from the edge of disaster: how activists and insiders can use the lessons of hurricane sandy

How Activists and Insiders

Can Use the Lessons of

Hurricane Sandy to Make

the City Safer

From the Edge of Disaster

A North Star Fund Report

Written by Lisa Cowan Edited by Hugh Hogan

Table ofContents

From the Edge of Disaster How Activists and Insiders Can Use the Lessons of Hurricane Sandy to Make the City Safer i

Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................iii

This Report ...................................................................................................................2

The Emergency Plan.....................................................................................................3

The Players....................................................................................................................3

Landfall .........................................................................................................................5

The Role of Community-Based Organizations ............................................................6

Relief..............................................................................................................................9

Rebuild ........................................................................................................................14

Recommendations.......................................................................................................17

Conclusion...................................................................................................................26

Bibliography ................................................................................................................27

©March 2014

AcknowledgementsOur thanks to the following people who worked so hard on behalf of our city during and after HurricaneSandy, and who spoke to us during the research for this report. The views expressed are those of the authorsand all disclaimers apply:

Eddie Bautista, Executive Director and Juan Camilo Osorio, Research Director, Environmental Justice AllianceFran Barrett, InterAgency Coordinator for Not-for-Profit Services, New York StateNate Bliss, Vice President, NYC Economic Development Corporation Joan Byron, Director of Policy, Pratt Center for Community DevelopmentJill Eisenhard, Executive Director, Red Hook InitiativeEmmaia Gelman, Policy Director, Alliance for a Just RebuildingRobyn Hillman-Harrigan, Executive Director, The Rockaway Rescue Alliance Shore Soup ProjectNoel Kempner, Canarsie Coalition Coordinator and Managing Partner, Emergency Management Methodology PartnersEric Klinenberg, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge, New York UniversityJack Krauskopf, Distinguished lecturer, Baruch College School of Public Affairs (former COO, 9/11 Services Group)Brad Lander, City Council member, 39th DistrictIan Marvy, Cofounder and Executive Director, Added ValueJoseph McKeller, Executive Director, Faith in New YorkErin McLachlan and Orly Amir, Regional Catastrophic Planning TeamGonzalo Mercado, Executive Director, El Centro del InmigranteMaria Mottola, President, New York Foundation and Edna Iriarte, Program Officer, New York FoundationMichael Premo, Occupy Sandy/Sandy StorylineHerman Schaeffer, Director of Community Outreach, John Greenwood Human Services Unit, Planning and

Preparedness; Emily Accamando, Director, Citizen Corps, Office of Emergency ManagementAllison Sesso, Deputy Executive Director and Danny Rosenthal, Consultant, Human Services CouncilNancy Wackstein, Executive Director and Anne Shkuda, Deputy Executive Director, United Neighborhood HousesHelena Wong, Executive Director, CAAAVDan Zarelli, Director of Resiliency, Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and SustainabilityAndrea Zussman, Disaster Preparedness Officer, The San Francisco Foundation

Deep thanks also to those who read and commented on earlier versions of this report: Adam Leibowitz,Program Officer, North Star Fund; Carlos Menchaca, City Council member, 38th District;Matt Ryan, ALIGN;Nathalie Allegre, Alliance for a Just Rebuilding; Betsy Dubowski, Staten Island Foundation; Kate Slevin, NYCDepartment of Transportation; and especially to Michael Schmeltz, who researched and read countless drafts.

From the Edge of Disaster How Activists and Insiders Can Use the Lessons of Hurricane Sandy to Make the City Safer iii

From the Edge of Disaster How Activists and Insiders Can Use the Lessons of Hurricane Sandy to Make the City Safer 1

How Activists and Insiders Can Use the Lessons of Hurricane Sandy to Make the City Safer

From the Edge of Disaster

Hurricane Sandy was not a harbinger of things to come. Rather it was a grim reminder that we are alreadyliving in a world in which extreme weather events put communities at risk. While all of our lives are deeplyimpacted by climate change, these disasters are not equal opportunity events. The most vulnerablecommunities in terms of income, housing stability, inadequate educational andemployment opportunities, undocumented status, and health care are those most at risk incases of extreme weather. This is true across the globe, and it is true here in New York City.

Since Hurricane Sandy hit, there has been increasing agreement that the region’s best hope is to developmore “resilient” communities. Resilience is defined as the ability to spring back, overcome adversity, andcope in the aftermath of a disaster or catastrophe. It requires being able to understand a rapidly changinglandscape of environmental, political, economic, and cultural dynamics—a set of abilities that can be hardto come by in any neighborhood, and more so in systematically under-resourced neighborhoods.

Resiliency skills are often developed andcoordinated in strong community-basedorganizations (CBOs), which serve as gatheringplaces and centers of local knowledge andexpertise. During Sandy, these CBOs becamecenters of relief work, providing essentialsupport for vulnerable residents. Although theyhad no idea they would be called on to playthis role, there was precedent. In the statesalong the Gulf of Mexico after HurricaneKatrina, as well as in multiple disasters acrossthe world, CBOs have played this immediaterelief and response role. Indeed, the FederalEmergency Management Agency (FEMA) holdsthat all disaster response is local for the first 72hours, but these local organizations were not integrated into New York City’s emergency response plansprior to Hurricane Sandy. However, they served and continue to serve on the front lines for relief, recovery,and rebuilding with great care and effectiveness. As people and institutions working on these issues moveforward, we must continue to build resiliency in communities and individuals on an ongoing basis and inanticipation of extreme weather or other catastrophic events. CBOs will play an important role in theoutreach, development, and implementation of these adaptive and resiliency strategies.

Photo: Kisha Bari

Watermark on single-family home, Rockaway, Queens

This ReportThe North Star Fund started hearing from grantees the day after the storm—these are community-basedorganizations who were finding that no one was showing up to help in their low-income neighborhoods—no one from the city, state, or federal government had made it to their streets. At the same time, LisaCowan, the report author, spent the three weeks after Hurricane Sandy in the offices of the Red HookInitiative in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where she was the board president. The small youth developmentorganization became a coordinating center for a neighborhood-wide relief effort.

Based on these experiences as well as on interviews with 30 CBO staff, intermediary organizations,funders, academics, and government workers, and participation in dozens of meetings and conferencesacross the city in 2012–2013, this report lays out the experience of several CBOs that use community-organizing strategies along with advocacy and direct services in their work. From the Edge examines thenature of their response work, the ways they collaborated with other individuals and institutions, theirrole in the rebuilding, and the ongoing challenges to their organizations. CBOs, experts in their localities,were central to the New York City disaster response, and have an equally vital role to play in the rebuild.It was clear from the experience with Sandy, as well as previous storms like Katrina, that these CBOswill always play a vital role inemergencies and disaster nomatter how well amunicipality, a state, or thefederal government hasplanned for a response. So wemust learn from these lessons,talk about them, apply themand above all, allocateresources in a strategic way sothat institutions at every level,both public and private, havewhat they need to respond tothe plight of every person—but especially the mostvulnerable.

This report will briefly discussthe city’s emergency plan, review the players who were at work during and after the storm, describe theCBO role in providing relief after the storm as well as their role in the rebuilding. Finally, we will lay out aseries of recommendations that came from the CBO experience during and after the storm. All sectors inthe city have a role to play after a disaster. Figuring out the best ways to communicate, coordinate, andlearn from each other is an essential task, and there is much to learn from our experiences during andafter Hurricane Sandy.


Photo: Rachel Falcone

Community meeting to share information, day after the storm, Red Hook, Brooklyn

The Emergency PlanNew York City had certainly seen disasters before Sandy—both natural and man-made. The city’s Officeof Emergency Management (OEM) is responsible for intergovernmental coordination during anemergency, and the state has a separate OEM that coordinates on a state level. At the federal level, theDepartment of Homeland Security manages disaster planning though FEMA. Additionally, New YorkCity had been a part of regional disaster planning processes, with Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and NewJersey. Each of these entities created emergency plans that called for collaborations among the state, city,disaster response organizations and non-profit organizations.

Though the city began issuing warnings days before the storm hit, and announced a mandatory evacuationorder for Zone A neighborhoods1 on the Saturday before the storm, many New Yorkers failed to realize justhow long-lasting and widespread the impact of the storm would be. Once the storm was in force, thoseemergency plans largely stayed on the shelf. A variety of players went to work at the onset of the storm, butroles and responsibilities were unclear.

A New York University researcher who interviewed emergency management officials at city and statelevels, as well as first responders reported: “New York City’s Office of Emergency Management was theoreticallyresponsible for coordinating the different city agencies. But it was quickly sidelined by the mayor’s office. The result was ahaphazard approach that led to some notable failures with respect to evacuations and the safety of public housing residents.” 2

When state, city, and the big disaster relief organizations failed to show up in a consistent and meaningful wayin many of the hardest-hit communities in the city, citizens and activists at the local level had no choice but tobecome their own relief workers. Without pre-existing bureaucracy or regulated ways of doing business, theywere able to create flexible, fast, and humane systems to reach and rescue each other.

The PlayersAll over New York City and the region, individuals along with their families, neighbors, civic groups,volunteers, local community organizations, large relief organizations, and government agencies at the city,state, and federal level organized to deal with the effects of the storm. Their efforts were sometimes inisolation, sometimes in cooperation, sometimes parallel, sometimes redundant and sometimes in conflict—depending on the neighborhood and circumstances. What all these stakeholders had in common was thedeep desire to help, and the feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the disaster.


1 Zone A includes NYC neighborhoods that experience flood warnings in any hurricane that makes landfall close to New YorkCity. Zone B includes neighborhoods at risk in a Category 2 or higher hurricane, and Zone C in Category 3 or higher.

2 David Wachsmuth, “How Local Governments Hinder Our Response to Natural Disasters,” (The Atlantic Cities.com,October 28,2013).

Government actors in the city after the storm included:

• Federal: FEMA and the National Guard representing the federal government;

• State: the state Office of Emergency Management, and state elected officials who represented the city;

• City: the city Office of Emergency Management, the mayor’s office, local elected officials including citycouncil members, the public advocate, borough presidents, and community boards.

• The New York City HousingAuthority (NYCHA), landlord tomany storm victims across theaffected neighborhoods, wasalso deeply implicated duringthe storm as many NYCHAbuildings lost power, heat, andwater. NYCHA responsibilityranged from repairinginfrastructure in floodedbasements, to conducting door-to-door counts of the mostvulnerable residents, tooperating community centersserving as supply distributioncenters. At times no one wasclear on where NYCHA’s rolestarted or stopped.

The city and state, often at odds over funding and management issues, set up separate command centers.In the affected neighborhoods, local CBOs reported that it was very difficult to keep track of who wasrepresenting which office, and who could be relied to come back again the next day.

Researchers at New York University’s Institute of Public Knowledge interviewed a top advisor toGovernor Andrew Cuomo who explained: “The mayor has got a lot of authority in [New York] city. And then youhave these parallel entities of the OEM, FEMA, command centers, and whatever the state is doing. And you have all theseshadow players who each consider themselves the main player and everybody else the shadow players.” 3

While each agency seemed to think that they were in charge, and the other agencies “shadow players,” itwas very hard for those in the streets to know who was running the show. In the days and weeks after thestorm, the mayor appointed borough-wide coordinators and set up recovery centers in the neighborhoodswhere representatives of different agencies could sit to meet with citizens.


3 Max Liboiron and David Wachsmuth, “The Fantasy of Disaster Response: Governance and Social Action During HurricaneSandy,” (Social Text Periscope, October 29, 2013).

Photo: El Centro

Day laborer volunteer work brigade distributing free clean-up supplies and information,Midland Beach, Staten Island

Professional relief organizations, like the Red Cross and Salvation Army, were brought in, and oftentraveled neighborhoods in mobile vans.

Large place-based non-profits like Settlement Houses and food banks, many of which contracted with thecity to provide services, played a critical role in their communities. This report focuses on the smaller,community-based organizations, but the work of New York City’s non-profit sector as a whole was lifesaving, and certainly deserves a report of its own.

Cadres of volunteers and self-organized groupingslike Occupy Sandy, local faith communities, civicassociations, and individuals also played a key role inthe work. Occupy reconstituted itself from theZuccotti Park group, and grew to become agrassroots mutual aid collective that blanketed thecity and parts of the Jersey Shore. They worked withfaith-based institutions and community organizationsto reach into the most desolated neighborhoods, andto collect and distribute resources in a previouslyunimagined way.

Perhaps most remarkable were the volunteers whothemselves were storm victims. People came out oftheir flooded homes or NYCHA buildings that werewithout heat and power to help their neighbors. OnStaten Island, day laborers, many of whom had been flooded themselves, worked with El Centro to runvolunteer brigades by loading a bus with workers and supply bags, driving into Midland Beach, andwalking block by block, asking residents whether they needed anything, and offering their own hands tohelp clean up.4

LandfallThe storm hit the whole city, but it was the lowest-lying neighborhoods that suffered the most damage.Most of these neighborhoods are the homes of immigrants, public housing residents, and low-incomeworkers. Where the storm hit the more affluent communities—as in lower Manhattan—repairs wererapid. Low-income communities in Red Hook and on the Lower East Side were devastated by the storm,but because they had pre-existing social infrastructures, were closer to governmental offices and volunteerresources, and had different housing stock, the destruction was not as devastating as in the farther-outcommunities in the Rockaways and on Staten Island, where the impact lasts through today.


4 Hector Cordero-Guzman, Elizabeth Pantaleon & Martha Chavez, “Sandy Reconstruction and Day Labor Job Centers” (BaruchCollege, School of Public Affairs, October 30, 2013).

Photo: John Moore

Distraught Red Hook resident, two weeks after the storm

In a New York Times piece on the history of public housing, published after the storm, the author reflects:

In retrospect, after the storm, it looked like a perverse stroke of urban planning. Many of New York City’s most vulnerablepeople had been housed in its most vulnerable places: public housing projects along the water, in areas like the Rockaways,Coney Island, Red Hook and Alphabet City ... New York started building housing projects on the waterfront because that’swhere its poorest citizens happened to live. It continued because that’s where space was most readily available. Finally itbuilt them there because that’s where its projects already were.5

Much of the development of our city traces back to Robert Moses, head of the “Mayor’s Committee onSlum Clearance” in 1949. As such, he pushed the development of thousands of units of high-rise publichousing near the shoreline. Taking the Rockaways as an example:

“…in the aftermath of the storm, it is hard not to see the Rockaway projects as inherently flawed, doomed not only bytheir exposure to the storm-churned waters of the Atlantic, but by their very design. Densely populated, without any retailspace, and isolated from the rest of the city, the mostly poor residents have relied on help arriving from the outside. Mosesmay have thought he was breaking up the city’s ghettos; in fact he was relocating them and setting them in concrete.” 6

The impacts of the storm—physical, emotional and financial, were borne out by New Yorkers who werealready struggling with affordable housing, good jobs, and quality education and health care. These samecommunities, disproportionately made up of people of color, continue to suffer as their homes have notbeen rebuilt or their rents have been raised since the storm. For many, it was the CBOs in theirneighborhoods that were, and continue to be, strong allies.

The Role of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs): Scenes from the StormThe morning after the storm ended,Helena Wong, the Executive Director ofCAAAV: Organizing AsianImmigrants—a citywide organizinggroup with an office in Chinatown walkedand shared rides with strangers from herhome on the Upper West Side to get toChinatown. According to Helena, “The firstplace I came was to our office. It was eerie.Everyone was in their homes, waiting. Nobodyknew what was going on, so we knew that weneeded to get information out fast. I went to three


Photo: CAAAV

Food and water distribution, Chinatown, Manhattan

5 Jonathan Mahler, “How the Coastline Became a Place to Put the Poor,” (The New York Times, December 3, 2012).

6 Ibid.

buildings to see how people were, and it was pretty clear that no one knew what was happening. Members were shocked thatelectricity was going to be out for awhile.”

The streetlights in Chinatown were out and the streets were empty. Therewere no police officers or emergency personnel out. Helena described thescene: “After the last disaster in Chinatown, on September 11, there were tanks in thestreets and police barricades everywhere. This time the streets were empty.”

Using emails, texts, and social media, the CAAAV staff generateddonations of food, relief supplies and volunteers to dispatch from theiroffice into the nearby housing projects. The scale of people and need andvolunteers looking to help was overwhelming. CAAAV recruited volunteerswho could speak the different languages of the tenants in the publichousing projects where they worked, in order to help them understand thechallenges they were facing, and make plans for their survival.

Helena adds, “It was a no-brainer, these are our community members, we had to dosomething. We had long-term relationships; a lot of our members have known us forthe last decade. People knew to come here, and others knew to send supplies to us.Some police were trying to shut down our relief work, but other police were referringpeople to us. The Red Cross didn’t come in for a week. Across the board, we weredisappointed with every single level of the social infrastructure response.”

565

Local activists, faith leaders, and organizers founded Faith in New York (FNY) inQueens, Brooklyn, and Harlem to work with a multi-faith, multicultural federation ofcongregations and faith communities to develop grassroots leaders and move policychange that supports a more just and equitable New York City. In the days after thehurricane, they found themselves playing a very different role. The two-person Faith inNew York staff recruited over 450 volunteers from congregations across New York City,visiting church halls in the Rockaways, Howard Beach, Broad Channel, and Coney Islandto assess needs and deliver immediate relief, both home repairs and the distribution ofemergency supplies. Faith in New York became a makeshift disaster response team mainlybecause the clergy, volunteers, and Sandy survivors who are part of the communities inwhich they organize were so frustrated with lack of governmental coordination.

In the days after the storm, Joseph McKellar, the Faith in New York executive director,rented a Zipcar and went driving with volunteers from congregations across NYC to visittheir congregations. As he reported from his travels, many of the churches across theRockaway peninsula became relief sites. “It seemed like some neighborhoods were getting lots ofresources and others didn’t. [The] pastor of a congregation in Howard Beach was irate because the onlysupplies that he had to distribute from their makeshift disaster relief shelter were donations from other



Hot meals for residents withoutpower, Red Hook

churches, [even] 10 days later. He was screaming at his city council person because he could not get anyonefrom the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) or the Office of Emergency Management(OEM) to come. We would take church vans filled with volunteers and go to places where people weredropping off supplies and take them to the neighborhoods that needed them. . . . We got the word out byvolunteers calling other members of their congregations and coordinating through email and social media.”

Joseph concluded: “We don’t typically supply direct services, but we did because we had to.”

565

The morning after the storm, the youth job developer from the Red Hook Initiative(RHI), Sheryl Nash-Chisolm, a long-time community member who lives in the NewYork City Housing Authority (NYCHA) housing projects, crossed the street and openedthe door of the youth center. Because the building had no basement it had not flooded,and RHI had miraculously retained power and heat in the largely blacked-outneighborhood. As soon as Sheryl opened the doors, the phone started ringing and RedHook residents in need of power and information started showing up. Almostimmediately volunteers from outside the neighborhood and beyond arrived to help.

Occupy activists set up in the tinyRHI kitchen and started serving hotmeals for hundreds from theorganization’s small, four-burnerstove. Volunteer medical students,nurses and doctors created a systemfor monitoring, feeding, andproviding medical attention tohomebound seniors and others whocould not get out of their apartmentssince elevators were knocked outduring the storm. Lawyers showedup to help residents with FEMAapplications. People dropped off food, blankets, batteries, flashlights, and clothing by thecarload. Volunteers canvassed the streets. RHI staff and board members reached outacross the city to try to understand the scope of the problems and a timeline for restoringservices, as well as trying to figure out when and from where relief might arrive. Staffworked 18-hour days and then walked up the cold dark stairs of the NYCHA housingproject to get to their cold apartments. Local police, other non-profits, city councilmembers, and businesses—all formed a sea of help and confusion. RHI sat at theintersection between neighborhood residents in extraordinary need and those who soughtto help them in extraordinary numbers.

565


Photo: Jordan Fletcher

Waiting for heat, two weeks after the storm, Rockaway Park, Queens

565Eric Klinenberg’s article Adaptation, in the January 7, 2013 issue of The New Yorker quotesNicole Lurie, a former professor of health policy who has been President Obama’s assistantsecretary for Preparedness and Response since 2009: “There’s a lot of social-science researchshowing how much better people do in disasters, how much longer they live, when they have good socialnetworks and connections,” she says. “It was a big evolution in our thinking to be able to put communityresilience front and center.” 7 CBOs and community organizing groups put those social networksand connections front and center in normal times and that proved to have an unanticipatedbenefit after the storm. The same social networks and connections proved vital as neighborsand CBOs in the affected communities worked to keep track of each other and provideessential services and information.

565

ReliefScores of CBOs became de facto relief organizations in the days after the storm. They collected food,delivered meals to people stuck in their homes, delivered medical supplies and cleaning and buildingmaterials, served meals, transported stranded residents, shared information, and created emergency centers.They facilitated the work of thousands of volunteers, stayed open around the clock, and were often the primesource of help for people stranded after the storm in neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan.

Many of the capacities and skills that make CBOs successful advocates and organizers, working to improvelives and conditions in their communities, turned out to be essential to providing meaningful relief services.These groups used the deep relationships and mutual trust they had built within the communities where theywork to find and serve as trusted helpers to scared and stranded community members. They used theirexperience with door-knocking and their commitment to letting the people affected define the problem tofind out who was in need of help, and what kind of help they needed. They used their local geographicknowledge of institutions andthe make-up of theircommunities to identifyrelevant resources and services,in order to find out who wasable to provide assistance.They drew upon the flexibility,creativity, and resourcefulnessthat has always allowed themto do much with few resourcesand their ability to reach outto allies across the city. Perhaps


Photo: El Centro

Volunteer day laborers distribute building supplies, Midland Beach

7 Eric Klinenberg, “Adaptation,” (The New Yorker, January 7, 2013) p. 35.

most important, these CBOs based their relief work in their deeply felt knowledge that people who live intheir communities are not victims per se. Rather they are people who can take constructive action forthemselves and their neighbors, once they have the necessary information and connections. CBO leaders,staff, and members guided and supported a group of New Yorkers who were literally and figurativelyliving in the dark through the terrible weeks following the storm, and have stayed with them as the effectsof the storm linger.

What elevates their work beyond relief services, compassion, and crisis leadership is the clear insight of thesecommunity organizations. They saw that the disaster affecting the most vulnerable individuals and

communities after the storm isstrongly tied to the more protracteddisaster that is the economicinequity and inequality within NewYork City. Inadequate housing,economic uncertainty, poor healthcare facilities, little attention fromcity services, faulty food supply—allof these were highlighted by thestorm, but all were endemic in thosehard-hit neighborhoods long beforeit ever started raining.

By recognizing and naming theconnections between these twodisasters—that of systemic long-standing inequity and that of thehurricane—many community

organizations are using this fleeting moment of attention and resources that are available post-Sandy totry to advocate for a more just and equitable rebuild of the city’s and the region’s infrastructure—bothphysical and social.

It is difficult to know just how many CBOs ended up providing Sandy-related relief and recoveryservices, or how many people the organizations touched. The Alliance for a Just Rebuilding (AJR), acoalition of organizing, labor union, faith-based, environmental, and policy organizations that cametogether to address immediate relief and long-term rebuilding issues in the wake of the storm,surveyed 18 community groups that worked in Sandy-affected areas, none of which were relieforganizations. Collectively, these organizations served tens of thousands of Sandy-impacted NewYorkers in every affected community. By gathering more than 20,000 documented assessments ofSandy-affected households, AJR documented unmet needs over the period of time between the dayafter the storm and July 2013. Beyond the documents, the community groups logged tens of thousandsof conversations with people struggling to recover.8


Photo: Charlotte Badler

Note in lunch made for displaced residents

8 Emmaia Gelman, “What CBOs Know About Unmet Sandy Needs, and How They Know It,” (unpublished report, (Alliance for a JustRebuilding , August 2013).

The Human Services Council (HSC) and Baruch School ofPublic Affairs surveyed an additional 104 organizations thatprovided Sandy relief and recovery efforts. These were mostlylarge, well-established social service organizations that contractwith the city to deliver services, as distinct from the smallerorganizing groups who AJR spoke with. Neither group of non-profits had prior experience as disaster relief organizations.After the storm, the HSC-surveyed organizations provided casemanagement, crisis counseling, financial assistance, housing aid,and other services. Nearly two-thirds of the 90 respondingHSC organizations served more than 100 cases, while less thanone- quarter of those 90 organizations served fewer than 50cases.9

While it is clear from reports and stories of previous stormsthat community-based, non-profit organizations play a centralrole after a disaster, few of the CBOs or even the bigger service delivery organizations that were active afterSandy had any knowledge about or role in the city or region’s disaster planning. If this was the case, we areleft to ask why these lessons were not applied prior to Sandy in New York City.

Nationally, non-profit organizations come together to form coalitions called Voluntary Organizations Activein Disasters (VOADs). The New York State VOAD website defines a VOAD as “a forum whereorganizations share knowledge and resources throughout the disaster cycle—preparation, response, andrecovery—to help disaster survivors and their communities.” Nationally, government interface with non-profit organizations during disasters is often through a VOAD.

The executive committee of the New York City VOAD is made up of the Red Cross, the American Society forthe Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Salvation Army, New York Cares and the World Cares Center.According to their website, the New York City VOAD had 38 members, including city agencies, the summerbefore the hurricane hit. The NYC VOAD has a seat in the Office of Emergency Management crisis center,where all city agencies active in an emergency gather to coordinate services and responses. In a public meetingin October, 2013, representatives of the VOAD said they had hundreds of organizations participating inplanning phone calls in the immediate aftermath of Sandy, but VOAD leadership was not able to provide a listof their members for this report. It is telling that none of the organizations interviewed for this report hadheard of the VOAD, except for the Occupy Sandy representative, and so were not well-served by this structure.Though large nationally known relief organizations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army were active in theVOAD, many community members around the city reported feeling that the response from the national relieforganizations was absent or inadequate or poorly executed in the immediate aftermath of the storm.



Sorting donated supplies

9 Micheline Blum, Jacqueline Fortin, Jack Krauskopf, Danny Rosenthal and Allison Sesso, “Far From Home: Non-profits Assess SandyRecovery and Disaster Preparedness,” (Human Services Council, October 2013), p. 5.

The challenge of determining the precise number of organizations that provided relief services after thestorm is reflective of the challenge of working after the storm. Since there was no clear agency, office, ororganization “in charge,” many parallel systems were created, and many organizations and agencies workedwithout formal connections to the city, or formal training in disaster response. There is also no single orcoordinated way that organizations active during the storm have been engaged or tracked since the storm.

While there were some helpful partnerships with individual city agencies, many residents of geographicallyisolated neighborhoods felt abandoned by their government, and CBOs were confused about who was incharge at the city level. The Human Services Council survey reported:

“Organizations most frequently perceived that FEMA and the mayor’s office played the leading coordinating roles. However,a quarter of the organizations [surveyed] saw other non-profit organizations as playing the leading coordinating role andidentified more than 15 different organizations as doing so. It is important to have clear direction after a disaster, and it is apoint of concern that non-profit responders had varying perceptions about who played the central coordinating role.”

When asked to name one agency that played the leading coordinating role, there was still noconsistent point of view. More than 35% of those responding identified the mayor’s officeas doing so, followed by 27% identifying FEMA. The New York City Office of EmergencyManagement was identified by 18.9% for this coordinating role.10

In a report written after Hurricane Katrina, author Tony Pipa, writing for the Aspen Institute’s Non-ProfitSector Research Fund, found many of the same dynamics at play in New Orleans and the Gulf region:

While the different parts of the charitable sector leapt to help, many in the sector soon became bewildered by the impressionthat they were mostly on their own. Whereas they anticipated fitting intoa system that simply needed to expand its capacity, they soon becameuncertain whether there was a system at all. They had a difficult timedetermining where to direct important information about their activitiesand their needs, and how to communicate with others involved inproviding crucial supplies and services. Almost all interviewees loudlydeclaimed the lack of an effective coordinating superstructure and theinefficiencies caused by poor coordination.11

This paragraph could have been written word for word about theSandy response. In New York City, lost FEMA drivers called theoffices of the Red Hook Initiative asking where they should dropoff blankets in the Rockaways—an entirely differentneighborhood in a different borough (Queens) miles away fromRed Hook (which is in Brooklyn). In Chinatown, some policeofficers referred residents to CAAAV for help, while other police


Photo: Kamau Ware

Community meeting flyer to organizeaffected residents

10 Ibid, p. 11.

11 Tony Pipa, “Weathering the Storm, The Role of Local Non-Profits in the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort,” (Aspen Institute, 2006), p. 15.

tried to shut down their relief efforts. In Red Hook, residents contrasted the Red Cross workers who showedup days after the storm and who could or would not leave their trucks and National Guard members in Armyfatigues distributing pre-packaged MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) with the Occupy volunteers and CBO staffwho walked up flights of stairs in NYCHA buildings and elsewhere to deliver hot, home-cooked meals. OnStaten Island, as in other communities, information was not translated into the languages of all the stormvictims, and undocumented citizens were hesitant to ask for help. El Centro del Inmigrante a storefrontimmigrant day worker center in Port Richmond, Staten Island, organized its own recovery center withtranslators, legal assistance, and access to needed supplies.

Michael Premo, an organizer and early member of Occupy Sandy, described Occupy Sandy’s ability to setup and get to work so quickly: “Working with existing [Occupy] networks meant there were shared values and principlesand agreement that the experts are the people who have been impacted.” Even though the Occupy network had not beeninvolved in relief work in the past, and indeed had not existed at all prior to the 2011 movement, they reportmobilizing 50,000 volunteers who provided over 300,000 meals, remediated over 1,000 homes, and generatedover a million dollars worth of donated supplies as mutual aid throughout the rebuilding process.12

Michael credited their success to their ability to be agile and creative, and not tied to how things had beendone in the past, particularly the paramilitary, vertical, organizational style of traditional disaster response.

At a convening held by the Human Services Council at the one-year anniversary of the storm, DeputyMayor for Health and Human Services, Linda Gibbs, declared to a room of non-profit service providers

that the city’s agencies had done a great jobwith Sandy. But that was not what it feltlike to the staff of CBOs leading relief workin the days after the storm who saw howmany people were left in the cold, and howmany still remain in dire circumstances ayear later.13

Given all that concerned stakeholders haveseen and learned since the storm, and all ofthe energy and resources that are cominginto the city for the rebuild, this emerges as acritical opportunity to create a city that isstronger and serves its most vulnerableresidents better than the city that got hit bythe storm.


Photo: Faith in New York

Faith in New York members march to demand more action from city leaders

12 Occupy Sandy website, www.occupysandy.net, October 25, 2013.

13 Emmaia Gelman, “What CBOs Know About Unmet Sandy Needs, and How They Know It,” (unpublished report,Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, August 2013).

Rebuild“[In New Orleans] pre-storm vulnerabilities continue to limit the participation of thousandsof disadvantaged individuals and communities in after-storm reconstruction, rebuilding and recovery.” 14

The confusion that marked relief efforts in New York City and the region in the immediate aftermath ofSandy continues into the rebuilding process. There are multiple players, competing priorities, and unclearfunding streams. There is little conversation between city, state and federal agencies. At various meetingsaround the one-year anniversary of the storm, there was much talk about how much progress the city has orhas not made. From talking to CBO staff,it seems clear we have far to go. The HSCsurvey shows that many of the surveyednon-profits are forecasting an ongoingneed for these services for up to threeyears, and sometimes longer.15 In ameeting between Gulf Coast and NewYork City CBOs organized by the NewYork Foundation in January, 2013, theGulf Coast groups projected that Katrinais at least a 10-year recovery process.More than a decade after Katrina, theyreported, some New Orleansneighborhoods have never been rebuilt orwere transformed by developers into neighborhoods that pre-storm residents could not afford. Similarly,New Yorkers displaced by the storm are facing wildly increased rents, lack of insurance, lost jobs, andincreased mold and mold-related illnesses, among other challenges.

The Center for Disaster Philanthropy, looking across the globe, reminds us that: The difficult task of rebuilding takes time. We know from Hurricane Katrina, the Haitian earthquake, and othercatastrophic disasters that bringing communities back to some sense of normalcy can take decades. Often the full needs of acommunity are not revealed in the days and weeks following a disaster, but rather it can take months or more for some needsto expose themselves.16

Much of the post-Sandy conversation about the city’s rebuilding process, and the need to foster resilience,however it is defined and it what context, focuses on the physical structure of New York City. The outgoingBloomberg Administration’s post-Sandy report—the Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR)—laid


Photo: Michael Premo

Damage to boardwalk at Beach 102 Street, Far Rockaway, Queens

14 Beverly Wright, “Post-Katrina, Black Families Still More Vulnerable to Extreme Weather,” (Ebony.com, August 27, 2013).

15 Micheline Blum, Jacqueline Fortin, Jack Krauskopf, Danny Rosenthal, and Allison Sesso, “Far From Home: Non-ProfitsAssess Sandy Recovery and Disaster Preparedness,” (Human Services Council, October 2013), p. 3.

16 Center for Disaster Philanthropy website, http://disasterphilanthropy.org/.

out the Bloomberg Administration’s vision for a citywide rebuild after Sandy. Linked to the Bloombergadministration’s earlier city planning work, coordinated in a process called PlaNYC, and given specialurgency post-disaster, both the SIRR report and the work of the City Office of Resiliency are almostentirely focused on improvements to the city’s physical infrastructure. There are many physicalinfrastructure projects that can make the city stronger, but questions about which areas and strategies toprioritize, and how to integrate strengthening the social infrastructure were not part of the SIRR process.The report does not address the underlying economic disparity that heightened the social, economic, andpublic health impacts of this unprecedented weather event and what it foretells about the coming affects ofclimate change. Nor do the SIRR recommendations take into consideration the need to enhance socialresilience—the need to enhance or build the organizational and human capacity to cope with, adapt to, ortransform the conditions that threaten our most vulnerable neighborhoods.

Joan Byron, Director of Policy at the Pratt Center for Community Development, summed up MayorBloomberg and the SIRR report in The New York Times:

“His [Bloomberg's] response to Sandy at the human level was appalling. But the infrastructure stuff is brilliant.”

Unlike government offices and agencies, CBOs with deeprelationships in vulnerable neighborhoods like those hit hardest bythe storm are perfectly positioned to respond at the human level andto make sure that the economic and social infrastructures areaddressed as we rebuild our city. However, with the myriad planningprocesses at the neighborhood, borough, city, state and federal levels,it is a challenge for CBOs, even larger better resourced ones, to weedthrough the many meetings and determine where their input is mostimportant and ultimately which ones will actually benefit the peoplethey exist to empower. At the same time, it is critical that they do so,to make sure that the time, energy, and money that flow into the citybenefit the most vulnerable among us—especially those in low-income communities.

As the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding stated about the SIRR plan: “Bloomberg’s blueprint promises to make the City of New York more resilientto future disasters. But ‘resiliency’ must apply not only to physicalinfrastructure, but also to economic and social infrastructure that canstrengthen struggling communities and ready them for future crises. And‘recovery’ measures should not replicate the circumstances that made so manyNew Yorkers so vulnerable in the first place.” 17

Low-income New Yorkers who were displaced or impacted by the effects of the storm continue to strugglewith drastically rising rents in storm-impacted neighborhoods, increased debt for both homeowners andrenters, wage theft and worker health violations in recovery jobs, lack of rental assistance programs for


Photo: John Moore

Volunteer canvasses public housing buildings

17 Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, “Turning the Tide: How Our Next Mayor Should Tackle Sandy Rebuilding,”(Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, July 2013), p. 2–3.

undocumented residents, public housing units with temporary boilers, lack of repairs to already poorlymaintained public housing complexes, and mental and physical illness resulting from mold, trauma, andchronic duress.

CBOs are working to participate in both emergency preparedness planning for the next crisis and in the workof rebuilding the city after Sandy. These are distinct but connected conversations. At the same time, theseorganizations that functioned as emergency responders have the critical work that they were founded to doprior to the storm, and that cannot be left behind during recovery and rebuild. In order to integrate all theseneeds, the CBOs who work with and for vulnerable populations along with policy makers, the media, andelected officials, are asking which preparedness measures also address the ongoing challenges in our poorestneighborhoods, and which make daily life better.

The staff and members of the Red HookInitiative, for example, have been invitedto participate in literally dozens ofdisaster preparation planning processes,conferences and meetings at everylevel—neighborhood, borough, city-wideand regional. Jill Eisenhard, the executivedirector, reflects on the process ofplanning for future disasters, and howher organization should prioritize thatwork in relation to their mission to serveyoung people in Red Hook:To me it’s very, very confusing to figure out howthe city and state and feds and neighborhoods are

working together, or are supposed to. [I’m] trying to figure out who in government is ultimately responsible for coming in andsaying there is a need for a plan and who is responsible for creating it. And then we need to figure out how that also becomessomething that is useful on a daily basis, and not about sitting around on a shelf until the next disaster. If we are going totrain residents to deal with emergencies, we need to create jobs and skills, and have concrete and immediate benefits in whichpreparedness is tied to daily life.

In understanding that our most vulnerable neighborhoods are both the victims of a grinding crisis ofinequity, as well as the sudden crises brought about by the storm, we are challenged to develop structures andprocesses that address both needs. Planning and rebuilding efforts must not pit physical and social needsagainst each other, or distract from the important work these organizations were doing before the storm. EricKlinenberg, professor of Sociology at New York University, and director of the Institute for PublicKnowledge, has written and spoken about the benefits of neighborhood-level sense of cohesion andcommunity both as a protective factor in emergency, and as a part of daily life. Strong CBOs are critical tobuilding this kind of social infrastructure:

If you think about the response we had to 9/11, the kind of investment we made in homeland security and national security,we are now at that moment when we have to make that kind of commitment to climate change. Not just with the hard


Photo: Michael Premo

Wreckage in Far Rockaway

infrastructure, but also with the social infrastructure. And the nice thing about investing in climate security through socialinfrastructure is that the residual benefit is such that we could dramatically improve the quality of life in all these[vulnerable communities], all the time, regardless of the weather.18

Our conversations about the city’s experience during Hurricane Sandy strongly show that resources as wellas a clear role for CBOs, and a plan to support these organizations in filling that role must be a priority.CBOs are often holders of the wisdom and experience of New Yorkers who are not traditionally at thedecision-making tables, and all policymakers, philanthropists, and agency leaders risk repeating the samemistakes of hurricanes Katrina, Irene and Sandy if they ignore that fact.

RecommendationsMost of us turn to our families, friends and neighbors intimes of crisis. Beyond them, we turn to trusted institutionslike churches, mosques, and synagogues, and tocommunity groups or institutions that we already know. Ifyou had asked an organization like CAAAV or the RedHook Initiative whether they ever intended to providepost-hurricane relief services a month or even a weekbefore Sandy hit, they would have laughed. But in themoments after the storm, the organizations took on therole without a second thought.

The recommendations in this report address twofundamental questions:

1. How do people with the power to make decisions abouthow the city prepares for future disasters make sure thatevery vulnerable neighborhood and constituency has pre-identified resources and champions?

2. How do we give community institutions the support they need to play the role even more effectively inthe future to ensure that resources and efforts put into rebuilding the city post-storm create a more justand equitable place for all New Yorkers?

These questions are at the heart of this assertion from the Clawback blog of Good Jobs New York: Many low and moderate-income communities had long standing inequality issues before the hurricane that were thenexacerbated. In order for resiliency efforts to move forward efficiently, local officials must better communicate with theirconstituents. The old adage about there being a silver lining holds profoundly true after Sandy: federal officials have a chanceto diversify the type of stakeholders who will be at decision-making tables around the region as neighborhoods rebuild in theface of climate change.19



Fallen tree in front of public housing building

18 Eric Klinenberg, professor of Sociology, NYU, “Here and Now” radio program, (WBUR, October 25, 2013).

19 Good Jobs New York, “Clawback,” (Clawback.org, August 27, 2012).

In the months after the storm, it was said that Sandy brought out the best in people, and the worst in systems.Or, as City Council Member Brad Lander reflected after the storm: “We saw a tremendous amount ofcompassion but not a lot of justice.” It is essential that we learn from, and build on what worked in theaftermath of this unprecedented storm, as well as from those systems and institutions that failed. The followingrecommendations arose from the many interviews and conversations that were conducted in the course ofresearching this report. They serve as a jumping-off point for developing thoughtful, concrete, and doable newways to approach the impact of climate change on all communities, but especially the most vulnerable ones.

Most recommendations will require cross-sector planning and implementation. Below wehave used the following key to indicate who is identified with and responsible for eachrecommendation: G = Government, P = Philanthropy, C = Community Responders. Therecommendations are divided into two sections: Response and Rebuild.

Response

1. CLEAR AND RESPONSIVE CITY LEADERSHIP (G)

One of the most consistent themes in the conversations with CBO leaders and other responders was that offrustration and fear at the lack of clarity about who was in charge of relief coordination at the city level. TheHuman Services Council survey cited on page 11 in this report showed that community organizations wereconfused as to whether FEMA, the mayor’s office, OEM or some other entity was “in charge.” 20 Movingahead, the city must determine and then communicate who, indeed, is in charge.

It is also essential that the key leaders at the OEM and other city offices have an understanding of andappreciation for both the needs and capacities of vulnerable neighborhoods. We need leadership at the seniorlevels of the new mayoral administration, and within OEM and the office of long-term sustainability andplanning who will take the lessons of Sandy and apply them. Emergency response will be more effective ifcity leadership respects local knowledge that comes up through the neighborhoods, works with communityinstitutions, is fierce about ensuring communication and cooperation between city agencies, relieforganizations and CBOs, and appreciates that while neighborhoods of NYC have many things in common,they also have different needs and resources and thus require unique plans and solutions. To paraphraseCarlos Menchaca, the newly elected city council member from District 38, speaking at a recent forum, “if notan organizer, the new administration and OEM needs to be run by someone who thinks like an organizer.”

2. CREATE CLEAR LINES OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN CBOs AND GOVERNMENT AGENCIES (G)

Then-Public Advocate de Blasio’s 6/13 report, Supporting Community-Based Disaster Response: Lessons Learned from Hurricane Sandy, clearly articulates what many of the people interviewed for this report felt:

The city did not make adequate efforts to identify and build relationships with CBOs prior to Hurricane Sandy. 21


20 Micheline Blum, Jacqueline Fortin, Jack Krauskopf, Danny Rosenthal, and Allison Sesso, “Far from Home: Non-Profits Assess SandyRecovery and Disaster Preparedness,” (Human Services Council, October 2013), p. 11.

21 Office of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, “Supporting Community-Based Disaster Response: Lessons Learned from Hurricane Sandy,”

Having determined who is ultimately in charge, the city must 1)communicate which is the first point of communication for CBOs and2) that point of communication must be as senior as possible in mayor’soffice. This so that communities know how to coordinate their workwith government efforts. It is incumbent on CBOs to work with the city,but they must be given the appropriate scaffolding and power to do so.

3. MAP EVERY COMMUNITY (G, C)

During an extreme weather event, it is essential to know which CBOs,civic associations, organizing groups and small businesses are knownby the community, are available and able to take leadership in anemergency. Most CBOs know their neighborhoods and resourcesintuitively, but even local CBOs and certainly the various governmentagencies and offices charged with emergency response could usetangible, common map that builds on existing maps and makes thisknowledge visible. A mapping process should identify who theneighborhood players are and what their relevant assets and capacitiesare in an emergency. In addition, any future mapping must build uponand integrate existing mapping efforts like the New York DisasterInterfaith Services map of faith communities and congregations, theRed Cross mapping project, and the Pratt Institute maps that groupslike Occupy Sandy used during the storm. It should include foodsystems mapping, both proximal (meaning places in directly impactedcommunities where, for example, food could be warmed and water and other relief supplies made available)and distal (certified, kosher, halal and other kitchen facilities where emergency meals could be preparedsafely and readied for distribution). Where there are insufficient resources in the community, the mappingprocess must identify new partners and resources.

4. DESIGNATE GATHERING SPACES (G)

It is critical to identify spaces in each neighborhood that can serve as gathering places and informationcenters in an emergency. These may be NYCHA community centers, located within the housingdevelopments,22 they could be churches that serve as collection points for relief supplies and volunteerdispatching. They could also be CBOs like CAAAV and the Red Hook Initiative, which retained powerwhen public housing and surrounding homes and businesses were without it. They could be civicinstitutions like city libraries or even local businesses like Tom’s Diner on the boardwalk in Coney Island,which also retained power after the storm, and became a gathering place.

There should be clear criteria for gathering spaces, and once designated as an emergency gathering place orrelief center, organizations or businesses should be given resources and training to ready them for a potentialrelief role. These spaces will be better utilized during a crisis if they are known and trusted, and are positiveparts of daily life of a community.



Hot lunch served at Red Hook Initiative officetwo days after the storm

22 CVH report, TK.

With respect to government shelters, during Sandy, city government used schools. This worked in thefirst few days after the storm when most facilities in hard hit neighborhoods and elsewhere were closed.But once schools re-opened, the city and communities ran into problems turning away people who weredirectly impacted by the storm, or those, like some who were homeless, who took advantage of the well-organized and secure school facilities where the petty crime and other challenges faced in the sheltersystem were not happening. Ultimately, the mapping of a range of shelter-appropriate spaces that arecategorized for short- and longer-term use would go a long way to making the disaster relief responsemore effective.

5. PLAN FOR ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY (G,P,C)

As part of creating a clear communication plan, the city should create access points to the city’scommunication infrastructure so that CBOs can communicate with the city, and find emergencyresponse activities in their own neighborhoods and other neighborhoods or boroughs. During Sandy,most of the hardest hit neighborhoods were entirely without power or cell phone services. Nonetheless,several local activists and volunteers were very resourceful in deploying staff and volunteers in unaffectedneighborhoods by using Twitter, Facebook, and other online tools to meet community needs. If it doesnot already exist, the city should create a text messaging or mobile application that could be helpful inboth recording and accessing what is happening in a given neighborhood. Plans for investing in “lowtech” resources, like generators, CB radios and bicycles for getting around in a no-power, no-gassituation, must be assessed and where they make sense, planned ahead of time.

6. SUPPORT LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS (P, G)

A coordinated response requires deeper cooperation and support between local CBOs and nationalrelief organizations than was seen during Sandy. Each type of entity brings distinct assets to the work,and they will be more effective if they are able to plan and communicate better, and support each other.

Most national and much local giving goes to the large relief organizations like Red Cross and SalvationArmy during an emergency like Sandy. In his report, Weathering the Storm, The Role of Local Non-Profits inthe Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort, Tony Pipa recommended that Congress create a special designation—tobe invoked during exceptional disasters—that mandates the American Red Cross to contribute fivepercent of its overall fundraising to local grant-making intermediaries for distribution to local non-profits and faith-based groups.23 Another approach would be for the mayor’s office to convene visioningand planning sessions between CBOs and the large relief organizations to plan fundraising effortstogether, so the onus does not fall solely on the Red Cross to redirect dollars. Rather, donors at everylevel could find information online about local relief efforts and organizations that are recognizedleaders with clear plans and agreements in place.


23 Tony Pipa, “Weathering the Storm, The Role of Local Non-Profits in the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort,”(Aspen Institute, 2006), p. 11.

7. CREATE SYSTEM(S) TO DISPATCH VOLUNTEERS ACROSS THE CITY (G,P)

Volunteers were essential to responding to Hurricane Sandy, and in many ways the massive volunteer effort iswhy the city emerged as well as it did. The strain of finding, dispatching, and managing volunteers, however, wasa huge challenge for the CBOs. While some communities were flooded with help, others did not have enough.

New York Cares took on some of this role during Sandy, but there was still much confusion, duplication ofefforts, and uneven volunteer supply. A large non-profit or city agency must be made responsible foridentifying and communicating the need for volunteers, and serving as a clearing house for interestedvolunteers in an emergency. Even better, volunteers can be connected to CBOs for non-emergency work,and will then be in place should there be a crisis.

At the same time, CBOs should familiarize themselves with potential sources for volunteer aid, so thatvolunteers can be mobilized and deployed without wasting anyone’s time or compassionate energy.

8. DEVELOP and REGULARLY TEST EMERGENCY PLANS (G)

There were emergency plans that were not pulled off the shelf during Sandy, and there are many currentemergency planning processes going on around the city in the wake of the storm that are not coordinatedwith each other. The city should catalog existing plans and planning processes, and then working with arange of stakeholders, determine if these plans are relevant and feasible, and where they are redundant.

Emergency plans should include a wide universe of organizations and groups, and consider roles forindividuals, civic associations, volunteers, religious institutions, CBOs, and local, state and federalgovernment agencies.

An article from NextCity.orgreflecting on disasters inThailand and Vietnam, as wellas Hurricane Sandy recommends: Ideally, a combination of capablegovernment and robust informalnetworks, working in tandem, couldprovide the bulwark that cities willneed in the age of climate change.This will require not only socialcohesion, but also a willingness on thepart of governments to help equipcommunities for self-reliance and


Photo: VOCAL

VOCAL NY members demand that city address needs of people in transitional housingand those on public assistance

develop disaster plans that allow for a citizen-led response. There are signs that this is slowly occurring—fromNew York to Bangkok, recent events have forced cities to let informal networks react to disasters with relativeautonomy. Whether they embrace a model in which private citizens and government agencies work in partnershipcould define their resilience as the coming storms arrive.24

The June 2013 Public Advocate’s report recommends that the city do a number ofspecific things that resonate with our research findings (report excerpted below):

• The city should partner with CBOs to develop neighborhood-specific emergency plansand designated door-to-door outreach teams that are well coordinated with otherrelief workers.

• The emergency response teams should be equipped with consistent monitoringforms and comprehensive relief information in all eight of the most widely spokenlanguages. In the course of research for this report, the authors heard over and againhow basic information was not available in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

• Afford outreach teams access to NYCHA buildings and vulnerable tenant lists,facilitate the creation of neighborhood coalitions of CBOs throughout the city, anddevelop mutual aid agreements so CBOs will be poised to openly transfer resourceswithin and across neighborhoods.25

Last, even the best plans will not work uniformly in each neighborhood, so plans need to be updatedannually, and to be tested and re-tested to tailor them to the unique challenges, conditions, andopportunities of a particular area.

Rebuild

1. PRIORITIZE SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE ALONG WITH PHYSICALINFRASTRUCTURE AS A RESILIENCE STRATEGY (G)

Right now, responsibility for recovery and rebuild is scattered across several city agencies includingthe Office of Emergency Management, the Economic Development Corporation, the Office ofLong-Term Planning and Sustainability, Housing Preservation and Development, and Health &Human Services. Each office holds responsibility for part of the plan, but there is no obvious singleplace to go, and no obvious position responsible for looking across the physical, economic, and humanneeds. The city needs to designate a single senior-level position that directly reports to a deputy mayor


24 Dustin Roasa, “The DIY Disaster Plan,” (Nextcity.org, April 29, 2013).

25 Office of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, “Supporting Community-Based Disaster Response: LessonsLearned from Hurricane Sandy,” (Dustin Roasa, “The DIY Disaster Plan,” (Nextcity.org, April 29, 2013)

25 Office of the Public Advocate, (June, 2013), p. 7.

and meets with the mayor on a fixed basis. This person should oversee all rebuilding andpreparedness efforts, and prioritize the development of social infrastructure as a resilience strategy.

Examples of this dual focus include—retrofitting public housing, improving access to utilities invulnerable communities; improving access to health care/food in vulnerable communities. This typeof physical infrastructure goes along with reducing the overall inequality that is prevalent in NewYork City.

2. STRENGTHEN COMMUNITY RESPONDERS, INCLUDING INSTITUTIONS AND LEADERS (P, C)

Community groups must engage in climate-related planning, both in times of relative calm andduring moments of crisis or disaster. There are critical conversations going on about the future of ourcity, and the perspective of CBOs is essential to the conversation. We can strengthen institutions andleaders by making grants for local organizations to hire directors of planning or communityengagement workers. Philanthropy must continue to fund intermediaries like Alliance for a JustRebuilding, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and other planning groups to helpCBOs sort through the myriad of planning processes and resources, and guide community groups tothe best places to use their time and expertise.

We must make sure that the CBOs that have developednew capacity and expertise in the wake of the storm aresupported to continue this critical work.

3. FIND VEHICLES TO PROVIDE GRANTS,LOANS, AND CREDIT TO INDIVIDUALDISASTER VICTIMS AND SMALL BUSINESSES (P)

Several of the CBOs we interviewed said that foundationsand donors had asked them to make grants to localresidents who needed cash during and right after thestorm. They were also asked to assist small businesses inthe community. This request put enormous strain on theCBOs, and philanthropy should figure out a way that afoundation or an intermediary organization can take thison (with guidance from local CBO staff) rather thanasking that CBOs provide the direct grants to individualsand businesses.


Photo: John Moore

Powerless buildings, Red Hook


Based on stories and needs identified through a three-part series on Irene, Sandy, and the Food Systemconvened by Community Food Funders in May and June of 2013, farmers and fishers identified the needfor economic support after these extreme weather events. Small bridge loans of up to $10,000 could helpproducers get new seed and other inputs to be able to replace damaged crops or lost fishing or harvestingdays in the immediate aftermath of a storm. These were absent during Irene. Related to this, fishers andfarmers reported that during Sandy, they had fresh fish, vegetables, meats, and fruits that could have beendeployed in the relief effort, but they had lost access to local distribution networks and resale points. Aspart of the city’s and the state’s future planning efforts, the needs and contributions of local producers, aswell as consumers in vulnerable communities, should be articulated, mapped, and addressed as integral toa comprehensive emergency plan.

4. MONITOR REBUILD SPENDING AND PRIORITIES (P, C)

It will take vigilance, organizing, and activism to ensure thatlow-income communities’ needs and priorities are reflectedin the rebuild, and the spending of city, state, and federalmonies. Government must be pressured, and CBOs andtheir supporters must be consistent and strategic in theiradvocacy around the needs of low-income communities.We need an equitable and transparent rebuilding process;quality, economy-building jobs for all New Yorkers;investment in jobs, affordable housing, health care, andtransit; and a commitment to long-term climatesustainability and the elimination of environmentaldisparities across communities.26

City council, the city comptroller, and the public advocateshould take leadership to monitor these expenditures by the

city, state, and federal government. Thanks to advocacy by the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, the City Counciltook a bold step toward more accountability at the end of 2013 through passage of the Sandy Tracker Bill.The legislation creates an accessible online database of projects funded with Sandy recovery and rebuildingdollars in New York City, and requires comprehensive reporting on the jobs created, local hiring by zip code,implementation of Section 3 HUD guidelines, contractor safety records, and other critical rebuilding contractdetails. The city council should work with the city administration to ensure successful implementation of the bill.The city comptroller should similarly use his power to audit Sandy contracts. The public advocate’s office couldbe instrumental in monitoring whether help is reaching those who need it most.


Schedule of events and resources for localresidents after the storm, Red Hook

26 Alliance for a Just Rebuilding website, www.rebuildajustny.org.

As billions more in funds will continue to be allocated through the years, philanthropy should resourcea respected organization like Good Jobs New York, the Fiscal Policy Institute, the New EconomyProject, or a local university research team to continue monitoring the rebuilding process.

5. STRENGTHEN SUSTAINABILITY IN A NEW CLIMATE (G, P, C)

All planning processes and resulting action must acknowledge the climate crises we are facing, and at thesame time must work toward a better quality of life for all New Yorkers. Money and resources put intoprotecting the city should result in physical and social infrastructure that create more vital, just, andthriving communities.

One painful outcome of the storm was to see how vulnerable the regional electrical grid is, as well as itslocal networks. Technology exists to make New York a global model of sustainability and equity—we cantie the process of improving the grid to local economic development, job training, and small businesscreation. As Alliance for a Just Rebuilding’s Turn the Tide report states, there is a “need to create a boldClimate Response Plan that ensures just, safe and resilient communities.”27 There is tremendous potential,for example, to work with the NYCHA to carry out a broad scale co-generation project that could createan ongoing alternative grid in some of the most vulnerable communities that could be used in the event ofanother major storm that knocks out part or all of the city’s grid. There are also a number of projectsidentified in the Sandy Regional Assembly report spearheaded by the New York City EnvironmentalJustice Alliance.28 Too often, innovative projects developed by researchers, designers, engineers and CBOssit on shelves for lack of public, private sector, or philanthropic support. This must change.


27 Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, “Turning the Tide: How Our Next Mayor Should Tackle Sandy Rebuilding,” (Alliance for a JustRebuilding, July 2013).

28 Sandy Regional Assembly, “SIRR Analysis: An Assessment of the Mayor’s Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR) Plan,and Recommendations for Federal Sandy Rebuilding Task Force,” (New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, July 2013).

ConclusionIn its wake, the storm laid bare a series of complicated questions for the city to deal with. The questionsare challenging and a process to even consider them is not obvious. There is a temptation to offer upquick solutions: a task force here, a planning meeting there, a resolution to store information on “theCloud” instead of on servers in offices, a better list of emergency contacts. And while some structuralsolutions will help, including those listed in the recommendations section of this report, the deeper need isto reframe the disaster response and recovery conversation in terms of economic inequality. As a city, weneed to look at a set of questions and actions that are not just about the next 30 years, but also about thenext several generations. We will likely need a different set of strategies and actions for the near futureand then for the long-term. These strategies have to work together, not against each other. It is not at allclear that we can continue to live in neighborhoods like Coney Island, the Rockaways, and others. Howwill we make those decisions, and where will we go?

The necessary conversation and resulting action is complicated and nuanced, and not one we have hadon a city-wide level to date. The hard dilemmas and new challenges that we face will be best addressed ifwe include all New Yorkers in naming the questions and looking for solutions.

As we move forward and continue to build resiliency in neighborhoods and individuals, CBOs working inour most vulnerable communities have an essential role to play in the development of these adaptive andresiliency strategies for disaster preparedness and recovery. If we want these critical voices, we mustpromote the capacity of these organizations to participate in a nuanced and targeted conversation.

In the wake of the storm, our city was flooded with compassion. We saw it in the way neighbors tookeach other in, the way volunteers showed up, the generosity with which people donated money andresources. But as we have noted, compassion is different than justice. We are at a moment where we havea chance to take that compassion, that connection that New Yorkers felt to each other and their city, andtry to link it to a movement toward greater equity and a more resilient and thriving city that works for allNew Yorkers. It may be lifesaving work.


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Office of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Supporting Community-Based Disaster Response: Lessons Learned from

Hurricane Sandy (June, 2013).

Tony Pipa, Weathering the Storm, The Role of Local Non-Profits In the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort, (The Aspen

Institute, 2006).

Dustin Roasa, The DIY Disaster Plan, (Nextcity.Org, April 29, 2013).

Sandy Regional Assembly, SIRR Analysis: An Assessment of the Mayors’ Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency

(SIRR) Plan, and Recommendations for the Federal Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, (New York City Environmental

Justice Alliance, July 2013).

David Wachsmuth, How Local Governments Hinder Our Response to Natural Disasters, (Atlantic Cities, October 28, 2013).

Beverly Wright, Post-Katrina, Black Families Still More Vulnerable to Extreme Weather, (Ebony, August 27, 2013).


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