Opinion: Beware ‘Free Market’ Entry Into Disaster Response

A former resident of a Queens neighborhood ravaged by Superstorm Sandy questions the efficacy of “free-market-based” disaster relief in an opinion column for Al Jazeera America. Writer Josmar Trujillo said the post-Sandy work of the Robin Hood Foundation, the anti-poverty nonprofit led by hedge-fund mogul Paul Tudor Jones that aims to apply business practices to charity projects, raises concerns about accountability in raising and allocating millions of dollars in relief donations.

Mr. Trujillo says that in the Rockaway neighborhood, where he was living when the storm hit in October 2012, longtime community organizations that quickly mobilized in Sandy’s wake were passed over for Robin Hood grants in favor of high-profile outside groups with affluent backers, some from as far away as the West Coast. Those groups often imported volunteers rather than hiring local workers for reconstruction efforts, he asserts.

Criticism of disaster response by established bodies like the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency “might allow the free-market-based version to expand virtually unchallenged,” Mr. Trujillo writes. “If privatized disaster recovery means local groups are turned down for grants to provide relief in their own communities, to their neighbors, in favor of groups based on the other side of the country, then I have some serious reservations.”