government role in the reconstruction
process, funding, community participation, and resilient improvements in infrastructure and planning.

To measure the success of recovery, it is important to look at different scales of intervention over
different timeframes. Success in recovery will depend first on the scale at which that recovery is
measured: at the level of the individual or household, at the level of the neighborhood or community,
or at the level of the city or region. Success in recovery will also depend on the timeframe in which
recovery is measured: in years or in decades. Finally, the degree of success in recovery will depend
on the perspective of the evaluator: a family, a community, a government, an outside funder, or an
independent evaluator (Comerio, 2005).

With the caveat that comparisons are difficult and tempered by differing perspectives and timeframes,
it can be useful to compare Chile’s and New Zealand’s housing recoveries, along with those in other
countries with a strong central government role in recovery management, with housing recoveries
in countries characterized by a more limited government role. Exhibit 1 provides a comparison
of losses in six recent disasters. Three recoveries (in Chile, China, and New Zealand) had strong

Exhibit 1
Comparison of Losses in Selected Recent Disasters
Strong National Government Role Limited National Government Role
in Recovery in Recovery
New United
Chile China Haiti Japan
Zealand States
M8.8 M7.1/M6.3 M9.0
M7.9 M7.0 Port-
earthquake Canturbury/ earthquake Hurricane
Sichuan au-Prince
and Christchurch and Katrina,
earthquake, earthquake,
tsunami, earthquakes, tsunami, 2005
2008 2010
2010 2010–11 2011
Damage
value $30 $30–50 $40 $12 $300+ $80–150
($ billions)
Housing
units lost 370 5,000 17 300+ 113b 500
(thousands)a
Deaths 526 90,000 184 316,000 19,000 1,970
M = magnitude.
a
Housing units lost is an attempt to quantify those units that were uninhabitable after a disaster. The number of units
damaged is much greater in all cases.
b
Plus 82,000 evacuated because of nuclear radiation.

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Comerio

national government leadership, and three (Haiti, Japan, and the United States) had more limited
government roles. Note that all the countries listed, except Haiti, have building codes that are
similar to those in the United States, although construction practices and oversight vary.

Housing Recovery in Chile

On Saturday, February 27, 2010, at 3:34 a.m. local time, an M8.8 earthquake struck the south central
region of Chile. The earthquake produced a tsunami that caused major damage over 630 kilometers
of coastline. The earthquake and tsunami impacted 75 percent of the population of Chile, which
is concentrated in six central regions. Overall, some 370,000 housing units (10 percent of the
housing in the six regions) were affected. Of those units, 220,000 (60 percent) were rebuilt with
government assistance and 150,000 (40 percent) were repaired or rebuilt privately, often with
insurance. Of the 220,000 units targeted for government assistance, 109,000 involved repairs of
damaged homes and 113,000 required rebuilding (MINVU, 2011). Within a few months after the
earthquake, Chile developed a national reconstruction plan that required special legislation and
funding through various business taxes and (unaffected) property tax increases. The plan covered
major sectors, including infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and so on. Housing, a central element
of the plan, was managed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MINVU). MINVU,
whose mission is to improve the quality of housing for vulnerable populations, thought the earth-
quake and tsunami overturned 4 years of housing program efforts to reduce the already existing
housing deficit (Comerio, 2013).

The reconstruction plan was aimed at low- and middle-income populations (annual incomes of less
than $12,000 per family per year and home values of less than $88,000). The process involved
coordinating more than 239 municipalities and included reconstructing temporary and permanent
housing, urban planning, and reconstructing historic heritage. More than 70 percent of the homes
to be rebuilt were on sites where the beneficiaries had a house before the disaster, which meant that,
in Chile, recovery policy was focused on keeping families in their communities, limiting greenfield
developments, and improving seismic and thermal rebuilding standards in rural and urban localities.

A variety of options were available to qualified families: funds to repair an existing house, to acquire
a new house, to build a new house on the owners’ land, to build a house on a new site, or to build
units in social housing (see exhibit 2). Repair funds were dispersed in three increments (of 30, 30,
and 40 percent) to ensure that funds were used for construction. Landowners needing new homes
could choose from models based on presentations from several predominantly local builders, some
of whom offered prefabricated homes, some of whom offered site-built homes, and all of whom
MINVU precertified for engineering standards. After the community voted, the builder received the
contract for that community—providing some advantages of scale for builders in remote regions
and encouraging competition among builders. Families could also add additional rooms or special
finishes after the base unit was provided.

Families without land were accommodated in temporary camps while social condominium projects
were designed and completed. These projects typically improved on previous housing quality
in terms of unit size (from 38 to 50 square meters), services, and site amenities. In cities such as
Talca, where 30 percent of the housing stock was damaged, additional subsidies enabled builders

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 Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches

Exhibit 2
Breakdown of Number of Units by Programs
Problem
Approach Repairable House, Nonrepairable House,
Nonlandowner
Landowner Landowner
3,000 acquisitions
12,000 use banks of 16,000 acquisition
Family led 3,000 do-it-yourself
materials for repairs subsidies
buildings
8,000 social condo-
32,000 social condo- 30,000 new
State led minium demolitions/
minium repairs developments
rebuildings
Third-party 84,000 repair subsi- 48,000 precertified 4,000 urban
intermediary led dies houses densifications
Source: MINVU (2012)

to work on inner-city sites in an attempt to counteract the rush to build on the periphery. In coastal
cities, new master plans were developed for tsunami protection, infrastructure, and urban relocations.

Within 1 year after the earthquake, 60 percent of the government subsidies were allocated, 35 per-
cent of the housing was in construction, 5 percent of the new housing was complete, and all insur-
ance payouts were complete. After 2 years, all the subsidies were allocated and about 70 percent
of the home repairs were complete, but only 10 percent of the new construction was complete,
although 45 percent had started. After 3 years, 68 percent of the government-funded housing was
complete and, at the fourth anniversary, in February 2014, nearly all 220,000 units were complete
(Comerio, 2013).

The Chilean government’s housing program demonstrates an effort to combine new, safe building
technologies with local vernacular lifestyles and to improve the welfare standards for a significant
population. The program is also remarkable because it reflects a policy that kept most of the recon-
struction as part of the urban fabric instead of in greenfield developments. It was conceptualized
and funded at the national level, but local and regional agencies handled management and
implementation—with oversight from local architects and engineers and construction competi-
tively bid by local builders. Plans for hazard abatement were integrated into coastal redevelopment,
and efforts were made to rebuild with greater density to counteract exurban development. What is
important to success in the Chile case is the combination of political will, funding, strong leader-
ship, flexibility in adapting existing programs, and professional best practices (Comerio, 2013).
The overall program was extraordinarily successful in terms of replacement housing, improved build-
ing standards, improved resilience for future disasters, and maintained community cohesion.

Housing Recovery in New Zealand

In the early hours of Saturday, September 4, 2010, people in Christchurch and the surrounding
Canterbury region of New Zealand were surprised by an M7.1 earthquake, the most damaging
earthquake to hit the country since 1931. The epicenter was located west of the city, which expe-
rienced moderate shaking levels, but the earthquake caused major damage because liquefaction

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and lateral spreading affected sewer and water lines and damaged home foundations. The earthquake
caused significant nonstructural damage but limited structural damage to buildings throughout
Christchurch. This event was followed by thousands of aftershocks (Geonet, 2012). The most
damaging occurred on February 22, 2011, when a shallow M6.3 earthquake devastated the central
business district and caused widespread foundation movement and extensive utility loss across the
city, with the heaviest liquefaction damage in the eastern suburbs (EERI, 2011).

Christchurch, a city of about 400,000 people and the largest city on the South Island, has a housing
stock composed primarily of well-built, single-family, wood-frame homes, with only a smattering
of condominiums and apartments. Approximately 87 percent of the homes in greater Christchurch
were damaged. Of those, 30 percent had major damage and 70 percent sustained minor damage
(EQC, 2012; Markum, 2012). In most cases, liquefaction and subsidence were the predominant
causes of damage and ongoing problems. In a country with a population of only 4 million, the
national government took a proactive role in recovery. It established the Canterbury Earthquake
Recovery Authority (CERA) to act as facilitator and coordinator, particularly for planning and
implementing the downtown and infrastructure recovery. The government insurance program,
the Earthquake Commission (EQC),2 managed residential claims. EQC provides earthquake and
fire insurance that is required with every mortgage. Approximately 95 percent of New Zealand
homeowners have EQC-backed earthquake insurance coverage.

At the time of the earthquakes, an EQC insurance policy cost homeowners $67.50 New Zealand
dollars (NZD) per year and provided protection of up to $100,000 NZD for a dwelling (build-
ing) and $20,000 NZD for contents (personal belongings). If the site was destroyed (originally
conceptualized for landslides, but applicable in the liquefaction zones), an amount for the land
lost could also be added. When the actual damage was beyond the EQC limit, homeowners were
responsible for the difference, either from savings or additional private insurance (EERI, 2010).

Although the EQC was well capitalized, the courts ruled that claims from each event must be
covered separately, which led to a situation in which EQC was managing more than five times the
number of claims as there were damaged homes. The claims furthermore had to be apportioned
over 12 different events among EQC, primary insurers, and reinsurers (King et al., 2014). At the
end of May 2013, 1,000 days after the first earthquake, only 45 percent of the residential claims
were settled (Gates, 2013). Although the funding for repairs will ultimately be available to home-
owners the settlement process has been incredibly complicated, not only by the number of events
and the apportionment of claims, but also by government decisions to limit development in lique-
faction zones and require improved building standards for foundations in large portions of the city.

Land was zoned red (no rebuilding allowed), orange (further study needed), or green (rebuilding
allowed) based on geotechnical studies and assessments of where utilities could be replaced. More
than 7,000 homes in the red zones were offered a buyout package to leave their unsalvageable
houses. The government bought their land (more than 700 hectares, or 2.7 square miles), which
is now subject to an increased threat of river and ocean flooding. Another 2,500 homes in the
orange zone were on hold for many months, pending further study. The Department of Building
2
In 1945, the government established an insurance program to protect its residents from the financial impacts of
war. Later, it repurposed this program as coverage for natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis,
volcanic eruptions, hydrothermal activities, and floods.

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 Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches

and Housing subdivided the green zone into three subzones. There, 10,000 to 15,000 homes in
technical category (TC)3 will require substantial foundation work to be considered habitable. The
homeowners in TC3 homes are afraid they will not be able to afford the added cost of complex
structural foundation repairs, which are not covered by insurance settlements. They are also con-
cerned they may not be able to sell a TC3 home in the future (Markum, 2012).

TC1 homeowners are free to rebuild according to the basic building code, but TC2 homeowners
will have to have foundation plans reviewed. Despite homeowner anxiety, these engineering stand-
ards are critical to the city’s long-term resilience. They represent a tough but important decision on
the part of CERA to enact realistic standards for long-term land use given the effects on land and
elevation changes resulting from liquefaction.

In the Christchurch, New Zealand case, the government acted quickly to establish CERA, recogniz-
ing the need for national government leadership in a disaster that caused losses of 20 percent of
the national gross domestic product (GDP). Although the government was comfortable with the
capacity of insurance to fund the housing recovery, no one quite realized how complex administering
the staggering number of claims over multiple events with multiple payers would be. The longer
timeframe and extra costs (higher repair costs for foundations, higher housing costs for those having
to move) are pushing development to the outskirts of the city at the same time that civic leaders
hope to entice development back into the downtown area. For residents, the 3- to 5-year wait for
payment from insurance claims combined with rezoning and foundation standards are sources of
considerable stress. Overall, the country has done remarkably well in organizing a recovery effort and
maintaining extremely transparent processes. The Christchurch lesson, however, is that insurance
should not be the sole predisaster recovery finance plan.

Government Recovery Management in Other Recent Events

Other nations have had differing approaches to housing recovery. The M7.9 Sichuan earthquake of
May 12, 2008, in western China caused extensive damage in a large and remote region, destroying
some 5 million homes. As a nation, China has stringent building codes, but regulations in the Si-
chuan region were less vigorously enforced, resulting in a high death toll. The central government
took an active role requiring wealthier eastern provinces to contribute 1 percent of their local GDP
for 3 years to the recovery in a program in which damaged cities were twinned with contributors.
As is common in China, planning and central management were used to develop new towns and
large-scale housing construction sites. The goal of moving families out of temporary housing after
two winters meant little time to review building codes, little time to consult impacted residents
about their desires or needs, and little environmental review of site selection (Peng et al., 2011).

In addition, no real choice of housing type or location was available to families. China’s strong em-
phasis on expediency may have compromised overall construction quality and limited integration
with jobs and social services. Thus, whereas the central government of China focused on a massive
and speedy rebuilding program, it lost opportunities for sustainable development and hazards
mitigation and opportunities to reduce social vulnerability through coordinated efforts in jobs, health
care, and other services. Victims furthermore had little choice in their housing options, and many
families were separated because the new housing was not near jobs.

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Comerio

The April 6, 2009 M6.3 earthquake in the Abruzzi region of Italy devastated 49 small towns and
the central city of L’Aquila, leaving more than 60,000 people homeless. Within 6 months, the na-
tional government built base-isolated housing for 15,000 people on a variety of sites in the region.
Intended as long-term temporary housing, the units will be repurposed as student housing after
20 years (Calvi, 2010). Although the effort was critical for many families with no housing options,
larger recovery efforts have stalled for lack of funding. Families who did not receive the new housing
lived in hotels and coastal towns (2 hours away) for 2 to 3 years, and many have relocated per-
manently. University students commute 2 hours from Avenzano. After 5 years, some rebuilding
has begun on the outskirts of L’Aquila, but it is unclear how the university, the tourist industry, or
local business will support the larger community recovery without greater housing stability.

Other examples of strong central government recovery management come from efforts after earth-
quakes in Turkey (for example, the 1999 Kocaeli and Düzce earthquakes) and in India (for example,
the 1993 Maharashtra and 2001 Gujarat earthquakes). In these cases, World Bank funding was
channeled through national and state governments to support rebuilding programs (Mukherji,
2011, 2010). Although the finance mechanisms were different, the approaches were similar to those in
China and Italy, with heavy investment in replacement units in new developments. Some limited efforts
by NGOs engaged small subsets of the affected population in self-building and repair programs.

In nearly all these cases, governments used existing agencies and programs to deliver housing after
disasters. Some, as in Sichuan, China, and L’Aquila, Italy, were highly centralized with few oppor-
tunities for housing choice or participation in planning by the citizenry, whereas others provided
varying degrees of flexibility and housing choice to earthquake victims. For the more recent events,
it will be valuable to reexamine the relationship between housing construction and community
economic and social stability 10 years after the event to see how the impacted populations have fared.

Limited Government Management With Private Investment

The United States and Japan are similar in their approaches to a more limited role for government
in disaster recovery, with a focus on public funding primarily for infrastructure, limited govern-
ment support for housing and private-sector recovery, and limited disaster insurance for homes.

Although Hurricane Sandy (which devastated portions of New York and New Jersey in October
2012) is now considered the largest U.S. disaster, it is too soon to assess recovery efforts, and it is
more useful to review the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and the
Gulf Coast in August 2005. The damage was distributed over a large geographic area, but New
Orleans lost 100,000 units (50 percent of city households) of the approximately 400,000 units
damaged across the region. The city did not have enough capacity to provide temporary housing
(such as mobile homes and trailers), and many families were evacuated to other cities and states
(Olshansky and Johnson, 2010).

Flood insurance did not cover all the storm damage for homeowners who had insurance, because
storm surge was not covered, and many homeowners who were behind levee walls did not have
insurance because they were not in the designated flood plain. Politics, at all levels of govern-
ment, hampered government assistance programs. Housing repairs and reconstruction required

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 Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches

substantial private investment, and relatively little low-income and multifamily housing was
rebuilt. New Orleans now has about 25 percent fewer habitable housing units than it had before the
storm. Since Hurricane Sandy came ashore, similar issues have come up in New York and New Jersey,
where public investment in infrastructure will encourage private investment in high-income areas
but leave lower income regions with few options for recovery finance.

Japan’s March 11, 2011 M9.0 Great Eastern Japan earthquake and tsunami devastated a large coastal
region, similar in scale to the region affected in the Chile earthquake. Because of the additional
complexity created by damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, housing recovery
will go beyond the replacement of disaster losses to include long-term evacuation from undam-
aged communities affected by fallout. With limited insurance for homes, declining economies, an
aging population in coastal fishing villages, and complex social adjustments for nuclear-displaced
families, the recovery will be prolonged and require a combination of public and private invest-
ment. Coastal planning, similar to that undertaken in Chile to mitigate tsunami hazards, has been
completed, but decisionmaking, distribution of funding, and plan implementation are taking place
at the central government, prefecture, and local municipality levels without good coordination
(Maki, 2012).

Past events in the United States and Japan—the 1989 M7.1 Loma Prieta (San Francisco Bay Area)
earthquake, the 1994 M6.8 Northridge (Los Angeles area) earthquake, and the 1995 M7.2
Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe, Japan) earthquake—discussed subsequently—demonstrate the outcomes
from a limited government approach to housing recovery.

Some 25 years after the Loma Prieta earthquake, major investments in public infrastructure have
brought about the transformation of the San Francisco waterfront (resulting from the demolition
of the Embarcadero freeway) and the rebuilding of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and of
museum, cultural, and civic buildings. The Hayes Valley neighborhood was also revitalized, with
the replacement of the damaged Central Freeway with a boulevard design. By contrast, only 75 per-
cent of the total housing destroyed by the earthquake was replaced within 10 years after the event.
High-income areas recovered quickly, but many residents of low-income, single-room occupancy
hotels and apartments were left homeless after the Loma Prieta earthquake. The time-consuming
repair and replacement of these units were carried out largely by nonprofit housing groups, which
meant that no additional units of government-subsidized affordable housing were added in the
decade after the earthquake (ABAG, 2000; Comerio, 1998).

After the Northridge earthquake, nearly 300,000 owners of damaged single-family homes made
claims on their earthquake insurance; repairs required 2 to 5 years to complete. Rebuilding multifam-
ily housing was more difficult. Two-thirds of the 59,000 multifamily units declared uninhabitable
required at least 5 years for repairs, and the remaining one-third were abandoned or torn down
(Comerio, 1998, 1996). High rental vacancies in the San Fernando Valley and in much of the city
of Los Angeles at the time of the earthquake provided families with relocation options, so people
were not displaced. The rebuilt apartments typically served newcomers to the area.

In Kobe, some 400,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed. The government provided
48,300 temporary units, which were occupied for 6 to 8 years after the event. A complex planning
process involved a variety of land use and zoning adjustments, which were effective but time

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Comerio

consuming, to aid the rebuilding process. The government set a target of 125,000 replacement hous-
ing units, of which 38,600 were designated for low-income people. The Phoenix Plan stated that
two-thirds of the new units were to be built by the public sector and one-third by the private sec-
tor. After 5 years, private-sector housing was being built much faster than public-sector housing,
particularly in outlying areas (Olshansky, Johnson, and Topping, 2005; Preuss, 1998). Although
the national government ultimately met the overall housing replacement goal, many earthquake
victims were displaced, and new housing in Kobe served a gentrified population. Some 10 percent
of Kobe’s population left the city, and it took 10 years for the population to return to predisaster
levels (Maki, 2012).

The United States and Japan are developed nations that make some investment in post disaster
housing. Their policies, however, suggest that they are willing to accept a greater reliance on the private
sector for disaster recovery, even if that recovery is uneven across income groups. In developing coun-
tries, a limited government role in disaster recovery can extend the hardships for disaster victims.

The devastating losses in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from the January 12, 2010 M7.0 earthquake—in
terms of the number of deaths and the physical losses in housing, schools, hospitals, and public
buildings—extend to the capacity to manage the country. Haiti lost a significant portion of its weak
national government in the earthquake and was already dependent on NGOs for many social services
(Farmer, 2011). For any developing country, the losses incurred in natural disasters are in part
products of their predisaster conditions—poverty and lack of jobs, education, and training. After a
disaster, the problems are often compounded by the unintended consequences of international aid.
In Haiti, less than 1 percent of the aid went to the public sector; yet, long-term recovery requires a
functioning public sector. An NGO can build a school or a clinic, but the building is of limited use
without a public mechanism to pay teachers or nurses.

Only 3 percent of the donor funds were spent on permanent housing (Sontag, 2012), and, as of
April 2013, individual households had constructed nearly 10 times as many housing units as had
international agencies. Now 4 1/2 years after the earthquake, 172,000 residents are still in tent camps
(Konotchick, 2013), and much remains to be done in addition to providing housing, including
resolving landownership, developing public services (water, sanitation, education, and health care),
providing job training, and developing the economy.

Comparison of Approaches
When the housing recovery in a variety of countries is reviewed, two metrics stand out: (1) a strong
government role in funding, management, and coordination improves housing reconstruction;
and (2) more individual choice in housing combined with citizen participation in larger planning
processes improves citizen recovery.

The chart in exhibit 3 provides a way to look at the balance between government roles and com-
munity participation in various recovery efforts (Comerio, 2012). The placement of each country
is based on the author’s judgment, but the aim is to represent the variety of approaches used. The

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 Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches

Exhibit 3
Comparison of Recovery Management Approaches
Strong

China Chile

Italy

New Zealand

Turkey
Government role

India

Japan

United States
Weak

Haiti

Weak Strong
Community participation

chart shows that Chile and New Zealand have combined both “top-down” and “bottom-up”
approaches, providing government leadership and funding along with community empowerment
in decisionmaking. It is important to recognize that these approaches are not mutually exclusive
and can be combined effectively.

By contrast, China and Italy took strong government leadership roles in providing replacement
housing but did not engage local communities in most aspects of the decisionmaking. Turkey and
India had mixed programs—with some housing developed by government in large tracts and some
village programs in which NGOs worked with residents on self-help construction. The United States
and Japan provided strong leadership during the emergency phase and funded some aspects of recovery,
such as infrastructure and public facilities, but left most of the housing reconstruction to the private
market. Haiti’s weak government and high poverty levels limited recovery from both perspectives.

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In the future, countries with major housing losses in a disaster can learn from the experience of
others and attempt to find the “sweet spot” that provides the best of government management, for
expediency and flexibility, and incorporates opportunities for citizens to take some control over
their own recovery, with housing choice and participation in plans for the community’s future. In
this regard, Chile’s performance stands out.

Conclusion
After a disaster, people who have lost homes and all semblance of normal life may be confused,
disorganized, and demoralized. They grieve for what was lost. Their needs go beyond physical
replacements. People-focused approaches—that is, recovery programs that engage citizens in deci-
sions about the future—have the advantage of empowering these individuals, turning passive into
active, turning lack of control into control, and promoting community engagement. Psychiatrist
Craig Van Dyke (2012: 1) wrote, “…the grief literature describes the endpoint of successful mourn-
ing as a point when the individual is capable of making new emotional investments in the future.
It is not defined by happiness or even well-being. Rather it is an acknowledgment that one is
forever changed, but it is time to get on with life and make new investments and not have one’s
personal development permanently arrested.”

A community likewise cannot go back to how things were before a disaster but must adapt and
move forward. A few simple lessons emerge from recent experiences that can be useful in coping
with a large-scale disaster and extensive housing losses.

1. Disasters create anxiety and opportunity. It takes government leadership—at national and local
levels—to manage both.

2. Housing (and funding for all types of housing) is essential to recovery.

3. Government leadership is crucial.

4. Cooperation between the national and local levels of government is important—programs need
local input and cooperation to succeed.

5. Existing government programs must be flexible and adaptable to meet postdisaster needs.

6. Recovery takes time to implement. In the first year, it may be possible to fix basic infrastructure,
but major urban redevelopment and new civic institutions can take 10 to 20 years.

7. While managing information for citizens in an ongoing effort, a long-term vision helps to explain
the realities of construction times and the social and economic recovery goals.

8. Balancing government assistance and individual responsibility, government leadership, and

community involvement is essential in all recovery efforts. Postdisaster assistance should enable
citizens to recover, not create entitlements.

The U.S. government could improve its disaster recovery programs without a major overhaul
of current policies by using the National Disaster Recovery Framework to expand and structure
coordination between federal agencies and local governments and to focus on unmet housing

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 Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches

needs. A few examples of specific strategies might include case management for disaster victims,
targeting recovery funds for rental and affordable housing, and advancing shelter-in-place strategies
and other short-term housing solutions to keep people in their communities. The examples from
various nations demonstrate the many ways to manage disaster recovery. Each nation can learn from
the experiences of others, however, and develop policies and programs that focus on recovery and
community renewal.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks Lawrence Vale for the invitation to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology symposium, “Planning Practices That Matter: Housing for Resilient Cities.” The author also
thanks the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute for the 2013 Distinguished Lecturer Award.
The ideas presented in this paper were developed for those talks.

Author
Mary C. Comerio is Professor of the Graduate School in the Department of Architecture at the
University of California, Berkeley.

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