Housing Status Plays a Surprisingly Large Role in Post-Disaster Distress

It's been half a year since Superstorm Sandy converged on New York, displacing thousands of residents, and many people still can't go home again. An estimated 305,000 housing units were damaged in the storm, and while the city's Rapid Repairs program fixed up more than 20,000 in short order, other victims remain lodged in hotels — with a checkout date of May 1. Some occupy a housing purgatory with the DeAngelis family profiled by NY1 this week: unable to repair their home, but not ready to abandon it.

Alexis Merdjanoff, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Rutgers, says the role of housing on post-disaster stress hasn't received enough attention in the past. Traditionally, disaster researchers have focused on race, class, and gender to explain the mental anguish that occurs in the aftermath of a storm. "Racial minorities and low-income individuals and women — they all tend to fare worse," she says.