HLTH 6740 Week 7 High-Burden Population Profile Example

Displaced Low-Income Renters After Disaster: A Population Profile of a Heavier Psychological Burden and What the Literature Attributes It To

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 6740: Disaster, Crisis, and Trauma

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Displaced Low-Income Renters After Disaster: A Population Profile of a Heavier Psychological Burden and What the Literature Attributes It To

The Group and Why It Is Profiled

This profile concerns low-income renters displaced from their homes by a disaster: households that rented before the event, earned low incomes and could not return to their homes for weeks or months. Research identifies them as carrying a heavier psychological burden than many other survivors, not because of who they are but because of what displacement and tenure do to the recovery that follows. The profile describes the group, sets out what the literature attributes the heavier burden to and notes the resources the group brings, so that it is not reduced to its disadvantage. Examples draw on the flood response in the composite county used in earlier courses.

Who They Are

Renters differ from owners in ways that matter after disasters. Pulling together studies on tenure, Lee and Van Zandt found that renters, taken together, run into more kinds of housing trouble than owners, that disasters worsen those problems and that renters' recovery needs have been studied less than other vulnerability characteristics (Lee & Van Zandt, 2019). Low-income renters are more likely to live in older, lower-quality housing, to have limited savings and to depend on landlords' decisions about whether and when a damaged building is repaired. In the composite county's April flood, about 390 renter households were displaced, and several dozen had no written lease.

What the Literature Attributes the Burden To

Severity of exposure and loss. Displacement itself is a form of severe exposure: losing one's home, possessions and neighborhood. Reviews of disaster survivors consistently find that more severe exposure and loss raise the risk of adverse psychological outcomes (Norris et al., 2002).

Secondary stressors. After the event, displaced renters often face repeated moves, temporary housing far from work and school, disputes with landlords and difficulty documenting their losses. Stressors that follow the event featured prominently among the risk factors in the same review, and in the Katrina panel, stress tied to the storm that had not been resolved explained much of the climb in mental illness over the next year (Kessler et al., 2008).

Resource loss and weaker support. Poverty shapes risk at every stage of disaster, from preparation through recovery (Fothergill & Peek, 2004). Low-income renters have fewer financial buffers, and displacement can scatter the neighbors, congregations and family networks that provide support. Deteriorating social resources were among the factors most consistently linked to worse outcomes in the review of survivors (Norris et al., 2002).

Barriers to assistance. Recovery programs built around property ownership and documentation can leave renters waiting longer for stable housing, prolonging the stressors above. Renters without written leases, in particular, may struggle to prove where they lived, which delays rental assistance during the months when stable housing matters most.

What the Group Brings

Low-income renters are not only a vulnerable category, and describing them only that way would mislead planners. Many have experience managing scarcity, moving and rebuilding routines under pressure, and many maintain strong informal networks of family, neighbors and congregations that can be mobilized if they are not scattered. In the composite county, renters displaced from the same apartment complex organized shared rides to work and child care within days of the flood. Research on resilience reminds us that most people exposed to disasters, across groups, do not develop lasting disorder (Bonanno et al., 2010). A profile that described only risk would miss the strengths that support plans can build on.

What Displacement Does Over Time

Displacement is not a single event but a process. In the first days, displaced renters face the loss of home and possessions alongside everyone else in the flood zone. Over the following weeks, owners begin repairs while many renters wait for landlords to decide whether to repair, sell or convert their buildings. By the second and third months, some renters have moved two or three times, from shelter to relatives to a motel, each move adding cost and disrupting work, school and medical care. Trajectory research suggests that the people whose symptoms persist or worsen are often those whose stressors remain unresolved (Kessler et al., 2008), and for displaced renters, the stressors often grow rather than fade during exactly the months when attention to the disaster declines.

In the composite county, case managers found that renters still displaced at six months were far more likely to report trouble sleeping, missed medical appointments and conflict at home than renters who had found stable housing by then. Those observations are informal, but they follow the pattern the research describes.

Variation Within the Group

The group is not uniform. Renters with a lease, stable employment and family nearby may recover nearly as well as owners. Those without leases, with precarious jobs, with limited English or with prior mental health problems face compounding risks. Older renters living alone and single parents with young children have particular needs: the first may lose access to medications and routine care, and the second may lose child care and school stability in the same week. Support planning should therefore identify subgroups within the renter population rather than treating all renters as equally at risk. A short intake question about lease status, work and household composition would let case managers sort households quickly into those who need light-touch help and those who need sustained attention.

Implications for Support

Because much of the heavier burden is attributed to what happens after the event, displacement, secondary stressors and lost resources, support for this group must include practical help with housing, documentation and income alongside psychological support. Keeping displaced renters close to their workplaces, schools and networks may protect against the deterioration of social resources. And because distress may persist or worsen while stressors remain unresolved, contact must continue for months, not weeks. The support plan in week eight builds on these implications. It treats housing help as a mental health measure, not a separate program, because for this group the two cannot be separated.

References

Bonanno, G. A., Brewin, C. R., Kaniasty, K., & La Greca, A. M. (2010). Weighing the costs of disaster: Consequences, risks, and resilience in individuals, families, and communities. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 11(1), 1-49. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100610387086

Fothergill, A., & Peek, L. A. (2004). Poverty and disasters in the United States: A review of recent sociological findings. Natural Hazards, 32(1), 89-110. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:NHAZ.0000026792.76181.d9

Kessler, R. C., Galea, S., Gruber, M. J., Sampson, N. A., Ursano, R. J., & Wessely, S. (2008). Trends in mental illness and suicidality after Hurricane Katrina. Molecular Psychiatry, 13(4), 374-384. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4002119

Lee, J. Y., & Van Zandt, S. (2019). Housing tenure and social vulnerability to disasters: A review of the evidence. Journal of Planning Literature, 34(2), 156-170. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412218812080

Norris, F. H., Friedman, M. J., Watson, P. J., Byrne, C. M., Diaz, E., & Kaniasty, K. (2002). 60,000 disaster victims speak: Part I. An empirical review of the empirical literature, 1981-2001. Psychiatry, 65(3), 207-239. https://doi.org/10.1521/psyc.65.3.207.20173