‘After a disaster, people forget’
Volunteer numbers plummet as city goes back to work
As the sun peeked out over blue skies for the first time in days, about 3,000 eager volunteers showed up at NRG Center on Aug. 30, forming a bustling line of bright faces winding around the building and filling the sidewalk.
Two weeks later, that stretch of pavement is bare as would-be volunteers return to school and work, culling the ranks of helpers available to get the city’s hardest hit residents back on their feet.
“After a disaster, people forget,” said AmeriCorps member Morgan Villnave. “And Irma came right after Harvey, so they’re thinking about that.”
Across the metro area, it’s a mixed bag for volunteers — some organizations are hurting for help, while others are enjoying steady ranks and solid support.
And while the still-busy NRG operation — which will stop accepting new clients on Wednesday — is struggling to find volunteers, the American Red Cross shelter at the George R. Brown Convention Center has the “perfect amount” given its rapidly decreasing population, officials said. Catholic Charities and the Cajun Navy and Army have suffered a sudden downtick in available help, while groups like Vietnamese
Volunteers of Houston and Black Lives Matter don’t see much impact.
“Our disaster was somewhat different from previous times because it was widespread,” said Cumaraswamy Vipulanandan, the University of Houston professor who heads up the Texas Hurricane Center for Innovative Technology. “So people wanted to be volunteers in their neighborhoods, where they could walk up or drive.”
At its peak, NRG Center was home to nearly 3,000 residents, according to Frida Villalobos, a spokeswoman for BakerRipley, the nonprofit running the shelter. Volunteers peaked around 1,000 over a 24-hour period — and sometimes so many showed up that organizers turned them away.
“Immediately after the storm, schools, businesses, everyone canceled,” said Claudia Vasquez, a vice president with BakerRipley. “And we had an outpouring of folks come out. We had almost one volunteer for every guest. But as people need to start going back to work, we really started seeing a decrease in volunteers.”
‘We’re left scrambling’
As volunteer numbers took a nosedive, so did the shelter’s population — at first. On Saturday, NRG Center was down to about 1,700 guests. But as smaller shelters began shutting their doors, the population again began creeping upward even as volunteers kept leaving.
By Monday night, the population had ballooned back up to 2,200 with around 600 volunteers.
“We’re left scrambling,” Villalobos said.
Now, the shelter has sliced shifts from eight hours down to five in hopes of attracting more volunteers who are back in their offices and classrooms.
“When we don’t have volunteers, our volunteer check-in suffers a lot and then we can’t track the hours and get money from the government to help continue our efforts,” Villnave said.
“And the food service line goes a lot slower. It takes longer to get the items they need. Without volunteer assistants, everything suffers, including the people who stay here.”
The George R. Brown shelter, which has already stopped accepting new clients, has plummeting volunteer levels, but not enough to cause any problems in light of the decreasing shelter population.
“Obviously, the amount of people yearning to volunteer does peak immediately after the disaster,” said Marc Eichenbaum, special assistant to the mayor for homeless initiatives. “And while it might reduce, that does not mean that there’s a shortage or a lack of supply of volunteers to meet the needs of the shelter.”
On Monday, about 200 volunteers took care of 1,270 shelter guests, according to Volunteer Houston CEO Cameron Waldner. But as Volunteer Houston shifts its focus to long-term recovery efforts, those numbers are down from the shelter’s busiest days, when more than 1,000 volunteers looked after close to 10,000 clients.
With a smaller client population, the city-run shelter now has smaller volunteering needs than its counterpart at NRG.
“We are having no issues with a lack of volunteers,” Eichenbaum said.
Keith Downey, who’s helped organize groups in the Kashmere/Trinity Gardens area, echoed that sentiment, as did Black Lives Matter organizer Ashton Woods, whose mucking crews are still drawing around 100 volunteers per outing, largely on weekends and outside of work hours.
Jiten Agarwal, who has helped organize a coalition of groups in the IndianAmerican community, said he’s seen volunteer efforts continue with “more or less the same momentum” over time.
Back to their families
But yet, the Cajun Army is down to about a third of the volunteers it had in the Houston area before Labor Day, a spokesperson said. Catholic Charities is seeing a decrease as well.
“Many volunteers helped as much as they could, but they were also impacted by Harvey, so they are going back home to help their own families,” said spokeswoman Christiana Johns.
And that might be part of the reason that many smaller, locally based organizations are still thriving.
“Over the past few weeks, volunteers found out about their own friends, neighbors and colleagues that also need help,” said Maria Burns, a University of Houston professor with a background in crisis management and emergency response. “Many volunteers diverted their time and help to their neighbors, or local churches and professional associations.”
The return to work and post-hurricane road congestion also could be dampening volunteer turnout, Burns said. The new disaster in Florida has diverted national attention, and the relatively quick return to normal in some areas may hurt local efforts.
“I was here during Ike and recovery was much slower, but this time regions got power back very quickly,” Vipulanandan said. “Recovery has been faster, so attracting volunteers is harder.”
But that doesn’t mean the volunteers aren’t needed, especially as relief groups settle in for the long haul of rebuilding.
“The constant message we’re trying to get out there is: We still need you,” Vasquez said. “We still need volunteers.”