Beaumont-area counties lose 1% of population in wake of Harvey
Before Hurricane Harvey, Kim Therrien could just open the door and let her two large dogs run themselves silly across her spacious backyard. Then came a flood and a harrowing escape by boat.
Nearly two years later, she and the dogs are still living with friends from church and nowhere close to returning to their home in northeastern Port Arthur. When Therrien gets home from work, she takes the dogs to a park for a halfhour of exercise, a daily reminder of what the storm took. She feels it the most on days when her knee acts up or the summer heat grows unbearable.
Therrien, 56, focuses on her blessings — a roof over her head, money to eat and pay her bills — but she is a displaced person living in our midst. She does not know whether her flooded home is beyond repair or if she could even afford to
live there again. Her future is uncertain.
“If I find out the house has to be torn down and rebuilt, I don’t know that I’ll stay,” she frets. “Because part of the reason for staying is because it’s where I grew up. Once that’s gone, it’s not where I grew up anymore. I also don’t know if I’ll be able to afford flood insurance.”
New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show the population of Jefferson and Orange counties fell by nearly 3,000 in the year after the storm, the latest stark assessment of the storm’s impact on Southeast Texas. But the losses could grow deeper as an untold number of people like Kim Therrien eventually decide whether to cut their losses and move on.
Some 3,265 applications from Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties have been made to the Texas General Land Office’s Homeowner Assistance Program. How many people that could affect is unclear. But so far, only a dozen or so homes have been completed and just 108 are under construction.
With daylight still streaming through battered roofs in homes like Therrien’s, recovery feels very far off.
Experts expect a 1.5 percentage point population loss after a severe storm like Harvey. In that light, the overall losses here of about 1 percent don’t seem out of line. Experts credit a stable economy for giving many flood victims a reason to stay.
But the same Census data show the state’s population grew at a robust 1.3 percent rate during the period, sixth-fastest in the country.
That makes the region’s drop startling, Lamar University professor Enrique “Henry” Venta said.
“What’s troubling is it’s happening while population in most everywhere else in Texas is going up dramatically,” he said.
Venta is one of two Lamar professors who last fall received a grant to determine what worked and what didn’t in terms of Harvey response and recovery. The pair brought on other faculty members and will later hire undergraduate students to complete the project.
Hurricane Harvey, which hit this part of Southeast Texas as a tropical storm, caused about $125 billion in damage and is the second-most costly hurricane to hit the contiguous 48 states since 1900, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm brought record rainfall totals to the area, including more than 40 inches of rain in Port Arthur and 60.58 inches within five days in Nederland.
Early Lamar research shows that while the population dropped, incomes are rising and unemployment is down, two factors that likely have kept more people than expected in the area.
“When you look at measures of economic recovery, we’re doing fine,” he said.
That recovery has, in part, been spurred by a large amount of insurance money that’s come into the area to help homeowners and businesses rebuild as well as government aid.
He said Southeast Texas also benefits from the dominance of the petrochemical and industrial industry.
“Lots of our people are employed in these basic sector economies that move quickly,” Venta said. “There was a lot of personal devastation, but all this money came back in and many people were able to rebuild their homes.”
Yet the recovery has been uneven, at best, and difficult for all. Flood victim Amanda Allison, also a Lamar professor, said she and her husband decided to stay in their Vidor home because they owed too much on it to leave it behind.
They’re able to pay for repairs out-of-pocket, but they’ve been scammed a few times and still don’t have a kitchen or a bathroom. When Allison wants to cook, she uses an indoor stove and an outdoor sink. That kind of stress was a big factor in the couple’s recent decision to divorce, she said.
“If we fix it, we can sell it for more than we bought it for in the first place,” she said. “That’s the goal, but I’ll probably end up living here with my kids.”
Research from the center-right American Action Forum found similar trends nationwide: Areas with more residents who have the means to fix their homes see lower population drops after a disaster.
Brianna Fernandez, a former employee of the nonprofit, said her analysis of population losses after hurricanes showed areas that were more heavily impoverished tended to see greater population losses after a disaster.
“They were the individuals that didn’t have the resources to settle where they were,” she said. “They didn’t have the economic wealth to rebuild, and it cost them less to just go somewhere else.”
But her research also showed that the majority of area residents tended to make decisions on whether to stay or go about a year after a hurricane hit.
In other words, it’s too early to know the full extent of the population losses in Southeast Texas.
Therrien’s situation has some pre-Harvey complications, the kind that happen in everyday life. Her parents, who owned the house, died several years ago and left it to her. But she never got the will probated and must get that cleared up before she can go further.
Then she will have to get estimates from three contractors to determine how much work the home requires and how much it will cost.
If the cost of repair or rebuilding grows too high, Therrien said, she will look into getting a loan.
If that proves unattainable or if she won’t be able to afford flood insurance, she’ll just have to move on.
“With every chapter, there’s a certain grief that comes when we close the last page,” she said. “But you can’t go to the next one until you end the first one. The last page on this house hasn’t been written yet, so I don’t know what I’ll do.”