Texans washed up after hurricane
‘Harvey Homeless’ living in unsafe homes they can’t afford to repair
Susan and David Elliott huddle in the back room of their flood-ravaged home. It’s where they eat meals, at a table in front of their bed. It’s their “command centre.” It’s where they live now, a year after the water came and sullied everything else.
“I’m back here!” Susan Elliott calls out. The bedroom in their home here, 60 miles southwest of Houston, is their only refuge, their only option, their last resort.
One year after Hurricane Harvey flooded southern Texas, thousands of residents remain essentially homeless in their own homes. Everything they own is mouldy, rotted, dusty, unsafe. .
At least 197,000 homes were badly damaged, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. In many working-class and lower-middle-class communities like Wharton, residents say they can afford only a fraction of the repairs neces- sary to make their homes livable. So they live in one room. Or on a relative’s sofa.
“We are what Texans call the ‘Harvey Homeless,’” says Susan Elliott. “There are days we feel paralyzed because we are out of money or emotionally drained.”
Recovery here has been monumentally slow, in part because nearly 80 per cent of households affected by Harvey did not have flood insurance, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Affordable-housing advocates call Harvey one of the largest housing disasters in American history, next to only Hurricane Katrina, which overwhelmed New Orleans in 2005.
Because of the low levels of insurance coverage, many people were financially blindsided when the storm hit in August 2017, and their lives haven’t yet returned to normal. Some scrape by living in mouldy halfbuilt homes, others have fled to motels, others rely on donations or relatives to house them.
While the storm is long over, rebuilding could take years or even a decade for some, said Mary Comerio, an expert in di- sasters and an architecture professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
“Those without huge savings or backup plans will likely live in poor conditions until they can fully raise the funds to completely build back. We have seen this around the world,” she said. “Life will really never be the same.”
FEMA’s hotel voucher program ran out in July, said Lauren Hersh, an agency spokeswoman, meaning that those living in hotels and motels must start paying for the emergency housing themselves.
Hersh said the agency is “pushing residents to buy flood insurance” because the payouts are far more than FEMA provides; she said the average FEMA payout to homeowners after Harvey was $4,203.
The agency has been trying to focus on local preparedness. Officials and relief experts say FEMA was never designed to be a complete safety net — leaving the most vulnerable residents open to catastrophic losses from massive storms.
“I just want walls,” said Susan Elliott, 60, in tears. “We just want people to know things are not OK. We are still not OK.”