This article discusses the plight of the homeless during public health emergencies and the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. It reviews the role of public administrators that grounds their efforts by examining their foundational purpose to serve the most vulnerable in our society. Using subsidiarity principle as the context, it discusses homelessness in America and the role of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and their Continuum of Care program. It also highlights the role of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during public health emergencies and their interim guidelines for local governments in providing for the homeless during emergencies. Finally, through a case study on the city of Dallas, Texas, the article examines how local governments have responded to address the needs of the homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes that it is imperative that public administrators at all levels of government explore areas of shared competence, cooperation, and allocate responsibility where it would yield the most efficient result.

We draw on social capital and social vulnerability explanations to investigate the determinants of household emergency preparedness using data from the 2008 General Social Survey (GSS) and multivariate ordinal logistic regression. We develop an ordinal-level scale for household emergency preparedness. We also create indices for individual social capital and risk perception, which correlate with higher levels of household emergency preparedness. We show that race and gender per se do not make households more or less prepared for emergencies because these variables are proxies for socioeconomic inequalities in society. Our study provides insights into household emergency preparedness and direction for policymaking.

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The case study uses secondary information to examine the financial crisis that morphed into public health emergency in Flint, Michigan. While previous crisis management studies have examined financial crises and public health emergencies, the present study embodies both of them and offers an opportunity to understand how multi‐level governments cooperate in responding to multiple emergencies. The overarching question of interest is how do local governments cooperate with multi‐level governments to respond to multiple local emergencies? The specific research questions are as follows: (i) What are the causes, consequences, cautions, and coping strategies of the Flint crises; (ii) What are the roles of multi‐level governments in responding to the Flint crises? and (iii) What are the indicators of success and failure in the response by multi‐level governments to the Flint crises? The paper draws on the American federalism and crisis management scholarship for context and finds that crisis management leadership, effective communication, subsidiarity principles as in multi‐level response, and accountability are necessary for effective response efforts that build resilient organizations. The findings corroborate previous studies making the present study generalizable to other emergencies. Local governments can learn from the Flint experience in mitigating the impact of crises.

Local government investment pools (LGIP's) provide the political subdivisions of a state with a cost-effective option for investing their daily cash balances in an incomeproducing fund.LGIP's have grown into a $250 billion dollar industry in 44 states. This study reports on the factors that affect demand by depositors using time series data from TexPool. The results show that the yield spread of LGIP's has a nonlinear relationship with demand, the pool's liquidity was inversely related to demand, and TexPool's average monthly yield levels had no effect on demand. This study supports the normative values expected of local government investors-priority on safety and liquidity of principal. Outsourcing of the fund's management and aligning the pool's average maturity to the purpose of the pool brought a high level of confidence in the fund as seen by the substantial growth in both the average balance of investments and the number of depositors.