Privilege in Disaster

By Karen Sternheimer

As I write, it’s been a few months since losing my home in the Los Angeles-area firestorm. In addition to my regular job, I now effectively have a part-time job working to settle insurance claims, get our missing mail, learn about the rebuilding process which means attending Zoom meetings multiple times a week, and also seek disaster relief. I describe this as a major inconvenience, but one that is manageable.

I recognize the role that privilege has played in this process, and how others might have a lot more difficulty navigating losing one’s home in a fire. Setting aside the unique emotional experiences that this might bring—I tend to deal with challenges as problems to be solved intellectually rather than emotionally—there are structural factors that have made this process easier to address for me than for others.

As sociologist Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City details, people in poverty who experience eviction face multiple disadvantages. First, their family and friends are likely to be in similar difficult financial places and unable to offer much assistance. In contrast, we had multiple offers for short-term and mid-range housing that meant we didn’t have to go to a shelter, which would likely have been crowded. Our cat would have had to be in a carrier, adding to her and our stress levels.

Desmond also discusses the trauma of having to give up a beloved pet upon eviction, something we fortunately didn’t have to consider. He observed people losing all their possessions after a sudden eviction—something we can relate to—but they were unlikely to have had insurance, which we had. We also didn’t face the humiliation of having our possessions put out in public, to be taken to a storage facility which evicted people can’t always pay for. If we had any salvageable items, we could apply for storage benefits as victims of a federally-declared disaster.

We also had resources to buy basics like toiletries, food, and clothes immediately after losing our home. Family members shared lightly used shoes, sweaters, pants, and workout clothes. Although many people donated clothes to fire victims, there is something about wearing clothes from a family member rather than a stranger that provides comfort.

Many people lost their businesses in the fires in addition to their homes; the medical building with my doctor and dentist offices burned down, and so did their homes. I at least had an office and a job to return to that added a sense of normalcy. When I first returned to my office, I marveled at the little items I had in my desk drawers that suddenly became very valuable: lip balm! Scissors! Scotch tape! And of course, I had books after so many were lost in the fire.

Having a flexible job means that I can spend some time during normal business hours navigating the bureaucratic process that collecting insurance entails. It provides an address to get some of my new things shipped to, and a place for mail to be delivered. Being somewhat tech-savvy and having internet access has also made navigating the endless number of forms that need to be submitted more manageable. A disaster relief worker complimented me on uploading documents without assistance.

Age can be a barrier as well. My 87-year-old mother-in-law, who also lost her home, is dependent on her children to help with this process. She is fortunate to have family with the time and ability to help, but this has also alienated her from the process, and ironically, she has too much time on her hands and now has little else to do but think about all that she has lost. Because of her discomfort with online accounts, most of her records were on paper and are lost, making it more difficult to know account numbers to disconnect cable, phone, and internet service and other utilities.

Some of our neighbors are experiencing more privilege than we have: they have second homes they can stay in or had purchased more generous insurance benefits. But many have less privilege, particularly if they had no insurance or savings to help financially. Just buying the basics: food, clothes and toiletries have cost us hundreds of dollars, money which many people don’t have to spend without going into debt. That is if they have good enough credit to charge items.

Back in 2007, Sally Raskoff wrote a post called “The Disaster of Homelessness,” comparing the sympathy that emerges for people like me who experience a sudden loss of home to those for whom not having a home is an ongoing crisis. She wrote:

How can we begin to explain these differences in attitudes and assistance? For one thing, homeless people are at the bottom of the class system, while those who are aided by the government and others during disasters are more likely to be at least middle class. In the hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters of the last twenty years, homeowners were often given low-interest loans from government agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) to rebuild their properties and businesses. In some cases, these supplemented insurance payouts and in many areas, the rebuilt areas were actually worth more after the disaster than before.

When you go to Matthew Desmond’s website, evicted.com, it reads “Without a Home Everything Else Falls Apart.” For those of us with some economic privileges—savings, insurance, and family and friends with resources—a whole lot less falls apart.