by John McQuaid
Staff writer

North Carolina officials had expected to shut down their temporary housing program after 18 months, but 33 months later, there are nearly 70 families still living in temporary housing, such as here in Princeville, N.C.
(PHOTO BY ELLIS LUCIA / The Times-Picayune)

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. -- Griffin Clark's string of bad luck began when Hurricane Floyd flooded her out of her apartment in a small public housing development in Tarboro, N.C. Then an old foot injury acted up and she had to get orthopedic surgery. Unable to work for a time, she lost her job at an auto parts plant. Unable to pay the bills, she filed for bankruptcy. Amid the problems, she was unable to find a new place to live.

So for two years -- long after Floyd had become just an unpleasant memory for most people -- she stayed in a mobile home provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for storm refugees in Rocky Mount, about 20 miles west of Tarboro.

"It's not much, but it's home," she said, sitting on a couch and looking down at the tattered carpeting in the living room one day in November. "It's been rough being so far from my real home, my friends. I've been trying to get out, rent an apartment back in Tarboro. But there's no place to get out to."

Clark finally moved out in March, 30 months after the hurricane struck. With help from a federal relief program, she bought one of the used FEMA mobile homes on a plot in a park once used for storm refugees, now converted to private use, just outside of Tarboro.

When a disaster wrecks homes, the federal government steps in with temporary housing, considered a last resort for those who cannot find anywhere else to stay. The idea is to provide basic shelter until homes can be repaired or rebuilt. But when the damaged buildings are public housing units and rental apartments occupied by poor people, owners or agencies may be slow to rebuild. They may never come back at all. With nowhere else to go, people with few financial resources can end up in temporary housing for a very long time.

North Carolina's post-Floyd problems with poverty and temporary housing give a hint of what New Orleans could face on a much larger scale if a catastrophic storm swamps the city. North Carolina's experiences also provide a rough road map of what emergency managers here would have to do to address the needs of newly homeless residents.

Based on the North Carolina example, the state and federal governments would end up running what would be the largest public housing program in the nation's history, allocating money and other resources to maintain large trailer and mobile home parks while waiting for inexpensive, alternative housing to be rebuilt in the city. That might not take place for years, if it occurs at all.

North Carolina's temporary housing program was supposed to shut down after 18 months. But it was extended twice, and 33 months later it is still operating after a second deadline expired. Officials had whittled the numbers down to 69 families at the start of June, and they are hoping to end the program this summer.

Floodwaters from Hurricane Floyd filled the streets of Bellhaven, N.C., in 1998, damaging nearly a third of the town's residences. Bellhaven Town Manager Tim Johnson says the town is still recovering.
(PHOTO BY ELLIS LUCIA / The Times-Picayune)

North Carolina's 1999 deluge bears a rough resemblance to the "filling the bowl" scenario in New Orleans. The hurricane came on the heels of a tropical storm that dumped heavy rains and swelled local waterways. When Floyd strafed North Carolina -- the worst hit among the East Coast states that were declared disaster areas -- heavy rains, river flooding and a storm surge in coastal areas put 18,000 square miles of land under water. Dozens of towns were flooded, some for days, a few for weeks.

In Tarboro, "the roads filled up with water," Clark said. "There were frogs and snakes. I didn't have more than two days worth of clothes when we left. Water was coming up in the driveway. All we could see was water. It stayed up two to three weeks before we could get back in there. When we did, the whole apartment complex was flooded. What water didn't damage, mold got to. Steps collapsed. Everything was piled in the middle of the floor."

The hurricane's widespread flooding initially left more than 10,000 people homeless and heavily damaged 15,000 homes. If the levees are topped on the east bank of Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes, by contrast, the disaster would be more confined geographically but would affect more people and structures. More than a 100,000 dwellings would be heavily damaged. Hundreds of thousands of people would initially be left homeless.

Days after Hurricane Floyd, after everyone stranded was rescued and the waters receded, North Carolina emergency managers realized they had no plans for how to handle the massive needs of the dispossessed. In spite of that handicap, they managed to mobilize fast. They formed an interagency committee to handle the response and manage the $1.3 billion in disaster aid that would soon be coming through. They hired Doug Boyd, an ex-Army major, to run the program. Workers fanned out to canvass possible locations to build temporary trailer parks, preferably as cheaply as possible. FEMA initially moved in more than 1,800 travel trailers and, more gradually, 475 mobile homes to accommodate the approximately 5,000 people -- about 2,000 families -- in need.

South Louisiana would require a more massive national mobilization of resources, one that might even stress national inventories of trailers and mobile homes. FEMA and state agencies would truck thousands of those housing units into the region from points across the United States. Officials working on catastrophic disaster planning are looking at where the units might go and say it might have to be far from New Orleans -- rural Mississippi, for example, something that might put commuters in a bind or force some to quit jobs, if their jobs still exist.

North Carolina officials set up 11 parks for travel trailers and the more permanent mobile homes. Some ended up in remote rural areas, others on unused properties in industrial areas on the edge of small towns -- generally, the least desirable spots around. "If you have to live in temporary housing, you can have it at three locations," Boyd said. "First, the best if you are the homeowner, put it on your own property. Second, a commercial site, a trailer park, close to your home. Third, group parks. For renters we had to build group parks."

Setting up and maintaining the parks was a complex job. It involved installing utilities, ensuring police protection and dealing with the needs of individual families.

"You're building little towns," Boyd said. "So you've got sewer, electrical stuff. You have to build the infrastructure before people can move in. We had to put everything in place -- had to build mailboxes, hire a transportation company to bring buses to take people to the hospital, grocery stores or other places they need to go."

The parks were crowded and unpleasant places to live, residents say. Some liken them to Third World refugee camps. "It was kind of like living in a neighborhood, but noisy," said Theresa Richardson, who lived in a park with her family for more than a year. "You were compacted together; everyone could hear your conversations, people walking by at all hours of the night."

For a time police units were assigned to some of the parks around the clock because of rampant crime. "You bring so many people close together, you got problems: domestic disturbances, drugs, prostitution," said Stan Ballantine, who manages the Fountain Industrial Park site.

Stuck with administering these quasi-towns, officials worked to move people out and shut them down. But that work has been slow and arduous because of a lack of affordable housing units for the poor. The sparsely populated rural area never had a lot of rental housing units, and now it has fewer.

"Eight or nine family public housing complexes were destroyed as a result of Hurricane Floyd," said Eric Tolbert, the state director of emergency management. "In some cases the rebuilding process hasn't been started. Of those facilities there is only one that has started leasing, letting residents back in. . . . The procedure to go through and get approval to rebuild those units took a long time. With private rentals, owners are not, for whatever reason, going to rebuild it or don't want to lease to the tenant again."

New Orleans has 20,000 people living in public housing. In the wake of disaster, it's unclear how, or if, the federal government would move to redevelop the property immediately. Renters would also face an empty market at first, then one that might be rebuilt to suit the needs of those with higher incomes.

"Anywhere you have a relatively poor population, they are typically renters, so they have little control over whether places are rebuilt," said Betty Morrow, a sociologist with the International Hurricane Center at Florida International University in Miami and co-author of a book on the effects of Hurricane Andrew, which hit south Florida in 1992, devastating the working-class suburban area of Homestead.

Eventually, about 70 percent of single-family housing in Homestead was rebuilt, but less than half of the multifamily units, according to Mary Comerio, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a book on disaster recovery.

Similar misfortunes befell low-income residents after the 1989 Loma Prieta, Calif., earthquake. "There were 8,000 to 10,000 housing units lost, which seems like a small number," Comerio said. "But they were almost all residential, low-income housing. They turned some Safeway (grocery store) they were using as temporary shelter into a homeless shelter. There was no alternative housing for those who lost their homes."

There are no clear rules governing how long people may stay in temporary housing, and North Carolina officials have not tried evicting anyone -- yet. People who remain are urged, but not forced, to move out and are given help navigating the complex terrain of public and private aid and loan programs -- not easy for people who have lost their homes and must start from scratch financially.

Some remaining residents are reluctant to move out. Under the program they pay no rent, water or sewer bills. However inconvenient it may be to live in an out-of-the-way trailer park, the alternatives may be more expensive and less comfortable. "I hate to say it, but some people get complacent," Boyd said. "They're paying only electricity and say, 'Why should I leave' "

But long-term tenants say they have trouble getting enough cash together to meet the requirements of apartment living, including the references and security deposits that are often required. "My finances have been up and down," said Rosemary Myrick, who was living with her two children in a mobile home park. They moved out to an apartment last month. "I just got a job as a cashier at a tire and auto shop. Now there's a problem with credit. (I'm) trying to get that straightened out. It's fine living here. It's home for me -- for the moment. I don't take anything for granted since the flood."

Some reasons for optimism exist. Assuming it's salvageable, a devastated New Orleans will almost certainly receive a massive influx of federal money that can provide some seeds to rebuild, though any effort would be arduous.

In North Carolina, post-Floyd programs have helped most of the dispossessed get their own housing. FEMA and state grants are available to buy homes. Private charities have also gotten involved. For example, after more than a year in temporary housing, Richardson took advantage of a program run by Habitat for Humanity. She and her husband put up a modest down payment and together contributed 500 hours of labor building a house. Last year they moved into a new, three-bedroom home on a residential street.

John McQuaid can be reached at (202) 383-7889 or john.mcquaid@newhouse.com.