Were low-income sheltering needs addressed after Hurricane Harvey? A needs assessment of its housing victims

With nearly 30 trillion tons of raining water, Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc on the Texas Coast, with two-thirds of its flooded residential buildings clustered in Houston-Galveston area alone. Victims of housing loss after disasters are usually in immediate need of emergency shelters (Quarantelli, 1995); and low-income urban residents are at risk of becoming chronically homeless if they lack access to assistance with relocating into conventional housing (Culhane, Metraux, and Byrne, 2014). In response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA), which for Hurricane Harvey came at a cost of $441 million. However, to what extent the shelter and housing needs were met by TSA, especially among those in low-income households, has not been investigated. Focusing on Harvey-damaged primary housing units in Harris and Galveston counties, our study interrogates two research questions:1.What was the extent of sheltering need among housing loss victims by different income levels?2.To what extent did the TSA program address the sheltering needs of housing loss victims with different income levels?