Maggie's Farm

I had an eye-opening time shadowing my county's post-Hurricane-Harvey disaster-relief coordinator all day yesterday. Most of the aid that has arrived in my Texas coastal county is being administered through the county or through foundations working through the same official government channels as the county. All these entities work under restrictions imposed by a federal law known as the Stafford Act, a 1988 amended version of the Disaster Relief Act of 1974. It created the system in place today by which a presidential disaster declaration or an emergency declaration triggers financial and physical assistance through FEMA. The Act gives FEMA the responsibility for coordinating government-wide relief efforts. The Federal Response Plan includes contributions from 28 federal agencies and non-governmental organizations, such as the American Red Cross.

The purpose of all this regulation is to try to eliminate waste, fraud, and duplication. An unfortunate side-effect is that, in the first six months or so after a disaster, a great deal of emergency aid becomes firmly wrapped around the axle. Cash and materials donated with the intention of helping homeowners quickly return their homes to a livable condition, for instance, are frozen in place until at least a couple of things happen. First, citizens must wind their way through the exhausting process of either securing FEMA or SBA benefits, or receive a formal denial of benefits after the completion of appeals. Second, case managers have to be hired and trained in the intricate process of complying with a thicket of Stafford Act requirements designed to ensure that all non-FEMA aid is properly accounted for and deducted from FEMA benefits. If this process does not take place properly, aid recipients can find themselves in real trouble with the feds.

As far as I can tell, the only way to avoid this red tape and delay is to rely exclusively on aid that never touches any public agency, and is dispensed only to citizens who understand fully that accepting the aid may disqualify them from some or all of any future aid they might have obtained from FEMA. Government officials almost uniformly distrust such an approach. They probably know they'll get untold grief from the feds about being unable to prove that no locals are double-dipping, etc. They hate the ad hoc approach to helping this family but not that. They are uncomfortable not being able to centralize and monitor all the aid coming in. And apparently they're willing to make the trade-off between satisfying all these bureaucratic desires even if it means strangling really timely aid in the critical weeks after a hurricane hits. It also means that the most fragile and disorganized residents, who tend to be the most needy, find it nearly impossible to navigate this Kafkaesque nightmare. FEMA can wear you down for months before you get a final answer out of them.

I agree, except that my heart is tender for the confused elderly sick people who aren't doing a good job taking care of business and don't have younger family members to step in for them. I want them to get their roofs fixed. I just suspect that it needs to be their neighbors who do it, not some distant strangers.