GULFPORT, MS - Joe Stevens used to be a commercial fisherman until diabetes took his legs. He used to have a daughter until her suicide left him caring for two of her three children. He used to have a house in the Lyman community - until a tornado spun from Hurricane Katrina took that too. Stevens, 52, now is facing the loss of the mobile home he has been living in for the better part of two years.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is working to draw its emergency housing program to a close by March 2009, but some deadlines are earlier. Stevens said he was told he had until today to find an apartment, although FEMA officials deny threatening anyone with that deadline. "They are trying to get us out of here," Stevens said. "I'm just having trouble getting up a deposit."
It has been 33 months since Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Much has been accomplished since that day, Aug. 29, 2005, but the toughest part of the recovery lies ahead. There are 6,334 FEMA trailers and mobile homes still in use on the Coast, housing about 16,600 people. Approximately 1,200 others are in motel rooms, having been moved out of trailers by FEMA because of high formaldehyde levels.
As the Coast enters its third hurricane season since Katrina, advocates say those without a permanent home are most vulnerable. An analysis of FEMA households at the beginning of May by the Back Bay Mission, a faith-based organization assisting Katrina survivors on the Coast, found that 82 percent of occupants made below-average income and one in three were over 60, had special needs or both.
Dena Wittman of Back Bay said many of them have been left out of the recovery. "It's those with the lower incomes, those who are on fixed incomes who often are disabled, and those who are the working poor who essentially were able to make it without any type of subsidies from the government prior to Katrina," she said. "They are not able to afford to live in their communities now."
Wittman said housing prices have risen 40 percent since the storm but salaries have not. Add to that higher food and gas prices, and the situation has gotten worse. Stevens receives $637 a month in disability payments from Social Security, plus about $500 a month in survivor benefits for his two grandchildren. With about $60 a month in food stamps, Stevens barely has enough to buy groceries and pay his utility bills, much less save any money for an apartment. Rentals for two-bedroom apartments in Harrison County start around $800 a month.
Still, he said, he receives regular telephone calls warning him the federal program that has kept him housed since the storm is coming to an end. Stevens wants to leave. Drugs are dealt in the trailer park, and the atmosphere is no good for his grandchildren, he said. "They threatened to bodily move us out of here and put us in a motel," he said. "That would be worse." Stevens said FEMA told him the government would help pay the deposit on an apartment or a rental home, but he has to get a signed rental contract first. No landlord will sign a contract without the deposit up front, he said.
FEMA spokesman Eugene Brezany said the agency is phasing out its temporary-housing programs. FEMA-built trailer parks were closed earlier this month, ahead of a deadline of today. FEMA hopes to relocate residents in commercial trailer parks, such as the one Stevens is in, by the end of the year, leaving just the single FEMA trailers on private property, he said.
Brezany said he does not know why Stevens was told he would be moved out by today. "If someone is telling them they have to be out by June 1, someone is getting out the wrong message," he said. "If somebody directly is telling them that from FEMA, they are wrong and we've got to fix that." Bennett Branch, who lives in a FEMA m
Source: ClarionLedger.com