A Terrebonne Parish lawmaker warned his colleagues at a Legislative hearing that there is a humanitarian crisis in the Bayou Parishes due to a lack of housing.
Houma Representative Tanner Magee spoke with WWL after the Joint Commerce Committee ended Monday. He described a desperate situation, particularly south of the Intercoastal Canal.
“You see the rubble of houses, and you see people living in tents, you see people making do with a halfway collapsed house,” said Magee. “You saw a lot of clotheslines with people hanging clothes to dry after it rained because it is obviously raining inside of their house.”
Magee said a Red Cross survey of only 70% of Terrebonne revealed at least 13,000 homes were destroyed or sustained significant damage. South of the Intercoastal Canal that divides the parish 98% of homes have some kind of damage, with 60% of them deemed uninhabitable.
“This is something that has to be corrected, we can not continue to live this way,” said Magee. “I can not continue to drive Terrebonne Parish and see firemen living in tents where the fire station is because they have no roof.”
Magee said one of the issues they are running into is that some apartment complexes threw their tenants out just days after the storm, clearly before they could even survey the facility. He said unless those apartments are unlivable the tenants should be allowed to stay, even if there is some damage because there are no hotels or apartments available for rent in the region. He added that everyone in the region is living in housing that is not optimal due to storm damage.
“When these people get kicked out there is literally nowhere to go,” said Magee. “That’s why you see people living in tents, and when I say tent I’m not talking about Army tents I’m talking about the Walmart variety tent.”
The lack of hotel availability in the region is also frustrating FEMA's attempts to put people in temporary housing that is at least somewhat nearby their ruined homes.
Magee, like many Bayou Parish leaders, implored FEMA to expedite the process for delivering temporary housing. He said FEMA has told them it would be 30 days, at the earliest, before temporary housing like trailers would be established. Magee and other leaders say the people of the Bayou can’t wait that long.
“I think they are waiting for a perfect plan, talking about we can’t put trailers in a flood zone, and this is not the time for that, this is the time to get something done quickly,” said Magee.
But Magee’s Southwest Louisiana colleagues warned him and Southeast Louisiana residents that they may be waiting far longer than they anticipate for federal assistance. Lake Charles Mayor Nick Hunter said it took eight to ten months before FEMA temporary housing arrived after Hurricane Laura. Abbeville Representative Ryan Bourriaque said the Southwest is still covered in blue roofs a year later.
“Once we work through insurance issues, and once you work with an attorney perhaps to get that insurance paid, then you are trying to find a contractor, then that contractor is trying to find supplies, then the price of supplies have changed, now you are going back to the same insurance company that you had to work for nine months to get your payment from,” said Bourriaque.