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molly taft
@mollytaft.com

SCOOP: FEMA is now requiring disaster survivors to sign up to receive aid using an email address - a move that is already putting some of the country’s most vulnerable people at risk of missing out on federal help, employees told me:

wired.comFEMA Now Requires Disaster Victims to Have an Email AddressWorkers at FEMA worry that demanding disaster survivors access services using email could shut out people without internet connectivity from receiving government aid.

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Kim Noreen
@kimnoreen.bsky.social

Decades ago, I was helping people on the streets get help for the issues they faced. Immediate wall was that one of the requirements was an address or phone number. They had neither. Our nation deserves to feel shame for the choice of profit for the few over care for one another. So much corruption.

molly taft
@mollytaft.com

in a document announcing the change seen by WIRED, the agency says that more than 80% of survivors already use email to sign up for assistance. but one FEMA worker told me they saw a colleague turn away a survivor bc they didn’t have email

molly taft
@mollytaft.com

the colleague, the worker told WIRED, wrote down instructions for the person to sign up for a Hotmail email address. “You could tell this person was not going to be able to figure it out,” they told me

molly taft
@mollytaft.com

govt data shows that one in five US households don’t have access to the internet; these households are more likely to be racial and ethnic minorities and make less than $25,000/year

molly taft
@mollytaft.com

both employees and agency heads have expressed a need to modernize the technology used to get aid to disaster survivors, but workers on the ground are worried about what an online-only disaster aid process could mean for less tech-savvy survivors or those without internet access