Community Resilience and Housing Instability

COMMUNITY RESILIENCE ESTIMATE

The U.S. Census Bureau’s Community Resilience Estimate (CRE) is a measure that is used to evaluate a community’s ability to withstand and recover from disruptive events such as economic downturn, public health emergencies, and natural disasters. The CRE uses American Community Survey data to model risk related to health, social, and economic factors by assessing components of social vulnerability. These components include:

• Income to poverty ratio (< 130% of AMI)
• Single or zero caregiver household (1 or zero people in the household are >18 years old)
• Unit level crowding (>.75 per room)
• Communication barriers
  • Low number of English-speaking households
  • Zero people in the household with a high school diploma
• No one in the household is employed full-time, year-round
• Disability that constrains life activity
• No health insurance
• Age 65 or older
• No vehicle access
• No broadband access

The CRE is used to identify where there are high concentrations of people who will be more likely to impacted by and have challenges overcoming a disaster. It helps policymakers, planners, and organizations better understand the needs of different communities and plan resource allocation and emergency response to address their unique needs.

HOUSING INSTABILITY

The CRE assesses income, employment, and overcrowding, all factors that impact housing stability. High rates of housing instability make disaster/disruption recovery much more challenging because a lack of stable housing makes it challenging to gain and retain employment, access healthcare, evacuate, or as we saw during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, shelter in place. High rates of home ownership, sufficient affordable rental housing, and stable housing better situate communities to recover from disasters and disruptions. By identifying areas that have high social vulnerability and high housing instability, policy makers can pre-emptively direct rental assistance and home ownership and affordable housing initiatives in these areas to mitigate risk and decrease risk for displacement. In addition, the CRE can be used to determine where to target critical building repair funds to prepare them to withstand natural disasters and to determine placement and characteristics of shelters and emergency facilities to ensure they are ADA-compliant, accessible, medically equipped, and are easily able to meet the needs of the most vulnerable people in a given area.

MECKLENBURG COUNTY

The highest county CRE in North Carolina (NC) is in Hyde County, NC with 39.8% of the population having three or more components of social vulnerability. Mecklenburg County’s CRE is 16.8%. This rate is lower than 94% of the counties in NC which suggests comparatively Mecklenburg County residents have the capacity to deal with the impact of a disaster or disruption. However, there are some Census tracts in Mecklenburg County that have a high number of residents who would be more greatly impacted by a disaster/disruption and have a more challenging time recovering.

The two Census tracts with the highest percentage of people who are less likely to be able to manage the impact of a disaster/disruption are Census tract 53.08 which consists of 0.3 square miles between Tom Hunter Road, North Tryon Street, and Monteith Drive and Census tract 23 which encompasses 0.7 square miles between Randolph Road, Wendover Drive, and Dunn Avenue and contains the Grier Heights neighborhood.

In Census tract 53.08, almost 55% of residents have three or more components of social vulnerability. According to 2023 American Community Survey 5-year data, this tract has a population of 2,579. Forty-six percent of the population fall below the poverty line which is almost five times the overall poverty rate for Mecklenburg County (10.4%). Seventy-four percent of children under the age of 18 live below the poverty line in this Census tract. The population is mostly female (52%), Black/African American (37%), and Hispanic (51%) and the median household income is $36,727, approximately 45% of Mecklenburg County’s median household income ($83,765).

In Census tract 23.00, 50% of residents have three or more components of social vulnerability. This tract has a population of 3,004 with almost half of its residents living below the federal poverty line and 55% of children below the age of 18 living in poverty. The population in this Census tract is mostly female (62%) and Black/ African American (89%). The median household income is $21,414 which is approximately 25% of Mecklenburg County’s median income.

In addition, Mecklenburg County has 23 other Census tracts where 30% – 45% of residents report three or more components of social vulnerability.