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Years after Katrina, permanent homes remain elusive for some

By Chris Joyner

USA Today

December 10, 2008

McCOMB, Miss. — Tears come and go as Rockell Joseph talks about the past three years of her life.

Her family was among the thousands of people whose lives changed forever on Aug. 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

Accidents, injuries, family deaths and economic turmoil have kept the Josephs from recovering their balance. More than three years after Katrina uprooted them, Rockell, her husband, Rafeal, and their six children are living in two rooms with no kitchen at the Days Inn in McComb, and they have no idea what will happen next.

The Josephs are among nearly 300 families in Mississippi returned to hotels from mobile homes as FEMA moves to close the last of its emergency housing sites in the state. The agency has announced a March 1 cutoff date for all temporary housing payments.

"We're down now to working with some really difficult situations," says Eugene Brezany, spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which continues to pay the motel bill for the Josephs and others like them while trying to find them permanent housing.

Across the Gulf Coast, Brezany says FEMA still has 9,850 applicant households in temporary housing units, down from 143,000 at the height of the recovery effort.

About 3,200 FEMA travel trailers and mobile homes remain in use in Mississippi, many of them on private property where homeowners are rebuilding, Brezany says.

The intractable problem continues to be a lack of affordable housing. While many families in motels have housing vouchers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 8 program, Brezany says there is nowhere to use them.

One thing after another

In August 2005, the Josephs were living in federally subsidized housing in New Orleans. The two had good jobs and say they had saved $4,000 toward a down payment on a place of their own.

Hurricane Katrina changed all that. The killer storm both hurt them and left them less prepared for subsequent obstacles life kept putting in their path.

"It's not like I'm depending on FEMA to help me," she says. "Things come up, and we have no control over them."

Brezany says FEMA pays on average $80 per day for hotel rooms for Katrina-displaced families. FEMA has taken steps — such as paying above-market rents, utilities and security deposits — to encourage landlords to accept Katrina applicants, he says.

Rockell Joseph says they came to McComb to be near her parents and the support of family members. But since they arrived, her mother died; her father, a disabled Vietnam veteran, is unable to help the family; and her husband is unable to work after he fell 40 feet when a gas line at his refinery exploded.

Rafeal Joseph's worker's compensation case is tied up in court, and he is scheduled for surgery next month. Last week, Rockell's sister lost her job.

While four of her children are in school, Rockell Joseph spends her days huddled in a tiny motel room with her husband and two youngest daughters calling FEMA and various charities.

Mostly she feels overwhelmed and said she's unsure what her family will do if the housing payments end next March.

"My daddy is looking up to me, just like my kids and my husband," she says. "I'm the backbone. I'm the rearer. I'm the provider."

'People are going to stay stuck'

Reilly Morse of the Mississippi Center for Justice says the FEMA and HUD strategy of finding suitable housing for Katrina families has not been particularly successful because there just is not enough affordable housing.

"No strategy they can come up with addresses that problem. These people are going to stay stuck," he says.

HUD spokeswoman Donna White says a lack of landlords willing to accept HUD applicants is a problem in south Mississippi.

"Sometimes, families are not interested in moving outside of the general area," she notes. "When you have a tight housing market, sometimes they have to move out of that market."

White says 2,422 Mississippi families have been absorbed into HUD's Disaster Housing Assistance Program, which moves families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita into federally subsidized housing.

Three months ago, FEMA allocated $25 million to a group of non-profits called the Mississippi Case Management Consortium and charged them with moving some of the hardest hit Katrina families into permanent housing. Michele Baker, spokeswoman for the consortium, says the program is working.

"All the early indicators suggest that things are going really well, better than we expected," she says.

But the success is tempered by hard financial realities.

"In most cases, the folks are employed, but they are underemployed, so they can't afford housing that's available," she says.

Joyner reports for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss.