Sheltering Deprivations: FEMA, Section 408 Housing, and Procedural Redesign

Having weathered nearly two years of unprecedented disasters and unrelenting public criticism, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the most indispensable—and most distrusted—pillar of the nation’s emergency management infrastructure. A constellation of well-documented failures, mostly in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, has created an image of an agency adrift. Yet FEMA’s role in the Gulf Coast recovery effort has only intensified; the agency is now responsible for sheltering over a million disaster survivors. Section 408 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (“Stafford Act”) forms the core of the federal government’s emergency housing regime. The provision guarantees up to eighteen months of housing benefits for all disaster survivors—regardless of their means—who can demonstrate substantial damage to their primary residence. As the agency charged with administering this program, FEMA has earned stinging rebukes from survivors and lawmakers for erroneously denying thousands of meritorious housing requests while paying out millions of dollars in fraudulent claims. FEMA’s mistakes are in part the product of two mutually reinforcing