Irma aid ends; retiree homeless

“I live in the woods now,” Mason said last week. “My faith and my kittens get me through. God and I have a good thing going. We always have.”

Her relationship with FEMA is not in good standing, though.

Mason said it rejected her application for help because the agency said her Byrd Plaza Mobile Home Park trailer was not her primary home. She said the uninsured trailer has been her only home for 11 years.

“For the first three weeks of this month, I spent six hours a day on the phone with FEMA,” Mason said.

Four months after Hurricane Irma, people throughout Brevard County are still trying to repair their homes and their lives. Some have had better luck with FEMA than Mason.

The agency has paid $24.4 million in home and rental assistance to Brevard residents for Irma damages not covered by insurance.

And there are still 100 households using the Transitional Shelter Assistance program, the same one Mason used to stay at a hotel from October through January.

At its height, 1,350 households were using the program.

“FEMA continues to work with survivors on a case-bycase basis to determine their eligibility for our programs,” FEMA spokesman John Mills said.

He said he would not comment on Mason’s case because of privacy laws.

Mason, who lives off $865 a month in Social Security and $165 monthly in food stamps, said she’d like to get a room or a small apartment she could share with a roommate.

Before leaving her hotel room last week, she grabbed blankets, a jacket, an umbrella, some clothing and an animal crate containing Honey and Shandi, two cats that came into her life just months before Hurricane Irma.