MANY HOMELESS AS MICHAEL’S DESTRUCTION ENDURES

When Noel Santiago came to save the kids from Hurricane Michael, they were frozen. “They were in shock,” he said. “If you didn’t grab ‘em by the arm and yank they wouldn’t’ve moved. Then who knows where they’d be.”

Santiago, 53, dragged his friend, 34-year-old Rosa Perez, and her two CHILDREN, Down to THE irst storey of Macedonia Garden Apartments in Panama City as the howling winds of Hurricane Michael ripped the roof off their secondstory apartment.

A week later, many of the residents of the public housing complex are still here. They’re camping out in the moldering remains of their shredded apartments AND Cars, Cooking over ires In Common areas and lighting their mildewing spaces with candles when night falls.

Like the tens of thousands displaced by the storm, many of these people don’t have places to go — or a way to get there if they did. Residents huddle in hallways, smoking cigarettes and anxiously discussing their next moves. Perez has been making the rounds, telling other residents that management can’t make them leave.

“Legal services came and told us,” she said. “They can’t do that. They want FEMA to put us in a hotel and not take the rental voucher. Everybody is scared by that. Perez and her family lost everything in the storm. They’re living with a friend until Perez gets her FEMA voucher for two months’ rent. She doesn’t have a bank account, so she’s been waiting a week for the mail to be delivered with her voucher.

For many in the community, the world has narrowed to what’s within walking distance. The nearest aid station is just over 2 miles away at a Baptist church. Without a vehicle or a shopping cart to carry the goods home in the scorching heat, it’s out of reach.

PEREZ Got HER irst tarp FRIDAY, when someone passing through handed a few out. The Red Cross brings hot meals daily, and occasionally FEMA or medical personnel come by. Residents keep a sharp eye for supply drops.

Hotels are booked up clear up to Mobile, Ala., and the devastation and electricity problems are so widespread the rental homes are nearly impossible to ind. Trailers AND RVS ARE In short supply.

For some, the best, and most affordable, option is a shelter. A week after the storm, the population at the dozen shelters in this region of the Panhandle skyrocketed from 1,500 to nearly 2,400 in one day, with 500 more people in the three special-needs shelters.

Steven Wallace, 65, ended up in a shelter the day before the storm, when he realised he couldn’t survive a Category 4 hurricane in his Panama City apartment. He was right: His place was trashed, and his landlord sent him a notice that he had 72 hours to get out. “I was told by others they plan to bulldoze it,” Wallace said.

He’ s supposed toge this security deposit back, he said, but the voicemail box for the management company has been full since the storm so he hasn’t heard any news. HE slept on THE loor with A Blanket For three days at the Northside Elementary School shelter before cots were delivered. A couple of days later, he and the other shelter residents were moved to Surfside Middle School in Panama City Beach.

What’s next? “I have no idea,” he said. He’s on Social Security and hunting for A Veterans AFFAIRS OFICE For some Help inding A PLACE to live. HE SAID HIS options for temporary FEMA housing are in Bradenton, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

“They said I qualify for a hotel-motel, but they’re far away,” he said. “It does me no good because all my doctors are here.” Even if people like Wallace did MANAGE to ind A temporary SPACE For a few months, it’s not clear how much affordable housing will be available down the road.

FEMA spokeswoman Deanna Frazier said the agency is paying for 671 hotel rooms for displaced survivors throughout the state – and in neighboring states too. The storm knocked out most of the available hotels in the area, leaving survivors with options far away from their homes.

“Staying in the Bay County area is going to be impossible,” she said. Joe Rodgers, a produce wholesaler from Moultrie, Georgia, grew up vacationing in Mexico Beach and eventually bought some property. Hurricane Michael turned his family vacation spot — and the other duplex he rented out — into rubble.

“I wasted my time boarding it up,” said Rodgers, 46. Like many across the PANHANDLE, HE DIDN’T HAVE lood Insurance. And the talk of the onerous new building code — he heard his new houses might have to be 16 feet above ground — has him considering just selling once he inishes REBUILDING. “I DANG sure Can’t afford to build two houses just to rent ‘em,” he said. That means rent increases, rippling out into the areas that serve the vacation communities. Rodgers said he expects the process to gentrify the area, pushing poorer people farther out.

“It’ll look more like Sandestin,” a resort community, he said. “It won’t be the same.”

In the meantime, some families have had to resort to creative measures. Christopher Schaefer, 25, and his family moved to a $70-a-night hotel in Alabama. After the storm, that price quickly climbed to an unsustainable $120 a night.

The next best option, he decided, was camping. schaefer bought a 12- person tent, a gas stove and a couple of air mattresses. He packed it all into his Jeep and set off for home with his girlfriend, 26-year-old Alle Nunn, and their three kids.

The home they rented in Callaway was crushed and looted when they arrived, so they set up camp next to a friend’s house miles inland. “It’s not a bad setup,” Schaefer said. “The kids are having a blast.”

The plan is to stay in the tent until their home gets power, and then move back in to the semi-livable part of their House. But THE inancial pressures ARE mounting.

Their property is locked in a storage unit they rented before the storm, but the electronic keycard entry won’t work without power so they’ve had to buy new clothes and toiletries. They’re renting a U-haul van by the day because their Jeep broke down on the drive back from Alabama. They are planning to stay, Nunn said. Plenty of their neighbours aren’t.

“We’ve already been seeing people packing up in a U-haul and leaving,” she said. “Why would they ... stay if there’s nothing left?”

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