Hurricane Guide Zeros in on Building Stronger Communities
The chapters on community engagement and household emergency preparedness, along with the info on energy, water and site security, offer strategies that are applicable to Houston’s hurricane-prone geography.
HOUSTON—Keep Safe: A Guide for Resilient Housing Design in Island Communities is an illustrated manual that was developed in response to the devastation of Hurricane Maria. It was released by Enterprise Community Partners and the Puerto Rico Builders Association at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, PR.
The 479-page manual provides practical tips and specific resources to help homeowners, community leaders, tenants, housing program administrators, property operators and construction professionals develop stronger, more resilient homes and communities that can withstand extreme weather events.
“The growing threat of natural disasters due to climate change makes it essential for every government and every community to make resiliency a top priority. This guide provides step-by-step instructions for how to do that,” said Laurel Blatchford, president of Enterprise. “The ferocity with which Hurricane Maria impacted Puerto Rico was matched only by local government and community leaders’ collective commitment to rebuilding. After 20 years of working to support affordable housing in Puerto Rico, Enterprise pulled together every best practice, resource and innovation in our field and worked with local and national experts to create an arsenal of tools that can protect island communities from facing impacts on that scale again.”
The manual is designed as an interactive workbook, with detailed annotated diagrams that cover everything from what types of vegetation can best withstand storms and protect properties to the difference between various types of nails and fasteners to how to choose a cistern to collect rainwater. Keep Safe includes 28 strategies for mitigating key risks, grouped into 12 chapters that range from building protection to passive habitability, water management, and energy and emergency preparedness.
“Working together, we identified what a truly resilient community can and should look like and developed a clear path to get there,” said Laurie Schoeman, senior program director for resilience and disaster recovery at Enterprise.
Enterprise developed the guide in partnership with a team of more than 150 technical experts across Puerto Rico and the United States from a range of organizations including the University of Puerto Rico Schools of Architecture, Planning and Engineering, as well as MIT’s Urban Risk Lab and National Renewable Energy Laboratories. The effort is part of Enterprise’s Climate Strong Islands Initiative, an effort to bring technical and capacity building support to island jurisdictions to ensure an equitable and resilient future in the face of risk from natural hazards.
While the guide is developed for the risks in Puerto Rico and Caribbean islands, there are strategies that are applicable to many types of properties in different geographies including Houston. Specifically, the chapter on community engagement is applicable to Houston, in addition to the household emergency preparedness. Some of the other chapters focused on energy, water and site security offer a variety of strategies that may also be applicable for communities in Houston.
“We are experiencing more frequent and intense storms due to climate change,” Monica Gonzalez, Gulf Coast senior program director at Enterprise, tells GlobeSt.com. “There is lots of work to be done with the federal government, corporations and individuals but we are becoming more innovative with funding. Typically, there are five to 10-year recovery periods after large storms. Our HEART program is specifically focusing on the smaller communities of Port Aransas, Beaumont, Baytown and Rockport that were affected after Harvey.”
Enterprise’s resiliency work in Texas has focused on Harvey-impacted areas outside of Houston through Enterprise’s Housing and Economic Assistance to Rebuild Texas program/HEART in partnership with the Texas State Affordable Housing Corporation. Gonzalez has also led Enterprise’s work on Rapido in Houston which helps residents return to their homes following natural disasters.