Washington, D.C., October 10, 2024 — Today, the National Alliance to End Homelessness expresses its deepest sympathies to the families, individuals, communities, and businesses impacted by the most recent natural disasters that hit the Southeast.
During these crises, it is an essential responsibility of elected officials to focus laws and funds on a strategic and inclusive disaster response and recovery. The National Alliance to End Homelessness urges state and local officials across impacted communities to:
- coordinate with their homelessness lead agencies to ensure everyone has a safe place to go after evacuation or as they exit from disaster shelters, regardless of housing status prior to the disaster;
- identify additional resources to meet both the urgent and long-term needs of people experiencing homelessness as part of an equitable recovery effort; and
- suspend any state or local ordinances, such as public camping bans, that could disrupt response and recovery efforts.
“The rising frequency and severity of natural disasters, both in the Southeast and nationwide, continue to take a disproportionate toll on people already experiencing homelessness,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “Elected officials must ensure recovery efforts are equitable to meet the needs of all people impacted.”
The needs of unhoused people are often unmet in disaster preparation, response, and recovery. At the federal level, for example, many forms of Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance exclude people who were experiencing homelessness prior to the disaster. Natural disasters further exacerbate the long-standing racial and other inequities impacting Black and Brown people, as well as people with disabilities, who are disproportionately represented in populations experiencing homelessness. The Alliance calls on federal policymakers to expand program eligibility to fill in these resource gaps, and in the meantime urges state and local leaders to dedicate more resources for their most vulnerable residents.
With the compounding crises of natural disasters and homelessness, the Alliance urges decision makers across varying levels of government to commit to humane and evidence-based practices that save lives. Removing harmful policies (such as public camping bans) in the wake of natural disasters will allow communities to focus on immediately sheltering and re-housing everyone who has been impacted by these catastrophic events.
About the National Alliance to End Homelessness
The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a nonprofit, non-partisan, organization committed to preventing and ending homelessness in the United States. As a leading voice on the issue of homelessness, the Alliance analyzes policy and develops pragmatic, cost-effective policy solutions; works collaboratively with the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to build state and local capacity; and provides data and research to policymakers and elected officials in order to inform policy debates and educate the public and opinion leaders nationwide.