Developing an Approach to Measure Housing Recovery Following Disasters

The final Capstone report outlines an approach to measuring post-disaster housing recovery that (a) provides both an accurate assessment of housing conditions and (b) can be used to guide recovery and rebuilding efforts. The report examines case studies to assess how housing recovery was measured following other disasters. The Capstone team developed a process for analyzing specific indicators and measurements that can help the New York City Mayor’s Office for Housing Recovery Operations accurately assess a changing housing landscape post-disaster. 

The Capstone team's approach proposes first “matching” an affected community with another that has similar demographic, economic, and housing characteristics. This enables recovery experts to make comparison over time and reduces the tendency to define success as a return to pre-disaster conditions.  Immediately following a disaster, officials should comprehensively assess housing stock damage using data from diverse sources. Then, monitoring a variety of measures can help officials understand reality and enhance recovery efforts. For example, building permit data show where rebuilding is taking place and may shed light on areas in need of financial or technical assistance. To measure disaster preparedness, the city can monitor numbers of trainings or drills carried out by different departments. To better understand the context of recovery, housing outcomes should be compared to other indicators (population shifts, economic measures, health outcomes, etc.). Finally, it is important to assess whether different levels of government and diverse community organizations felt their input was incorporated into the planning and recovery process. By monitoring these diverse indicators, officials can best measure housing recovery post-disaster.