This book contains housing policy scholars and practitioners examining the existing theories of community long term recovery, and the central role of housing in resilience. They propose public policy changes that are needed to improve recovery from future devastating community-level disasters.
Recent disasters have demonstrated the critical role that re-housing victims play in communities’ long term disaster recovery. This book examines the history and theories of rehousing, the role of bonding social capital, applies systems theory to understanding the stages of recovery, then presents case studies of long term housing recovery following Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy in the United States, Hurricane Maria in Dominica, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and a variety of disasters in Turkey, Nepal, Japan, and India. Together these chapters address what Dr. Louise Comfort has called "one of the most persistent and difficult policy problems in the field: long term recovery of communities following disaster."