450,000 households in flood zones, sponsored by the government
Nationwide, about 450,000 government-subsidized households — about 8 to 9 percent — are in flood plains, according to a 2017 report by the Furman Center at New York University.
Many of those, including traditional public housing, low-income housing for older people and Section 8 properties like the one in Houston, are financed by HUD. There are also properties in flood plains that receive tax credits to rent to low-income tenants, which are subsidized with other federal money allocated to states.
But the federal government’s maps to assess risk are based partly on historical data and don’t necessarily account for climate effects, like increased local precipitation, said Laurie Schoeman, a disaster recovery and resilience specialist for Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit group based in Maryland.
“If anything,” she said, “that is an underestimate of areas that are at risk.”
Climate change is putting everyone at greater risk for natural disasters, including flooding, wildfires and drought. Low-income and minority communities are especially vulnerable. Families like those at Arbor Court, who qualify for assistance and are 95 percent black, are not only among the least able to recover when disaster strikes, but they also tend to live in flooding-prone areas because the land was historically cheaper to build on.
Robert D. Bullard, an environmental justice advocate and a professor at Texas Southern University in Houston, said that subsidizing low-income families in flood zones overlaid with the government’s record of redlining and placing African-American families near industrial sites and other undesirable areas.
“It’s the same history,” he said.
‘We were trying to get on our feet, but then the storm hit’
When Ms. White moved into Arbor Court, she said, she had no idea it was at risk of flooding. But one night in 2016, water came bursting through a wall in her bathroom, she said, sending her and her two children fleeing to a neighbor’s apartment upstairs. By daylight, the area around the complex looked like a lake.
