Disaster recovery and local knowledge

As residents all along the Southeastern coast start to put their lives back together after a devastating visit by Hurricane Matthew, these communities will face unique challenges. Not surprisingly, the calls for billions of dollars in federal government aid are already coming out loud and clear.

Research on the aftermath of natural disasters reveals, however, that more often than not, local residents are better-suited to efficiently address these challenges than government on the local, state and federal levels.

Take a recent investigation by PBS’ “Frontline” and NPR into flood insurance and aid distribution in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. They found that disaster victims’ flood insurance claims were systematically underpaid, while the insurance companies selected by the feds to handle these claims were busy finding ways to increase their profits and limit payouts. Meanwhile, aid programs were slow to distribute funds while punishing homeowners with mountains of red tape and unqualified contractors, which ultimately prevented them from returning to their homes and communities.

Brad Gair, a disaster recovery manager in New York, said during the “Frontline” episode: “Did we put a bunch of money out? Yes. Is everybody mad? Yes. Did people get what they needed to get back into a home? No.” These horrifying stories were unfortunately a repeat of previous governmental responses to disasters — for example, after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Andrew.

In a recent book titled “Community Revival in the Wake of Disaster,” three of my colleagues at the Mercatus Center — Virgil Henry Storr, Stefanie HaeffeleBalch and Laura E. Grube — explain in detail why we shouldn’t be surprised that governmental responses to disasters lead to high administrative overhead costs and little relief to those who need it the most. They also show how entrepreneurs, “conceived broadly as individuals who recognize and act on opportunities to promote social change,” end up filling this critical role.

They reveal how in general, these entrepreneurs promote community recovery by providing necessary goods and services and restoring and replacing disrupted social networks. The entrepreneurs also provide signals to indicate that a community is rebounding. These signals are essential to incentivize people and businesses to stay in the community or, in the event they deserted it during or after the hurricane, come back.

Just as importantly, they argue that creating space for entrepreneurs to act after disasters is essential for promoting recovery and fostering resilient communities. They tell many uplifting stories of communities that didn’t wait for the various government agencies to rescue them and instead took matters into their own hands, finding ways to obtain funding, clean up and rebuild — which resulted in getting people back into their homes faster.

Storr and his co-authors link the success of these local entrepreneurs to people’s knowledge of one another’s needs, which allows them to find creative ways to overcome adversity. As opposed to the topdown approach of a distant bureaucracy, the best knowledge is local knowledge. Those who have lived and worked in these communities know them best and are paramount to revival.

When it comes to the recovery after Hurricane Matthew, policymakers should remember that when social networks are broken by disasters, local knowledge is particularly powerful and holds an even bigger advantage over bureaucrats than usual, no matter how wellintentioned the public officials are. In fact, bureaucratic red tape will only cause more people more pain.

One hundred years ago, a new public high school building for black youngsters was opened in Washington, D.C., and named for black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Its history is a story inspiring in many ways and appalling in many other ways.

Prior to 1916, the same high school had existed under other names, housed in other buildings — and with a remarkable record.

In 1899, when it was called the M Street School, a test was given in Washington’s four public high schools, three white and one black. The black high school scored higher than two of the three other schools. Today, it would be considered Utopian even to set that as a goal, much less expect to see it happen.

The M Street School had neither of two so-called “prerequisites” for quality education. There was no “diversity.” It was an all-black school from its beginning, and on through its life as a high-quality institution under the name Dunbar High School.

The other so-called “prerequisite” that the school lacked was an adequate building. Its student body was 50 percent larger than the building’s capacity, a fact that led eventually to the new Dunbar High School But its students excelled.

Some students at the M Street School began going to some of the leading colleges in the country. The first of its graduates to go to Harvard did so in 1903. Over the years from 1892 to 1954, thirtyfour of the graduates from the M Street School and Dunbar went on to Amherst. Other graduates from M Street High School and Dunbar became Phi Beta Kappas at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and other elite institutions.

Graduates of this same high school pioneered as the first black in many places. These included the first black man to graduate from Annapolis, the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. from an American institution, the first black federal judge, the first black general, the first black Cabinet member and, among other notables, a doctor who became internationally renowned for his pioneering work in developing the use of blood plasma.

How did all of this come to an abrupt end in the 1950s? Like many other disasters, it began with good intentions and assumptions.

When Chief Justice Earl Warren declared in the landmark 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education that racially separate schools were “inherently unequal,” Dunbar was a living refutation of that assumption. And it was within walking distance of the Supreme Court.

There is no question that racially segregated schools in the South provided an inadequate education for blacks. But the assumption that racial “integration” was the answer led to years of racial polarization and turmoil over busing, with little, if any, educational improvement.

For Washington, the end of racial segregation led to a political compromise, in which all schools became neighborhood schools. Dunbar, which had been accepting outstanding black students from anywhere in the city, could now accept students only from the rough ghetto neighborhood in which it was located.

Virtually overnight, Dunbar became a typical ghetto school. As unmotivated, unruly and disruptive students flooded in, Dunbar teachers began moving out and many retired. More than 80 years of academic excellence simply vanished into thin air.

Nobody, black or white, mounted any serious opposition. “Integration” was the cry of the moment, and it drowned out everything else. That is what happens in politics.

Today, there is a new Dunbar High School building, costing more than $100 million. But its graduates go on to college at about half the rate of Dunbar graduates in earlier and poorer times. Politics can deliver costly “favors,” even when it cannot deliver quality education.