Above photo: On Oct. 8, 2024, NOAA’s GOES East satellite captured this imagery of Hurricane Milton approaching the Gulf Coast of Florida. NOAA.
Over the years, Next City has covered how disaster-affected communities have found ways to connect and build on ongoing efforts toward regeneration and reconstitution.
Long before the winds and the rain and the flooding, there was already so much healing work that needed doing, and some of it was already happening. That’s not really in question. Like the fungi beneath our feet, the work of regenerating, reconstituting and rebuilding never really stops, even in the aftermath of a hurricane or other disaster.
But with every tragic deluge, the open wounds of carnage and destruction also open up new lines of sight for others to see who has been doing that work in their community — and then to either join them or bulldoze right over them. For so many in Western North Carolina, Central Florida and other areas affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, right now is another one of those moments.
In our reporting at Next City, over the years we’ve encountered examples of how disaster-affected communities have found ways to connect and build on regenerative work that was already happening before the disaster came.
Disaster cooperativism
The term “disaster capitalism” refers to the pattern of corporations and private sector actors exploiting vulnerable countries or cities in the wake of some kind of crisis. That can look like anything from private contractors taking on multi-million dollar federal contracts as part of disaster response and skimping on actual services provided while reaping the profits for themselves, to speculative real estate investors riding in on the wake of a disaster and buying up affected properties on the cheap to lease or sell later to the highest bidder.
In December 2004, Hope Credit Union opened up its first branch in New Orleans — its first branch anywhere outside its hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. Nine months later, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The branch itself needed to close down for repairs and rehab, but Hope developed an array of zero-interest or low-interest disaster-response loans for households and small businesses, expanding its reach in the city and surrounding areas. The credit union tripled its staff in the months after Katrina, and its loan portfolio grew from $2 million in December 2004 to $30 million by December 2006. After major rehab, Hope’s branch remains on O.C. Haley Boulevard in NOLA’s Central City neighborhood.
As a credit union, Hope is a member-owned, democratically-governed financial institution. In those months and years after Katrina, Hope became an example of disaster cooperativism. In contrast to its capitalist counterpart, disaster cooperativism refers to the expansion of community-owned or community-led entities in the wake of a disaster.
Another example of disaster cooperativism emerged in the wake of Hurricane Maria devastating Puerto Rico in 2017. In the aftermath, the island’s unique network of state-regulated credit unions known as “cooperativas” began expanding their work around solar panel kits and other decentralized solar power solutions.
That work galvanized the cooperativas as a network. They’re now drawing more and more financial support from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and are even recognized as leaders today in the green financing space. Just one, Cooperativa Jesus Obrero, has financed 600 solar panel installations across 28 municipalities since Hurricane Maria. All of that came before the Inflation Reduction Act and its $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which has only just started to rollout across the country. Those dollars will soon start flowing through many credit unions, including the cooperativas.
In yet another example of disaster cooperativism, community land trusts from Florida to Houston to Oregon have followed in the wake of flooding or wildfires in the case or Oregon to expand their portfolios of permanently affordable housing and other real estate. Community land trusts make homeownership more attainable by acquiring land and renting or selling just the homes on top of the land to families or businesses. Often the sale price is also limited using some kind of formula to ensure an affordable price to the next buyer while providing some wealth accumulation to the seller.
Permanently affordable housing also has to last. Since the Florida Keys Community Land Trust sprouted up in the wake of Hurricane Irma in 2017, it has helped lead the way locally on building more climate-resilient housing that can better withstand major flooding and hurricanes.
Housing that’s as resilient as communities
As Alabama’s Gulf Coast began picking up the pieces after Hurricane Katrina, new local efforts to rebuild housing to more resilient standards made sure to connect with and build upon existing grassroots organizations who were already doing regenerative and restorative work.
In Katrina’s wake, local insurance agents around Mobile, Alabama got together with builders, state officials, federal officials and engineers and scientists employed by the insurance industry to establish new building codes for storm- and flood-resilient housing, while also ensuring that rebuilding aid would go to those building the new resilient housing up to code and insurance rates would be lower for those homeowners.
But even with buy-in from local, state and federal officials, as well as the insurance industry and their local agents, the supporters of the new resilient home standards realized it would all be for naught if nobody believed they could get federal aid and lower insurance rates based on using those standards. Long after such practices were supposed to be outlawed, federal aid promised to everyone is often filtered through state or local rules and offices, which find ways to deny that aid to communities of color. This manifestation of systemic racism fosters deep-seated skepticism about federal aid.
That’s why Smart Home Alabama, the organization created to promote the new standards, partnered with Africatown Community Development Organization, an established and trusted organization already serving one of the most vulnerable segments of the local population. The two organizations co-created a grant program specifically to retro-fit the shotgun homes popular in the Africatown community, which traces its history to the last slave ship to arrive in the U.S. It’s through that relationship that information about the new resiliency codes and lower insurance rates started to circulate among those who needed to hear it most.
By 2018, Next City reported there were 7,000 homes built to the new storm-resilient codes across Alabama. As of September 2024, there were 50,000 such homes across the state, according to the Alabama Department of Insurance — though it’s unclear how many of those homes are in Africatown or are owned or occupied by Black households.
Disability justice, come hell or high water
It’s a simple fact that bears repeating: One of the reasons any group gets left out of planning for disaster response is because nobody doing the planning is from that group. It’s a big reason why people living with disabilities are two to four times more likely to die or sustain critical injuries during a disaster than non-disabled people.
“There’s this huge presumption that people with disabilities need to be taken care of, when in fact, non-disabled people, when they plan for us, do more harm than good,” Stephanie Woodward, executive director of the Disability EmpoweHer Network, told Next City in 2022. “Disabled people know what we’re doing and we know more about how to serve people with disabilities than [non-disabled people] do.”
The flagship program at Woodward’s organization is an annual summer camp that hosts youth with disabilities from across the country. During the camp they plan a year-long project in inclusive disaster preparedness, with support from a mentor. At least one county in Oregon now has an advisory group of local residents with disabilities who are identifying and prioritizing opportunities for more inclusive local disaster preparedness.
Last year, Next City reported on The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies. Formed in the wake of Hurricane Maria by a pair of disabled organizers, one of whom was born and raised on Puerto Rico, the organization started out by coordinating with local groups to get disaster relief resources connected to people living with disabilities from Puerto Rico to Florida and the Carolinas.
There are still many connections yet to be made between the organizations led by and serving people with disabilities and the institutions with resources that should be available to them. That’s why the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies helped draft the Real Emergency Access for Aging and Disability Inclusion (REAADI) for Disasters Act, introduced in Congress last year.
In addition to new funding and grant opportunities, the REAADI for Disasters Act would establish a National Commission on Disability Rights and Disasters to include those with disabilities in all parts of disaster preparedness, as well as create a network of centers that would offer training, research and assistance to support those with disabilities before and after disasters. It would also ensure that those who are eligible for Medicaid would continue receiving benefits even if they must relocate across state lines due to the impact of a disaster. The bill has yet to come up for a vote in Congress.
So much inspiration can be found in stories about communities coming together to help each other in the wake of a disaster. Those stories are already starting to emerge from places like Western North Carolina as it begins the long process of recovering from Hurricane Helene. Knowing your neighbors, research shows, could save you from the next climate disaster. Dig a bit deeper and you find that these patterns of mutual aid behavior exist far and wide, and go back a long way.
But mutual aid doesn’t have to be just a disaster response. It also exists as part of that ongoing, regenerative, constant rebuilding work in the form of credit unions, community land trusts and whatever models may emerge from discussions led by people with disabilities. Someone — maybe it’s you — has already been doing that work in your city or your community. As the waters recede or the smoke clears, it can reveal to everyone else why it might have been worth joining in that work all along.
This article is part of The Bottom Line, a series exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. Click here to subscribe to our Bottom Line newsletter.