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Crises collide: Homeless in America when climate disaster strikes

Source(s): ABC News
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For the homeless, natural disasters prove torturous for more than the obvious fact that it's worse to be outside than inside during a storm.

By Andrew McCormick

Terri Domer knows well what a brewing storm looks like. Domer, 62, an Iowa native, has spent her life watching thunderstorms gather and tornadoes dash across rolling hills.

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It's an immutable truth of the climate crisis that the most vulnerable are hit first and hardest. At a time of rising homelessness in the U.S. and as climate-related disasters become common — wildfires in California, monster hurricanes that thrash the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, an arctic blast in Texas — the rule holds.

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When the windstorm finally did let up, about 45 minutes after it had begun, Domer's campsite was in tatters: tents ruined, stoves and lanterns simply gone and just about everything else soiled with wet grime.

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Between coronavirus relief measures passed during the Trump administration and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that President Joe Biden signed last month, nearly $80 billion was allocated to HUD, the Treasury Department and various federal grant recipients to fight homelessness and housing instability, a HUD spokesperson said in an email.

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