%20-%20https://sketch.com%20--%3e%3ctitle%3e3ECBBF50-FD08-412A-943D-2CFC5E025A16%3c/title%3e%3cdesc%3eCreated%20with%20sketchtool.%3c/desc%3e%3cg%20id='Stylesheet'%20stroke='none'%20stroke-width='1'%20fill='none'%20fill-rule='evenodd'%3e%3cg%20transform='translate(-926.000000,%20-668.000000)'%20id='BUTTONS'%3e%3cg%20transform='translate(100.000000,%20597.000000)'%3e%3cg%20id='BTN-/-RIGHTS'%20transform='translate(816.000000,%2065.000000)'%3e%3cg%20id='ICON-/-Rights'%20transform='translate(10.000000,%206.000000)'%3e%3cpath%20d='M13.5752841,0%20L1.34943182,0%20C0.59375,0%200,0.586666667%200,1.33333333%20L0,22.6666667%20C0,23.4133333%200.620738636,24%201.34943182,24%20L17.6505682,24%20C18.40625,24%2019,23.3866667%2019,22.6666667%20L19,5.36%20L13.5752841,0%20Z%20M13.5752841,1.89333333%20L17.0838068,5.36%20L13.5752841,5.36%20L13.5752841,1.89333333%20Z%20M1.34943182,22.6666667%20L1.34943182,1.33333333%20L12.1988636,1.33333333%20L12.1988636,5.36%20C12.1988636,6.10666667%2012.7926136,6.69333333%2013.5482955,6.69333333%20L17.6235795,6.69333333%20L17.6505682,22.6666667%20L1.34943182,22.6666667%20Z'%20id='Shape'%20fill='%23595959'%20fill-rule='nonzero'%3e%3c/path%3e%3ccircle%20id='Oval'%20stroke='%23595959'%20stroke-width='1.5'%20fill='%23595959'%20cx='9.5'%20cy='13.5355339'%20r='5.5'%3e%3c/circle%3e%3cpolyline%20id='Path-2'%20stroke='%23FFFFFF'%20stroke-width='1.5'%20transform='translate(9.500000,%2013.035534)%20rotate(45.000000)%20translate(-9.500000,%20-13.035534)%20'%20points='8%2016.0355339%2011%2016.0355339%2011%2010.0355339'%3e%3c/polyline%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)
1. Introduction
Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast of the United States on 29 October 2012, crashing into New Jersey, just north of Atlantic City. From there, the storm travelled north, pushing water up into New York Bay and the Hudson River. Although the storm was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone before hitting the coast, storm surge and heavy rains caused extensive flooding to many coastal communities where land is only a few feet above sea level. Staten Island, New York and the New Jersey shoreline (Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean Counties) were hit the hardest, with flood levels exceeding nine feet.Footnote 1 In addition to the flood waters, fire claimed as many as 111 homes and seven million people were without power, some for several weeks.Footnote 2 Tragically, over seventy people were killed in the US and over one hundred fatalities were reported in the Caribbean. In New Jersey, approximately 72,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed; in New York City, approximately 305,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, mostly by the storm surge. An additional 40,000 residents were temporarily displaced. In the US, Hurricane Sandy caused as much as $50 billion dollars of property damage in the states of New Jersey, Maryland and New York, making it the second costliest hurricane in US history, after Hurricane Katrina.Footnote 3
In the wake of a natural disaster, there is increased demand for basic goods such as drinking water, food and clothing, as well as cleaning items (e.g. trash bags, rubber gloves and mops) and construction materials. The availability of many required goods and services, however, depends on the type of damage sustained, whether adjacent communities were similarly affected and what resources can flow in from the outside. For example, the community of Staten Island, New York, was one of the worst damaged following Hurricane Sandy. Peak storm tides of over 15 feet levelled parts of the community and left 23 people dead – the highest number of any New York City borough. Many residents needed a place to live while they decided whether to return and rebuild (and then during the rebuilding process). The wide-scale destruction required active community organizing to signal a return and to avoid the collective action problem in which residents wait and see what others are doing, leading to inaction.Footnote 4 Rebuild Staten Island is one group that helped to spread information about rebuilding efforts and also had volunteers who went door to door providing clean-up services.Footnote 5 Their actions increased the probability that residents would return and rebuild and lowered the costs of returning and rebuilding. Northeast of Staten Island, the communities in Far Rockaway on the Rockaway Peninsula experienced up to six feet of flooding. Water pumps were needed to drain basements, some of which were apartments, before mould could spread and overtake properties. Further, the community was without power for several weeks, making clean-up efforts more difficult. While the geographic isolation of some communities on the Peninsula made the transportation of relief and repair supplies more difficult, residents were able to make use of networks outside the community and organize for supplies (including water, food and clothing) to be brought in. Community members shared generators, water pumps and worked together to clean up homes.
There is now a substantial literature in New Institutional Economics that recognizes the ability of communities to engage in collective action and to overcome significant challenges, such as managing common-pool resources (CPR), responding to neighbourhood crime, or overcoming the challenges associated with post-disaster recovery. Elinor Ostrom, for example, has documented how local actors are able to govern CPRs, arrangements that she characterizes as ‘complex and uncertain situations’ (1990: 33). CPRs are complex because there can be a variety of actors using the resource in different ways, and CPRs involve uncertainty, including from external sources (e.g. ‘the quantity and timing of rainfall . . . [or] the presence or absence of disease-bearing vectors’ (ibid.: 33)). Nonetheless, local actors devise strategies for the effective use of CPRs. Similarly, in the post-disaster environment, scholars have shown how community members leverage social networks for mutual assistance, and in turn, contribute to community return and rebuilding (for example, see Beggs et al., Reference Beggs, Haines and Hurlbert1996; Chamlee-Wright and Storr, Reference Chamlee-Wright and Storr2009b; Chamlee-Wright, Reference Chamlee-Wright2010; Aldrich, Reference Aldrich2011, Reference Aldrich2012; Storr et al., Reference Storr, Haeffele-Balch and Grube2015). For example, Storr et al. (Reference Storr, Haeffele-Balch and Grube2015) have explained how local entrepreneurs (including both commercial and social entrepreneurs) make use of their social networks in order to (1) provide necessary goods and services for response and recovery, and in the process also (2) restore and replace disrupted social networks and (3) signal community rebound (and thus combat the collective action problem that characterizes disaster recovery). Together, this research illustrates that civil society is in fact capable of robust response and recovery efforts post-disaster.
We contribute to existing research on the role of civil society post-disaster by considering the arguments around polycentric versus monocentric orders. Polycentric orders contain a variety of autonomous decision-making authorities that both work together and compete among each other (Ostrom et al., Reference Ostrom, Tiebout and Warren1961). Coyne and Lemke (Reference Coyne and Lemke2012) have identified two important advantages of polycentric orders post-disaster: (1) their ability to make use of local knowledge, and (2) their flexibility to provide assistance at the appropriate scale. As Storr et al. (Reference Storr, Haeffele-Balch and Grube2015: 133), note, in order for local actors to engage in collective action, they must have the space to act, and polycentric orders provide that space. Neither Coyne and Lemke (Reference Coyne and Lemke2012) nor Storr et al. (Reference Storr, Haeffele-Balch and Grube2015), however, elaborate on the critical importance of the private provision of social services in polycentric orders. Our contribution to the literature is, first, to argue that private experimentation is a key characteristic of successful polycentric orders and, second, to show that civil society is capable of providing for post-disaster recovery.
Specifically, we consider a case study of an Orthodox Jewish community in Far Rockaway, New York. The community operates within a polycentric order and engages in the private provision of social services (such as food assistance, monetary aid, community centres, schools, ambulance services and public safety) both in mundane times and after disasters. We describe some of the characteristics that make cooperation especially effective, such as repeated interactions among community members and norms of reciprocity. We examine how this system responded to Hurricane Sandy and was important for community recovery in its aftermath. In the next section (section 2), we present the existing literature, including the theory of polycentric and monocentric orders (focusing on the contributions of the Ostroms), and then we elaborate on how polycentric orders allow for the private provision of social services and are, thus, well suited to respond to disaster. In section 3, we describe the methods used for the study. We rely primarily on interviews conducted in the Rockaway Peninsula following Hurricane Sandy. Next, we provide our case study and evidence in section 4. In section 5, we discuss evidence that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) acts as a monocentric hierarchy and point out why this may hinder response and recovery efforts.
2. Polycentric systems and post-disaster recovery
V. Ostrom et al. (ibid.: 831) define a polycentric order as one that has (1) multiple autonomous centres of authority that are, at least formally, independent of each other but, nonetheless, (2) take each other into account as they make decisions, as well as (3) cooperate with and compete against each other. Within a metropolitan area, for instance, different suburban communities have their own services for police, fire and garbage, as well as local private and public schools. Although they remain distinct entities, neighbouring police and fire departments (as well as voluntary fire departments and citizen patrol groups) often work together and provide additional support to one another as necessary. The schools, even more so with voucher programmes, offer multiple elementary schools, which may compete against each other for pupils, and also offer varied curricula (for instance, a private school may emphasize religious training or use Montessori methods). A polycentric order is spontaneous in the sense that there are numerous entities that are free to pursue their own interests (subject to general rules) and that are engaged in a process of adjustment and change (E. Ostrom and V. Ostrom, Reference Ostrom, Ostrom and McGinnis2002: 57).
Monocentric orders, in contrast, have decision rights centralized in the hands of a single authority. Drawing from the work of Michael Polanyi, the Ostroms describe monocentric orders as ‘deliberate or directed order that is coordinated by an ultimate authority exercising control through a unified command structure’ (ibid.: 57). In a monocentric political system, the power to implement and enforce rules is ‘vested in some single office or decision structure that has an ultimate monopoly over the legitimate exercise of coercive capabilities’ (ibid.: 55). The theory of complete central planning under communism is perhaps the ultimate monocentric order. The perceived benefits of such a system are predictability, standardization and economies of scale.
Admittedly, in any system of social order, we are likely to find elements of both monocentrism and polycentrism. As the Ostroms (Reference Ostrom, Ostrom and McGinnis2002: 55) write, ‘the existence of a predominantly polycentric political system need not preclude elements of monocentricity from existing in such a system’, and ‘a predominantly monocentric political system need not preclude the possibility that elements of polycentricity may exist in the organization of such a system’. While both types of orders, and characteristics of each order, are present in much of daily life, a society that is more polycentric will be more flexible and adaptable to the changing needs of citizens (Storr et al., Reference Storr, Haeffele-Balch and Grube2015).
Utilizing the Ostrom's work on polycentricity, Coyne and Lemke (Reference Coyne and Lemke2012) posit two distinct benefits of a polycentric system in disaster relief. First, polycentric orders tend to make more effective use of dispersed knowledge after a disaster. As the authors (ibid.: 223) explain, polycentric orders offer a ‘decentralized organizational structure to capture the specific knowledge of local actors’. Further, Coyne and Lemke (ibid.) note that the fewer the layers of bureaucracy that exist between the consumer (demander of assistance) and producer (supplier of assistance), the more consistent the producer's decisions are likely to be with the actual consumer's valuation of a good. Second, as they (ibid.) explain, dispersing decision making across several different groups allows flexibility in the scale of disaster relief provision. The multiple autonomous groups can cooperate and coordinate to provide larger-scale assistance, and, importantly, it is also possible to provide relief at a smaller scale. As Coyne and Lemke (ibid.: 223) write, ‘so long as contracting is possible, this mechanism allows polycentric orders to capture all the gains of monocentric ordering without sacrificing any of the benefits of the polycentric order, namely access to local knowledge and small scale provision when appropriate’.
Perhaps most importantly, however, polycentric orders allow for the private provision of social services. By ‘private’, we refer to activity in civil society by non-profit enterprises rather than activity in the public sector by government agencies.Footnote 6 Although the Ostroms (Reference Ostrom, Ostrom and McGinnis2002: 54) note that polycentric orders are not ‘a strict market model’, aspects of polycentric systems do allow for (1) access to local knowledge, (2) trial and error processes and, closely related, (3) feedback on actions and (4) incentives for learning. The Ostroms explored many models for delivering public services, based on the initial distinction between the provision and the production of public services (for a taxonomy see for example, V. Ostrom and E. Ostrom, Reference Ostrom, Ostrom and McGinnis2002). Coyne and Lemke (Reference Coyne and Lemke2012) point to two of these advantages of relying on polycentric orders after disasters; however, they do not elaborate on how polycentric orders allow for the private provision of social services, and, thus, experimentation and discovery by local actors.
How communities develop strategies for dealing with post-disaster challenges will be affected by various characteristics, such as the size of the group, existing norms of reciprocity, the level of heterogeneity among members, monitoring techniques and the information available to participants (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom1998: 2; Ostrom and Walker, Reference Ostrom and Walker2003). In many of the cases we explore, communities used private production and private provision methods (i.e. private efforts to arrange and financially support activities). In some cases, there is public provision of social services with private production or a mix of public and private provision with private production. Within religious communities such as the Orthodox Jewish community, the relatively small group size and high costs of traditions and practices (i.e. the tradition of full-time yeshiva, or religious study, among males until age 40), help to explain generous giving towards public goods (Berman, Reference Berman2000; Iannaccone, Reference Iannaccone1998). In our case study, we recognize the role of strong social networks within the community, norms of reciprocity and past experiences with disaster (both natural disasters and the financial hardship during the Great Recession) in facilitating community collective action. Footnote 7
Private provision of social services in polycentric orders
The post-disaster environment presents a variety of unique and daunting challenges for communities. In the period of immediate response, there is a need to get food, clothing and shelter to people who are affected and may not be easy to reach. It may be difficult to locate all those impacted because transportation may be suspended and the usual lines of communication – phone or email – may not be reliable. As the cases of Staten Island and the Rockaway Peninsula show, the type of assistance needed depends on the damage sustained. Even with these challenges, however, there are ways that communities effectively engage in collective action and support repair and rebuilding efforts.
Because not all knowledge is given prior to a disaster, or easily accessed after a disaster, a process of experimentation is required to develop strategies, obtain useful resources and coordinate plans. This is especially true in the post-disaster context. As E. Ostrom notes, ‘Uncertainties stemming from lack of knowledge can be reduced over time as a result of skillful pooling and blending of scientific knowledge and local time-and-place knowledge’ (1990: 34). Or, as she notes, trial and error learning is a powerful tool to uncover knowledge and develop successful strategies. Trial and error involves developing a strategy, implementing or trying to implement the plan, and then determining whether it was a success or not, or whether changes can be made on the margin to better coordinate action. Because polycentric systems consist of multiple autonomous centres, there can be a variety of actors testing their ideas at any given moment. These experiments will benefit from the knowledge gained during previous (successful or unsuccessful) experiments that the actors have engaged in or observed.
Even though the individuals affected by a disaster may not have full knowledge about their circumstances (either beforehand or in the aftermath), they do have access to some local knowledge (such as knowledge of the types of damage sustained in past severe weather events, who has sustained damage because of the storm, what existing social connections or skills may be leveraged, and how circumstances are changing, e.g. whether floodwaters are rising or receding). Access to local knowledge is critical if private entities are to successfully provide public services that meet the wants and needs of community members. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, for instance, Mary Ann Patrick,Footnote 8 the owner of a furniture store in Chalmette, in Saint Bernard Parish, used her local knowledge to reopen her store. Specifically, she contacted friends to help her clean up debris and mud in her store and called upon her network of furniture and appliance suppliers to help her restock her inventories. She used her own experiences as a disaster victim and feedback from her customers to guide her experiments with different product offerings aimed at meeting the particular needs of those affected by Hurricane Katrina. In the context of the Orthodox Jewish community, this local knowledge is transmitted through closely knit, often religiously based, social networks and existing aid structures designed to identify those in need and make services available.
In addition to being able to access local knowledge, E. Ostrom (Reference Ostrom1990: 34) has also pointed out that individuals on the ground have the incentive to experiment with various strategies for solving the problems that they face and to discover successful strategies because they benefit directly from the innovations. In the post-disaster context, many community members have a desire to return home and regain a sense of normalcy, to rebuild their homes as well as local public assets (e.g. parks, community centres, or schools), and to have local businesses reopen their doors.Footnote 9 In order for this sense of community to return, others must also want to and have the ability to return and rebuild. Local community leaders and entrepreneurs can increase the chances that others will return and also have an incentive to assess and adapt their strategies based on the feedback of community members if it increases their likelihood of successfully convincing displaced residents to return and rebuild.
Monocentric orders, in contrast, are less likely to encourage private experimentation. The Ostroms were aware that monocentric systems crowd out private efforts. ‘[In] a bureaucratic system of public administration in which all relationships are coordinated through a central command structure culminating in a single center of authority . . .’, as E. Ostrom and V. Ostrom (Reference Ostrom, Ostrom and McGinnis2002: 98) explain, ‘no place exists for private enterprise’. Where private enterprise does not exist, nor do the benefits of decentralized experimentation and learning.
Furthermore, as Storr et al. (Reference Storr, Haeffele-Balch and Grube2015: 127) explain, in order to carry out decisions, monocentric orders tend to rely heavily on ‘formal protocols and pre-established procedures to assess alternatives and to respond to problems’. Centralized, top-down decision-making systems present layers of bureaucracy between the decision-making authority and local actors. These top-down bureaucratic decision-making institutions make deviations from established protocols difficult if not impossible and, therefore, it is difficult to experiment and implement anything that was learned from past successful and failed experiments. Said another way, the more monocentric elements that exist in an order, the more difficult it is to identify successes and failures, to learn from those successes and errors and to adapt plans accordingly.
Following V. Ostrom et al. (Reference Ostrom, Tiebout and Warren1961), we view metropolitan areas as primarily polycentric systems and focus on the private provision of social services in the Orthodox Jewish community in the Rockaway Peninsula, in Queens, New York. In mundane times as well as after Hurricane Sandy, the community engaged in experimentation to provide needed goods and services. The community devised strategies to address financial hardship and hunger, the need for physical spaces for entertainment and religious activities, demand for religiously based education, a faster ambulance service during emergencies and desires for increased safety on the streets. The ability to organize and solve collective action problems is supported by strong social networks, shared values and past experiences with disaster. As we discuss in the following section, these goods and services are offered both because (1) there was a perception of a shortage of existing goods and services and (2) many existing goods and services do not align with the particular tastes and preferences of the Orthodox Jewish community.
3. Research methodology
Much of the empirical evidence for our research comes from in-depth qualitative interviews conducted in July and August 2013 and July 2014 in New York (focusing on the Far Rockaway community). The interviews are part of a larger research programme, originally the Gulf Coast Recovery Project (in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005), which aims to understand how individuals and communities recover following natural disaster. The research is funded by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and is conducted by Mercatus Center scholars and researchers. The project examines the political, economic and social aspects of recovery, recognizing that there is an interdependence among these three spheres and that all three are needed for a functioning society (Boettke et al., Reference Boettke, Chamlee-Wright, Gordon, Ikeda, Leeson and Sobel2007).
The research utilizes in-depth interviews, rather than other types of research methodology, for several reasons. First, the open-ended nature of the interviews allows for genuine discovery. Rather than asking individuals to indicate what resources were important for their recovery from a pre-populated list (e.g. personal savings, assistance from family and friends, FEMA Individuals and Households Program assistance), we ask interviewees to name these key resources. Second, we intentionally ask questions that try to get to the interviewee's own narrative or story about recovery. Sometimes follow-ups of, ‘could you tell me more about that?’ are used to elicit further elaboration. Understanding how individuals made sense of changing circumstances, formed expectations about the future and engaged in personal cost/benefit analysis is important for developing our own understanding and explanation of post-disaster recovery. In addition to relying on the interviews, secondary sources are referenced throughout and include historical accounts of the Rockaway Peninsula, as well as newspaper and magazine articles about Hurricane Sandy recovery.
The Rockaway Peninsula was selected as the location for interviews based on the level of damage sustained and various socioeconomic indicators that are roughly the same as New York City averages. The damage sustained was not as severe as in some communities, however, flooding did result in property losses. Census figures for 2010 show that the high school graduation rate for the Peninsula is 78% (City average is 80.1%) and median household income is $49,498 (City is $52,737), with a poverty rate of 20.8% (City is 20.6%).Footnote 10
Research findings following Hurricane Katrina (see for example, Chamlee-Wright and Storr, Reference Chamlee-Wright and Storr2009, or Storr and Haeffele-Balch, Reference Storr and Haeffele-Balch2012) led us to focus our research in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on civil society. We began by deliberately casting a wide net to get a sense of civil society efforts across different sub-communities, both geographically (although constrained to the Rockaway Peninsula) and in terms of religious and non-religious groups and other affinity groups. We conducted interviews with representatives of Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, the Rockaway Youth Task Force, members of the Orthodox Jewish community, and a surfing club that organized return and rebuilding. After interviewing several residents of the Orthodox Jewish community, it became clear that the community had organized a robust response to Hurricane Sandy. To understand how different individuals and organizations worked together and coordinated activities, we decided to continue interviews within the Orthodox Jewish community rather than further broadening our study.
The method of in-depth interviews and our decision to explore the Orthodox Jewish community further is, in hindsight, conducive to our theoretical model of polycentric orders. The individual narratives provided information on how relationships and experiences in the community were utilized to coordinate a collective recovery. The narratives revealed how members of different synagogues are nonetheless connected by networks of rabbis, schools and various club goods that their religious organizations provide. In other words, the details that emerged from the in-depth interviews highlighted the nested nature of the community. Further, we learned how this community engages with other groups in the broader Rockaway Peninsula.
4. Private provision of social services in the Orthodox Jewish community of Far Rockaway
Life today on the Rockaway Peninsula, part of the Borough of Queens in New York City, is shaped by post-Second World War policies, in which city officials sought to relocate poor minorities to accommodate returning soldiers and their families. Numerous public housing buildings were constructed on the Peninsula beginning in the 1950s. In the years after the Second World War, the Rockaway Peninsula contained 0.05% of the total population of Queens but contained over 50% of the housing projects (ibid: 3). Public services were undersupplied. Crime statistics sored, as did unemployment, infant mortality and high school drop-out rates.
Recall that today, the high school graduation rate for the Peninsula is approximately 78% (2010 Census) and average household income is $49,498 (with a poverty rate of 20.8%).Footnote 11 Despite the various challenges confronting communities on the Peninsula, residents have engaged in collective action to improve their respective communities. In Far Rockaway, Kaplan and Kaplan (Reference Kaplan and Kaplan2003: 4) write, ‘Orthodox Jews, who set up separate schools and religious institutions, established a rapidly growing, tightly knit enclave’. And, ‘some members of minority groups became politically active and demanded decent public schools and other services for themselves and their families’.Footnote 12 Indeed, prior to Hurricane Sandy (and after), the Orthodox Jewish community was thriving in the Rockaway Peninsula. Private actors within the community provide a diversity of goods and services, including social services (money, food assistance and other services), community centres, private schools, an ambulance service, and a civilian patrol. As we show, these private goods and services are provided because community members (1) perceive an excess demand for certain goods and services and/or (2) require some sort of product differentiation. Together, the diversity of goods and services contributes to the larger polycentric order.
We focus on two of the privately provided goods and services: the provision of social services and the provision of security services (specifically, the Rockaway Citizen Safety Patrol, or RCSP). This does not mean that the other privately provided goods and services are not important. In fact, the synagogues – the most important building within an Orthodox community – also serve as community centres, offering supplemental activities for children, the elderly and the rest of the community. For example, Young Israel of Wavecrest and Bayswater offers religious services, day camps for children, meals for elderly community members (through a grant from the New York City Department of the Aging) and a driving class (run through the American Association of Retired Persons). In terms of schools, there are various k-12 private schools, including Yeshiva Darchei Torah, which educates over 1,400 students. And the ambulance service, Hatzalah, is also an important volunteer-run service that operates in Far Rockaway, with other volunteer ambulance services using the same name in other parts of the country and the world.
Social services
The Orthodox Jewish community of Far Rockaway offers various social services to the community (both Jewish and non-Jewish) and helps individuals apply for government assistance. A few of these social service organizations are the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty (or the Met Council for short), which serves individuals throughout New York City, the Jewish Community Council of the Rockaway Peninsula (JCCRP) and Achiezer Community Resource Center (achiezer is a Hebrew word meaning ‘helping a brother’), which has offices near Far Rockaway. The Met Council serves tens of thousands of families annually, including approximately fifteen thousand families monthly who receive kosher food from Met Council's food pantries. Met Council's annual revenue is over $120 million, with government grants contributing a substantial portion.Footnote 13 The JCCRP is a smaller organization and operates only in the Rockaway Peninsula, although there are other Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) throughout New York and the country.Footnote 14
Executive Director of the JCCRP, Nathan Krasnovsky, explains that the Met Council is like the parent organization and the various JCCs are the children organizations.Footnote 15 The JCCRP helps residents to navigate government social services, including Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and Medicaid. They also offer their own assistance for career counselling, financial counselling and offer a kosher food pantry (an example of product differentiation, in this case based on religious beliefs).
At the JCCRP, Krasnovsky and his colleagues have taken a special interest in providing services around employment opportunities. Krasnovsky has created a tool that allows him to more effectively match job-seekers and employers. His database has client information as well as information about potential employers. Based on his repeated interactions with clients and knowledge about their skills, past work experience and interests, he can connect the client with the most appropriate potential employer. Krasnovsky explains, ‘I don't like to just put on a little band-aid onto people. [My vision] was bringing them back to the path of self-sufficiency, so without a job, without proper career counseling [it's] very hard to do that.’
Although many of the employees at the JCCRP are Jewish and it is a Jewish organization, Krasnovsky says that between 60 and 70% of clients are not Jewish. Further, there are other organizations that operate out of the JCCRP. For example, Catholic Charities has a caseworker at their office in the Rockaway Peninsula.
Rabbi Mordechai Kruger also provides career counselling at the JCCRP. In addition, Rabbi Kruger is a member of the Agudas Yisroel synagogue and operates a small community fund (the Bayswater Neighbors Fund) for residents who fall on difficult times. Rabbi Kruger lives in Bayswater, a northern community of Far Rockaway, and estimates that there are 400 Jewish families in Bayswater. He also explains that 70 families – approximately 18% – receive food assistance through private Jewish organizations. Many of these families do not qualify for government programmes (e.g. SNAP benefits), but need extra help because kosher foods tend to be more expensive. Further, it is not unusual for families to have six, eight, or even ten children. Rabbi Kruger's personal connections and local knowledge of the community allow him to be effective in providing short-term assistance to others, including money to cover utilities, rent, school payments and other needs.
It is also worth noting that, as community members themselves, Krasnovsky and Rabbi Kruger not only have access to local knowledge about the needs of their community, but they also have an incentive to find ways to improve the area.
Achiezer, located in Lawrence, approximately one mile northeast from Far Rockaway, assists community members struggling with health (including mental health) issues, financial problems or other crises. Specifically, the organization helps community members navigate medical crises, and provides assistance with health insurance, mental health services, legal assistance and financial counselling. Achiezer was founded by Rabbi Boruch Bender in 2009 after his family experienced a medical crisis. Rabbi Bender recognized that his own struggle was something that individuals in the community experienced every day. Between navigating medical decisions, understanding the insurance bills and ensuring that Orthodox Jewish laws were respected, Rabbi Bender explains, it is overwhelming. He imagined an organization that would serve as a ‘one-stop shop’ for all kinds of challenges that individuals confront on a day to day basis. There is one phone number and many available services. Today, Achiezer receives approximately five hundred phone calls per week and has 13 staff members and 150 volunteers. The extent to which community members rely on the centre is feedback that Achiezer is meeting a need. While we were conducting fieldwork in Far Rockaway, interviewees often mentioned receiving help from Achiezer or mentioned reaching out to Achiezer when they received phone calls from friends and family in need.
One reason that Achiezer is so effective is that it has the endorsement of 62 rabbis in the area. Each synagogue has a rabbi or several rabbis that serve as religious leaders to the members of the synagogue. The rabbis are consulted for spiritual counsel during other difficult times. Rabbi Bender explains that Achiezer is ‘a rabbi's best friend’, meaning that the organization is able to handle some of the challenges that rabbis often are confronted with. And, because the organization specializes in social services, they have knowledge of a wide range of resources.
In some ways these organizations overlap and duplicate goods and services; however, they also each offer variations in how they assist community members. And, just as they provided a wide array of goods and services to the community in mundane times, they also adapted in the post-disaster context and provided needed goods and services after Hurricane Sandy.
Hurricane Sandy brought high winds of 80 miles per hour and rain that in turn caused five to six feet of flooding. The Rockaway Peninsula was without power for two weeks following the storm during a time when temperatures began to dip below freezing. Many families experienced flooding, had damage to their homes and lost appliances and other personal items. Although Far Rockaway is closer to the city than other parts of the Rockaway Peninsula, public transport was disrupted and gasoline shortages made transportation via car difficult. Because of the way that the Orthodox Jewish community is organized, however, a decentralized system of sub-communities and synagogues was already in place to help the community respond to the disaster.
Rabbi Kruger of Agudas Yisroel, for example, started to receive information about families in need in the days after the storm. At first, he would find out about the needs of community members on an ad hoc basis. He soon realized that he required a way to better organize his information to better match donated goods with the needs of the community. He helped to create a spreadsheet with names, contact information and a list of resources needed by those in Bayswater who were affected by the storm. According to Rabbi Kruger, 115 families had experienced significant damage. He then started to gather information about what each individual and family needed. Rabbi Kruger explains, ‘we surveyed the families and created a very, very granular database. We knew how many twin beds, double beds, bunk beds, baby strollers [were needed], real basic stuff that a family's got to have.’ These efforts were providing assistance at exactly the scale that was needed (i.e. quantity demanded equalled quantity supplied). Rabbi Kruger notes that the detailed list of needed items was a tool that was imitated in other communities as well. There were many individuals who came forward and said that they wanted to help.
Similarly, Nathan Krasnovsky of the JCCRP was also busy after the storm. Following Hurricane Sandy, a variety of government agencies used the JCCRP to deliver assistance to disaster victims. Krasnovsky lists the various groups that had a presence at the JCCRP: the United Jewish Appeal Federation, the American Red Cross, Neighborhood Housing Services, Catholic Charities, Met Council disaster case management and the New York Legal Assistance Group. In addition to providing an immediate response for community members, the JCCRP was able to provide resources to help Sandy victims navigate private insurance claims, FEMA applications and other assistance programmes. The storm also left more community members eligible for other non-disaster assistance programmes, and the JCCRP was there to help them navigate the process.
Achiezer was another natural leader in post-disaster coordination and assistance. Even before the storm hit, Rabbi Bender called together leadership from various community organizations and local government to discuss the plan for ensuring that everyone was safe during and after the hurricane. Some of these organizations were the JCCRP, the RCSP, synagogues in the area, OHEL (mental health counselling), the Hatzalah ambulance service and the local emergency management office. The groups had learned following Hurricane Irene (the year before, in 2011) that coordination in advance was helpful. The organizations promised to help each other and share information depending on what sort of challenges arose.
Hurricane Sandy left the Achiezer offices without power. In order to still operate, Rabbi Bender opened up his dining room as the headquarters for the organization. They had 17 phone lines operating and took calls 24 hours a day in the days following the storm. The phones rang non-stop, as community members asked for help to evacuate, asked for updates on the storm and looked for assistance in its immediate aftermath.Footnote 16 In addition to receiving phone calls, Achiezer had an email list that they used to contact individuals in the community. The email list had nine thousand addresses, and Rabbi Bender sent messages with information about where assistance was available and other updates.
In the days following the storm, it became clear that everyone had underestimated Hurricane Sandy and the damage it would cause. The community would not only need food and supplies to get them through the days following the storm, but would need resources to repair and rebuild their homes.
Following the financial crisis in 2008, a fund called the Community Assistance Fund (CAF) had been created to help families make ends meet and avoid bankruptcy. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Achiezer and the Davis Memorial Fund reinstituted the fund in order to raise money to help families get immediate assistance as well as the resources needed to repair their homes. Donations flowed in from New York City, the country and the world, particularly from various Orthodox Jewish communities that wanted to help out.
The assistance programme was organized into three phases. The first phase provided emergency cash assistance from $2–3,000 per household for items such as food, blankets and generators. The second phase, called the coming home project, distributed $10,000 per household and was intended to help clean up and repair homes so that their lives could return to normal as quickly as possible. The third phase was reserved for families with significant losses, who received $10,000 or more to rebuild their homes.
Rabbis at local synagogues were asked to help identify community members who needed assistance. Individuals and families filled out an application for the assistance. Trustees were appointed to approve the distribution of funds and ensure that the money was used as it was intended. In total $11.3 million was raised and distributed to over a thousand families. Importantly, the money was distributed quickly.
Other organizations that play an important role in the community during mundane times also contributed post-disaster. Young Israel of Wavecrest and Bayswater opened its doors and provided food, shelter and clothing to those in the area. The kitchen was run and food prepared by local women in the community, who provided hot meals to their neighbours three times a day. Rabbi Kruger describes how residents of Williamsburg organized truckloads of kosher food to be distributed to Young Israel, and that community members sought out not only food, but comfort and counsel from one another as well as the leadership of the synagogue. Specifically, Rabbi Kruger emphasized the role of trust in bringing the community together, getting the resources they needed and ultimate recovery.
Another major hub for goods and services was the White Shul in Far Rockaway. The White Shul (another local synagogue) offered food, clothing and other household items for those who had been affected by Hurricane Sandy, and even had a doctor on site. In the weeks following the storm, the White Shul provided three meals a day to approximately three hundred families. When asked why the White Shul was selected to be a distribution centre, Chaim Leibtag (the president of the White Shul) explained that the synagogue is the centre of the community geographically because people have to be able to walk there on the Sabbath (and this includes families that may have many small children). Men will sometimes go to the synagogue three times a day for prayer. For many reasons, it was the natural meeting place after the storm. Similarly, the Sh'or Yoshuv Institute in Lawrence served as another distribution centre for food and clothing and also had a doctor on site.
Prior to Hurricane Sandy, there were numerous centres providing social services within the Orthodox Jewish community, and the various entities both cooperated and competed against one another. These organizations are clear examples of a polycentric system. Following Hurricane Sandy, this structure encouraged experimentation as local actors tried to find ways to support the needs of the community. For instance, Rabbi Kruger was able to figure out a useful system of compiling the needs in Bayswater, and Rabbi Bender made things work after Achiezer lost power and reinstated the CAF when it was clear more resources were needed. This experimentation allowed for the community to respond to the demand for immediate cash assistance, kosher food, home repairs and other needs.
Rockaway Civilian Safety Patrol
Organized in November 2011 by Laizer Shtundel, the RCSP is a volunteer group dedicated to ensuring the safety of community members in Far Rockaway, including the neighbourhood of Bayswater. Primarily a Jewish organization, the RCSP has approximately 95 member volunteers. Shtundel estimates that 80% of volunteers are Jewish and 20% are not Jewish. In order to get participation from the non-Jewish community, early RCSP volunteers attended a variety of civic associations and community council meetings. The RCSP also has strong ties to the local 101st Precinct of the New York City Police Department.
Although the 101st Precinct serves Far Rockaway, community members wanted additional protection against crime. A review of RCSP reports of incidents shows that much of the activity is petty crime: home burglaries, car break-ins and graffiti. Founder Shtundel explains that his car was broken into at the beginning of November 2011. He took the car into the shop to be repaired. A few weeks later his car was broken into again. At that point Shtundel started to talk to friends and neighbours about starting a patrol.
In fact, community volunteer patrols exist throughout New York City. Within the extended Jewish community specifically, there are shomrin (Hebrew for ‘guard’) groups, which are Jewish civilian patrols that are organized to address burglary, vandalism, muggings, assault and other crime in their local community. Unlike shomrim groups, the RCSP is a multi-ethnic organization and has been since 2011.
The RCSP and shomrim groups keep their eyes and ears on the street. If a patrol member suspects foul play, they call the police at the 101st Precinct. While they wait for the police to respond, patrol members can also monitor the changing location of a suspect and then communicate updated information to police. The RCSP and local police act as complements, working together to reduce crime. As Shtundel explains, ‘One of the benefits of having a citizen's patrol is that we know our neighbours and we know what is out of the ordinary. If I see a stranger in a car that I know belongs to my neighbor, I do not have to think twice about calling the police.’Footnote 17 In other words, the group relies on local knowledge.
The RCSP has two components. The first is the night patrol. The patrol is staffed by volunteers who commit to three-hour blocks. The patrol volunteers receive a radio and flashlight and either patrol on foot or in a car. The second component is the 24-hour hotline. The hotline is available for community members to call for assistance or to report suspicious behaviour, when they prefer not to call the police.
The RCSP also expanded their activities before and after Sandy. Prior to Sandy, the volunteers helped to evacuate sick and elderly individuals in the community. Following the storm, the RCSP set up station at the Young Israel of Wavecrest and Bayswater to assist with community needs. RCSP volunteers helped to distribute hot food prepared in the kitchen, and many volunteers helped community members pump water out of basement and ground-floor living quarters.
For two weeks after the storm, RCSP had volunteers out on the streets 24/7 – extending patrol hours to daytime hours in addition to night-time hours. Many parts of the Rockaway Peninsula were without electricity during this time. While many residents were concerned about potential looting, there were no such issues.Footnote 18
Polycentric orders allow for civil society groups to operate within the larger order. Specifically, the possibility of the private provision of social services within polycentric orders has allowed for the emergence of shomrin groups and, on the Rockaway Peninsula, the RCSP, which supplement city police efforts. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy the community was without electricity and had limited transportation. The RCSP had the flexibility to increase patrols and presence on the street, reducing anxiety among residents.
5. Discussion
The Orthodox Jewish community operates within a polycentric order and relies on the private provision of social services within that system to address problems in the community. The process of private experimentation involves and can be successful because it makes use of (1) local knowledge, (2)trial and error, (3) some sort of feedback on actions and (4) incentives for learning. The Orthodox Jewish community in the Rockaway Peninsula has experimented and tried various methods of assistance (from synagogues and community centres transformed into serve as cafeterias, food pantries and doctor's offices) as well as various methods of identifying those who require assistance and matching them with resources. Following Hurricane Sandy, it was noted how similar types of assistance were made available during mundane times (e.g. making use of existing social service groups and the infrastructure of the synagogues) as well as the specific needs and requirements of the Orthodox Jewish community (e.g. community members are better suited to provide the food and services their religion requires).
One response to the presented case study is to note that the characteristics of the Orthodox Jewish community allow for a level of cooperation that is unlikely to be matched in other contexts. We do recognize that the Orthodox Jewish community presents a unique case. In the spirit of the Ostroms’ research programme, we seek to document the diversity of strategies engaged, with full recognition that there is no single blueprint for effective post-disaster recovery. Some of these strategies may work in other contexts (e.g. civilian patrols and community centres), and some may not. However, other studies have shown that strong ties are not required to engage in effective collective action. For example, Storr et al. (Reference Storr, Haeffele-Balch and Grube2015) show that communities with more loosely knit social networks were able to coordinate recovery following Hurricane Katrina.
A further response may be that we have understated the potential ‘dark side’ of social capital in which the strong ties in some civil society groups do not always encourage helping outsiders, or even actively exclude some from receiving aid. Indeed, scholars have documented such phenomena (for example, see Aldrich, Reference Aldrich2012: 44).Footnote 19 In this particular case study, there were examples in which Orthodox Jewish organization did collaborate with non-Jewish community members, and there are some activities where ‘outsider’ participation strengthens the public good (e.g. civilian patrol, where outsiders present even more eyes on the street and knowledge that may not be available to all groups). Again, we do not claim that the Orthodox Jewish community offers the model of how every community ought to respond to disaster, or that it is a perfect system for disaster relief and recovery.
Given that our case study is in the US, it is worth examining – at least briefly – other models and organizations that provide disaster relief. In the US, the federal government, through FEMA, plays a large role in post-disaster assistance. Following the Ostroms, we have argued that metropolitan areas (i.e. communities) should be viewed as polycentric orders rather than monocentric orders, and that the characteristics of polycentric orders lead to robust recovery following disaster. FEMA is an organization within the larger order. Recent challenges related to the ability of FEMA to carry out its mission suggests that the agency has several characteristics of a monocentric hierarchy (see Ostrom, Reference Ostrom2010 and Posner, Reference Posner2010).
Two years after 11 September 2001, in March 2003, FEMA was placed under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The move illustrated an ‘all hazards approach’ (i.e. terrorist attacks and natural disasters), and was intended to help create economies of scale in disaster response and reduce duplications of efforts. The DHS combined 22 different departments and agencies, yet retains some decentralization with a structure of ten different regions across the country. Admittedly, an organizational chart cannot fully communicate whether a group operates as a monocentric or polycentric order. However, examination of various aspects of FEMA operation and criticism of response bring to light ways in which the organization illustrates disadvantages of monocentric hierarchies. Specifically, reliance on (1) detailed, formal protocols and pre-established procedures, (2) centralized communications and (3) continued ‘command and control’ indicate an organization with monocentric characteristics.
Policies that involve detailed, formal protocols and pre-established procedures are an attempt to maintain central control. For example, the National Response Plan was arguably too long (426 pages in total) and complicated for emergency management officials to understand and was blamed for failures after Hurricane Katrina. Polycentric design principles, in contrast, would suggest more general rules that do not constrain actors as they respond to the details on the ground, or decentralization with more local organizational bodies being able to draft their own rules that take their context into consideration.
Further, communication remains a key challenge in FEMA operations and is tied to monocentric design principles. The layers of bureaucracy and problems with technology in the post-disaster context lead to issues around the lack of interoperability, or the inability of a system to exchange and make use of information. The layers of bureaucracy present additional steps along any chain to communicate information or action. The technical aspects magnify the problems when transferring information means finding ways to translate data from one system to another. Tullock (Reference Tullock and Crowley2005) has compared such situations within bureaucracy as ‘whispering down the lane’, in which a message from one part of an organization can become distorted as it travels to another part of the organization. The more layers that the message travels through, the more distorted it becomes. The second negative consequence of ‘whispering down the lane’ is that it can take time, something that is not ideal in the post-disaster context when fast response is needed.
The bipartisan committee that investigated preparation and response to Hurricane Katrina recognized that the centralization of communication did not work; however, in their description of the chain of command, they explain that greater effort is needed rather than faulting the design:
Chain of command furthers the concept of unity of command, creating a line of authority from the lowest ranking individual to those in command, establishing a highly effective and efficient system. It requires that orders are given only to those directly below an individual in the chain of command and orders are received from only those directly superior in the chain of command. Those at the appropriate level in the chain of command can then, as authorized, coordinate their activities with peers in their partner organizations.Footnote 20
In 2011, FEMA adopted the Whole Community approach, which ‘requires finding ways to support and strengthen the institutions, assets and networks that already work well in communities and are working to address issues that are important to community members on a daily basis’.Footnote 21 There are examples of collaborations with civil society groups throughout the country.Footnote 22 Future research might explore how these public–private partnerships operate and what are the costs and benefits of such arrangements.Footnote 23
Still, there are other steps that could be taken to ensure that private actors have the space to engage in experimentation and take steps towards recovery. Recall that a key advantage of polycentric orders is that the people on the ground have access to local knowledge, including information about available resources and skills. This knowledge, however, is not useful if rules around occupational licensing, for example, prohibit the use of the resources. Therefore, suspending or recognizing licences of tradesmen from other states may be appropriate in the post-disaster context. Further, child care ratios that dictate how many workers are needed for a certain number of children within various age ranges can present a significant challenge. The safety of children is a concern post-disaster, and policymakers should be aware that such laws contribute to fewer day cares in operation and increased delays in the return of parents and workers to damaged areas.
6. Conclusion
It is often assumed that civil society is not capable of adequately responding to disaster. Arguments in favour of a significant federal government response to disasters tend to focus on (1) the need for a large-scale response after disaster, (2) the recognition that disaster assistance is a public good and (3) the need for timely, decisive action in the face of disasters. The federal government and other levels of government, it is argued, are the only entities that are able to provide assistance on that large scale that is required in the post-disaster scenario (Schneider Reference Schneider2008). We argue that polycentric orders, which include private actors, play an important role in post-disaster assistance and recovery efforts.
In their study of metropolitan areas, Ostrom et al. (Reference Ostrom, Tiebout and Warren1961) noted the strengths of having several autonomous centres that both cooperate with and compete against each other rather than one central authority. Over time, the Ostroms and others expanded on the benefits of polycentric systems. As Coyne and Lemke (Reference Coyne and Lemke2012) have noted, polycentric orders are (1) more flexible and (2) have the ability to make use of local knowledge, two important advantages in the post-disaster context. We argue that the private actors in polycentric orders also bring a key advantage to these systems. Private actors engage in experimentation, with an incentive to improve their community. In the case of the Orthodox Jewish community in Far Rockaway, private actors, noticing an excess demand for certain goods and understanding local demands for product differentiation, stepped forward to fill the gap.
Prior to Hurricane Sandy, there was a robust network of organizations that operated as complements to public services in the Peninsula (provided by City, state and federal government) and provided further social services (e.g. food assistance, financial resources and employment help), k-12 schooling, community safety (via the civilian patrol), religious services and ambulance care. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, these same organizations came together to coordinate the recovery of their community. These groups leveraged their social networks to locate the resources that they needed, re-engaged past disaster support programmes (i.e. the CAF) and devised new strategies to coordinate the delivery of aid. These private actors brought about recovery for their community.
