Tiny homes could be housing solution after Hurricane Michael

Nov. 03--PANAMA CITY -- By the end of the three-hour meeting, Tamberly Nichols was in tears.

They weren't loud tears meant to grab attention, but quiet tears -- the kind you try to hide while your whole body trembles. She had come to the meeting for answers about why 22 days after Michael her family was still living in a tent outside her apartment complex, why her landlord was threatening her with eviction, why it felt like no one was helping her, and why there wasn't a place for her to live. Where, she asked the FEMA representative standing behind the pulpit, were the FEMA trailers?

What was she supposed to do?

The answer was sympathetic, but formal. Apply for FEMA, give the system time to work, said Chris Allen, the FEMA representative invited to speak by the local chapter of the NAACP. The first step would be the transitional shelter assistance program, i.e. the FEMA hotel vouchers. As of Tuesday, the direct housing assistance program requested by the state government was activated, which would provide a "menu of options."

The menu could include money for repairs, or modular homes, or FEMA trailers, he said.

"There's not going to be a single solution."

Which, to most of the audience members who had crammed into First Providence Community Baptist Church on Thursday with stories about living in cars or threats of eviction, didn't really sound like a solution at all.

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In the days since Hurricane Michael ravaged the Panhandle as a Category 4 storm, housing has emerged as the greatest issue facing the storm-swept communities. In Panama City, an estimated 30 percent of the housing stock ultimately will be condemned. In nearby Parker, the estimates are double that.

The result is hundreds staying at the American Red Cross shelter at Arnold High School, people doubled up in houses of friends and family, people sleeping in tents and cars, and people continuing to live in homes that are structurally unsafe. Many are being threatened with eviction notices.

"There are homes people are living in right now that are going to be condemned," local attorney William Harrison, who has volunteered his services to the city, said in a separate interview. "It's going to be painful, hurtful and expensive."

As people look at the wreckage, they also are looking to government for an affordable solution, and something better than a single shelter on the other side of the bridge. Which has people asking, where are the FEMA trailers and shouldn't they be here by now?

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The answer, for better or worse, is that isn't how it works.

As with most bureaucratic government work, it's a process and the trailers are not the first step. They don't arrive the day after the disaster -- or even the week after the disaster. They arrive after local and state governments request them -- which has happened -- and after FEMA has had time to collect applications and determine what the need really is.

It's a process that can take weeks.

Since the day after the storm, Bay County officials and Panama City officials said they have been talking to FEMA about long-term solutions to the housing issues, including FEMA trailers which both agencies said they are not opposed to.

"If someone qualifies for that benefit, we want them to have it," said County Manager Bob Majka. "We will let them put it there ... and do what we can to accommodate them."

And Panama City Mayor Greg Brudnicki has said he wants "to pull every lever" he can to help people.

But despite the willingness to allow FEMA trailers, neither agency expects to see a lot of FEMA trailers come to the area. One, officials say they have been told much of the inventory is tied up in the Carolinas to help Hurricane Florence victims. And two, both groups have been told the FEMA trailers come with a $300,000 price tag for each base model trailer.

FEMA has said they have sufficient resources to respond to the need.

As of Thursday, only 100 applications have been approved of the 50,000 that applied for trailers, Panama City officials reported being told by FEMA. More approvals are likely.

While the process for direct housing assistance is just beginning, 14,595 households have been approved for renters assistance and 988 survivor households had checked into hotels using the transitional assistance program as of Friday morning.

But while the agencies would allow the trailers, there is a question whether this is a good time to try an innovative approach.

TINY HOUSES

Based on conversations with local officials, FEMA seems primed to go a new direction with disaster-related housing.

"For lack of a better term, it's tiny houses," Majka said.

Instead of trailers, the behind-the-scenes conversations seem to focus largely on rolling out a new program that would give people small modular homes that they would own. The price is significantly less to the taxpayers than the FEMA trailers, and it would give the resident ownership.

"It will be weeks until (FEMA trailers) get here," McQueen said. "These small houses ... can get here faster and have more permanence."

Concrete houses, McQueen said, also have been floated as an idea.

What the program will look like in practice remains unclear, but officials seemed to be excited about trying an idea that would give people a unit they would have ownership of and be a lower cost. Nothing is official yet though, and other options remain on the table.

FEMA spokesman Victor Igne said only, "there is a number of options we are discussing and we are doing what's best for the disaster survivor."

He added FEMA already has given out $65 million in grants to Hurricane Michael survivors for hotel vouchers, repairs, etc.

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But while officials said they are working as fast as they can and faster than has happened at other natural disasters, at meetings like the one with the NAACP, the general consensus of the crowd is it's not fast enough and it's not enough help.

"FEMA gave me $265.35 for me and my 11-year-old to start over," said Vanessa Tale, whose landlord is trying to evict her. "That's not even enough to buy groceries."

People in the crowd told her to "call the mayor" to push for housing units to be brought to the area.

Tale left the Tuesday meeting to go back to a home with mold creeping up the walls and a leaking roof as rainstorms still threaten the area.

And Nichols, who said she doesn't believe she would be safe at that shelter, said she doesn't feel like she's received any help, despite applying to FEMA and despite asking questions. She went home to a tent outside what was her apartment, hopeful that maybe one of the other people staying outside had built a fire despite the warnings not to.

She didn't however have any hope about her situation.

It's a situation that left many outraged.

"You should have something in your pocket to fix it," Cecile Scoone came close to shouting at the FEMA representative. "You should be reconfiguring the process ... FEMA should be able to fix our problems. I'm outraged. I don't want people going through this. This is ridiculous. Trailers should have been here Day 2. Take that back to your bosses."

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