ORIGINAL PAPER
Social vulnerability and participation in disaster
recovery decisions: public housing in Galveston
after Hurricane Ike
Sara Hamideh
1
•
Jane Rongerude
1
Received: 25 January 2018 / Accepted: 22 May 2018
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract In September 2008, Hurricane Ike caused massive damages to Galveston
Island’s residential structures including four public housing developments. These devel-
opments were located in neighborhoods with some of the lowest incomes and highest
percentages of people of color on the Island. Four months later, the Galveston Housing
Authority (GHA) decided to demolish all four developments consisting of 569 housing
units due to the damages to the buildings. Today, despite federal regulations requiring
reconstruction, court orders mandating replacement of the demolished units, and available
funding, only 142 low-income apartments have been rebuilt. We used the social vulner-
ability framework to understand these outcomes through the ability of groups to shape
post-disaster recovery decisions. This paper argues that one of the overlooked character-
istics of social vulnerability is a diminished ability to participate in post-disaster decision-
making. We found that social vulnerability limited participation through three distinct
mechanisms: the physical displacement of public housing residents, the stigmatization of
public housing, and the reduction of residents to housing units in the debates. There were
few local advocates arguing for the preservation of public housing units and even fewer
remaining residents to speak up for themselves in the face of strong local resistance to the
reconstruction of public housing units or the return of public housing residents. The void of
a strong and authentic local pro-public housing perspective in Galveston provided an
opening for various local campaigns to claim that their desired plan benefited the poor. The
disaster recovery became an opportunity to remove or reduce public housing units and
therefore public housing residents. Our findings show the dynamic features of vulnera-
bility. While static factors of vulnerability can limit access to resources for recovery,
dynamic processes of social marginalization and exclusion limit the voices of socially
vulnerable groups in recovery decisions and exacerbate marginalization.
& Sara Hamideh
shamideh@iastate.edu
1
Iowa State University, Ames, USA
123
Nat Hazards
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-018-3371-3
@Phil_Robichaud
@deepthiw
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