Politico — How FEMA helps white and rich Americans escape floods

May 27, 2022

By Thomas Frank — An investigation by POLITICO's E&E News reveals systemic favoritism toward wealthy and white people in a federal program that lifts homes above rising floodwaters.

WILSON, N.C. — City planner John Morck had an ambitious plan to fix a chronic flood problem — and a racial injustice.

Decades ago, officials in this former tobacco-farming town built public housing next to a creek that overflowed, causing the barracks-style apartments to flood repeatedly. The city of Wilson condemned 52 buildings in 2017, leaving them as boarded-up blights in a low-income, predominantly Black neighborhood.

But when Wilson asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency last year for $12 million to demolish the homes and rebuild on higher ground, the agency said no.

The decision points to biases within FEMA’s flood grant programs, which for years have favored wealthy or white areas.

“Sometimes the resources don’t go where they’re supposed to,” Morck said. “They’re supposed to give money where the need is.”

FEMA has allocated billions of dollars of flood-mitigation money using a racially inequitable system that has favored saving flood-prone houses in rich areas or in communities that are almost entirely white, using costly projects that elevate the homes above flood levels, an investigation by POLITICO’s E&E News shows.

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