Climate Disasters

Food & Shelter
Written By Alysha Rashid

75% of Southerners live in counties that have experienced disasters in the last 3 years, compared to 64% of non-Southerners.

Number of FEMA county-level disasters

Mar 1, 2020 - Jan 9, 2023

Source: FEMA. Notes: Excludes COVID declarations. Includes all other disasters, for example: hurricanes, fires, floods, tornadoes, levee breaks, landslides, earthquakes, and severe ice storms.

Over the last three years, climate disasters have compounded the nation’s misery. The nation experienced an average of 20 “billion-dollar” climate disasters annually from 2020 to 2022 — up from an average of 7 annually in the two previous decades.1 Southerners have been most likely to experience a disaster, with 75% of Southerners living in a county that has had a disaster since March 2020 compared to 64% of non-Southerners. In 7 of 12 Southern states (AL, AR, FL, LA, MS, NC, and SC), 100% of the population live in a county that has experienced a disaster since March 2020.

51% of Americans have experienced multiple disasters since March 2020. In Louisiana, every county (parish) has experienced 12 or more FEMA-declared disasters since March 2020.

As a result, federal spending on disaster relief more than doubled in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2018 or 2019.2 But the time- and document-intensive FEMA application process has been shown to increase inequity because it is too burdensome for smaller/rural municipalities and people with low-incomes.3 Moreover, the supply of available housing diminishes, and housing costs (including insurance) increase after disasters.4

  1. “Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters”. National Centers for Environmental Information. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/

  2. “Disaster Relief Fund, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security”. USA Spending. https://www.usaspending.gov/federal_account/070-0702

  3. “As Disaster Costs Rise, So Does Inequality”. Howell, Elliott. SOCIUS. December, 2018. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023118816795

  4. “Natural Disasters and Housing Markets. The Tenure Choice Channel”. Dillon-Merrill, Ge, and Gete. December, 2018. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2019/preliminary/paper/YZ56fSb6&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1673914838206677&usg=AOvVaw2FR0pHH383oDHw5mOIK0OX

Alysha Rashid
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