Disaster preparedness in homeless residential organizations in Los Angeles County: Identifying needs, assessing gaps
This publication presents the results from an evaluation of the perceptions of Los Angeles nonprofit homeless residential service providers and community-based organisations (CBOs) regarding the likely impacts of a disaster on their clients and operations, the barriers they face in disaster planning, and their suggested solutions to facilitate preparedness within their sector.
The findings of this document indicate the need for hands-on technical disaster-planning assistance tailored to the unique operational needs of nonprofit homeless providers. In addition, collaboration with peer entities on community disaster planning can similarly address barriers to preparedness mentioned by respondents in several ways:
- serving as a catalyst for an organisation’s preparedness efforts through peer-enforced accountability;
- providing homeless-serving CBOs with disaster-planning expertise that is targeted to their unique disaster service challenges;
- providing outside individuals who can provide hands-on technical assistance.
Natural Hazards Review, Volume 17, Issue 1, February 2016. This document is published under a licence.
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