Housing Issues After Disasters

Abstract

Since 1989, earthquakes and hurricanes in the United States have caused housing losses on the same scale as those typically experienced in disasters in under‐developed countries. While casualties in the American disasters have been low, the costs of reconstruction have been staggering. This paper documents the housing losses and recovery problems in the Northridge earthquake and compares that experience to other American urban disasters (the Loma Prieta earthquake, Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew), as well as with those in Mexico City and Kobe, Japan. The paper will demonstrate that the common denominator in urban disasters is housing and that recovery issues are quite different in cities than in rural areas, precisely because the losses are concentrated in densely populated areas and the housing loss not only represents a significant financial investment, but also a unique component of the urban infrastructure.

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