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INVESTMENT PROPERTY PRESERVATION TECH
THE RACIAL
DIVIDE
OF FLOOD
DAMAGE
BUYOUTS
According to new research from Rice
University, government buyouts of flood-
damaged homes disproportionately benefit
whiter, wealthier communities, even as low-
income and minority homeowners are more
likely to participate in such programs.
Scientific American reports that in a
nationwide analysis of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency's (FEMA) Hazard
Mitigation Grant Program, researchers found
that buyout programs both create and reflect
historical discriminatory practices, even if the
implementing agencies comply with anti-
discrimination laws.
Researchers report that the phenomenon is
especially prevalent in urban areas.
"Our analysis tries to follow the
demographic trail," said Jim Elliott, professor
and Chair of Sociology at Rice and a fellow
at the university's Kinder Institute for Urban
Research. "What we found is [buyouts are] not
randomly distributed among neighborhoods
and racial groups. Buyouts are about housing,
and housing is a socialized asset" affected by
race and other socioeconomic factors.
"Cities have neighborhoods forged through
long histories of racial segregation that live
on to create unequal access to opportunities
in good times and bad, as well as in ways that
can accumulate across multiple of steps of
housing transactions, even when the buyer is
a government agency," according to the study
published in the sociology journal Socius.
"Although sometimes blurry in practice and
opaque in process, these steps matter because
they allow racial inequities to enter at multiple
points that can accumulate in unintended
ways."
"is dynamic is not a contradiction," said
Kevin Loughran, co-author of the study and
a postdoctoral fellow at Rice. "It brings more
options and public resources to those living
in more socially advantaged spaces, especially
if they own property, while leaving those in
socially marginalized spaces more reliant on
government assistance that is not only less
likely to come but less trusted when it does."
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