Who gets help after a hurricane or flood? FEMA will start tracking it by race
Nearly half of the people who ask for disaster aid don't get help. Is it discrimination?
In the wake of hurricanes, floods, and other disaster events, most Americans know that you can apply for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA. What they don’t know is that since 2002, nearly half of those applicants were turned down.
Since that year, some 15 million households applied for support through the agency’s Individual Assistance Division; roughly 7.5 million households were denied help, according to an E&E news analysis. Journalists and watchdog groups have been offered little insight into why. Demographic information, such as race, ethnicity, sex, tribal membership, marital status, and education level, has been nonexistent, making it impossible to track the federal agency’s equity priorities and to screen for discrimination.
That could change.
https://grist.org/accountability/who-does-fema-really-help-demographics-might-tell-us/