FEMA Flood Buyout Program Pays Black Homeowners Significantly Less Than White Peers

A federal program designed to offer flood-prone homeowners a path to safety has been found to offer that path on unequal terms. New research examining FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program reveals that Black homeowners receive substantially lower buyout payments than white homeowners for comparable properties — a disparity that persists even when accounting for location, flood risk, and property characteristics. The findings place this gap within a longer American story of racialized wealth extraction, where the instruments of public relief have too often mirrored the inequities they were mea