I attended high school at Ground Zero. I’ve been working to demand care for 9/11 survivors ever since.

Our basic social assistance programs, meanwhile, are limited and often difficult to access. Disaster victims who face complex, long-term losses generally get only partial assistance, the arrival of which is dragged out over long periods. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s own records show that low-income disaster survivors are less likely than their wealthier counterparts to get federal emergency assistance after a disaster, in part because applying for help is so complicated.