Family displaced from Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria are homeless again in NYC as storm anniversary approaches

Sept. 17--The images of the deadly storm came across the TV in her Bronx hotel room last week -- blankets of rain, whirlpool winds, shards of wood where homes once stood -- and Jenyffer Ortiz could feel the anxiety starting to build as she watched Hurricane Florence tear through the Carolinas.

A year ago, that was her and her family trudging through the flooded streets, sifting through soggy belongings, only it was Puerto Rico in the eye of an end-of-days storm named Maria, and the federal government seemed to have turned its back.

Her ordeal is far from over. Maria's aftermath forced Ortiz to the mainland and New York to seek medical treatment. But the federal housing vouchers that kept her and her children off the street expired last week, and now Ortiz -- mother, grandmother, survivor, diabetic -- finds herself homeless again.

"Making the decision to come to this country was very difficult," Ortiz said as she prepared to leave the Holiday Inn Express near Yankee Stadium that has been home since January. "I left behind my family, my kids, I have grandkids. I left behind a life."

Ortiz, 46, has two of her children with her, 20-year-old Carlos and 14-year-old Valerie. She has older children from a previous marriage, parents to her grandchildren, whom she hasn't seen leaving the battered island.

Hurricane Maria has also separated Ortiz from her husband, who came with her to New York, but was forced to return to Puerto Rico. She has no other family in New York.

The mountain hamlet of Orocovis where she lived was among the hardest hit when Maria roared through on Sept. 20, 2017. Ortiz is still haunted by the memory of a bedroom flooded past her knees, and water coming into their home from the toilets and shower heads.

"When you looked through the windows, all you saw was houses that were moving," Ortiz said. "You'd ask yourself, 'What's happening?' We couldn't see well, but the sound was horrible."

Ortiz said the hurricane's aftermath made it difficult to maintain her medical routine. She has Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and other medical issues. She said she uses insulin five times a day, and also takes 14 pills daily.

"In order for you to have insulin you need ice, you need water, and we didn't have that," she said. "The line to get ice was 500 or more people. You had to wait five hours to get one bag of ice."

"I came because my health condition was getting worse and I had to leave," Ortiz said. "I had the option of staying and going through what other went through or becoming a statistic out of the more than 2,000 deaths."

So, it was on to the mainland and New York, where she traded one hardship for another.

Carlos is working at a grocery store, and Valerie is in school, but they both suffer from depression, Ortiz said, and need counseling.

"Living here is very difficult," she said of the hotel. "Living in between four walls, like a prisoner."

At least this hotel was better than the last one. Shortly after arriving in New York, Ortiz' family stayed in a Hell's Kitchen hotel where they saw rats, worms and what she thinks was blood on the bed.

Their next stop is a shelter in the Bronx.

"We're going to start from zero," Ortiz said.

In Puerto Rico, Ortiz said, she had a catering business.

"I would do catering for 200 to 300 people," she said. "It was my life, but then everything was gone."

Ortiz said she hopes to one day open her own restaurant or even work in catering once she gets her license.

In the meantime, she has to focus on her family's stability. The news about Hurricane Florence and how it battered North Carolina hasn't helped.

"I was thinking, 'How are they feeling?'" she said. "Imagine how we felt. We didn't expect Maria was going to be like that."

"I still say, 'How does Trump think nothing happened?'" Ortiz said. "He didn't live the pain that we lived."

"We try not to remember, but every day we wake up and try to keep moving forward. September 20 is coming soon, and it's going to be a day of crying and pain," she said. "It was the saddest day of my life, and for so many people."

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