Hurricane Irma temporary housing goes critical

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Housing in Key West, a challenge even before Hurricane Irma hit, is about to get a lot harder for people displaced by the storm.

That was the reluctant answer given by John Allen, a representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), who gave Key West City Commissioners an update on storm recovery at their Oct. 17 meeting. Currently there are 482 households living in 26 Key West hotels as part of FEMA’s short-term housing assistance program. Of those households, 257, or 53 percent, are people with a Key West address, which includes Stock Island and Big Coppitt.

The problem is that the hotel stay program expired on Monday, Oct. 23. Normally, FEMA would provide options, including mobile homes for people needing longer-term housing in disaster areas. But house trailers won’t work in most parts of the Florida Keys, Allen said. While trailers can be placed on private property if there are water, sewer and electricity hook ups, land is at “a premium” in Key West, he said, and there are few public or private properties large enough to place a house trailer.

That was echoed by FEMA’s Direct Housing Specialist John Donahue, who said the federal agency has contracts in place to purchase trailers and Monroe County has been approved for temporary trailer use. The problem is that FEMA is providing trailers larger than those used after Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and they are too big for many of the existing mobile home trailer pads in the Keys. Plus, the trailers must be elevated above the flood plain, according to Monroe County requirements.

“Some of our manufactured homes are 64-feet long and we just can’t physically put them anywhere here on the Keys,” Donahue said, adding, “And we would have to elevate them to a point where it would not be practical, to put them up so high you’d be able to park a car underneath them.”

As a result, the FEMA specialists said, the agency is working to find new ways to house Irma displacees once they have to vacate their hotel rooms. While some of the hotel stays could be extended, many Key West hotels are fully booked with Fantasy Fest reservations. FEMA has increased the amount it will pay towards monthly rentals to $4,542 a month, up from $1,700 in recognition of the high cost of housing in Key West. However, convincing a landlord to turn their vacation rental property into transitional housing may be a hard sell, said Commissioner Sam Kaufman.

FEMA has also begun a Sheltering and Temporary Essential Power (STEP) program, which gives property owners up to $20,000 to fix their homes enough for them to live in while more extensive repairs are made. STEP requires a home to have at a minimum one livable bedroom, running water and electricity, and a place to prepare food. Other options FEMA is considering include using houseboats as temporary housing or creating “base camps” for displaced residents.

“We continue to look at every option that we can, knowing housing is very limited here, as well as land,” Allen said.

But when Donahue was asked what will happen Oct. 23, when most of the people living in Key West hotels must vacate, he told the unpleasant truth.

“That is an immediate crisis that we have here. Honestly, I don’t have an answer for that for you, sir,” he told Kaufman.

“That doesn’t make me feel very good,” the commissioner responded.

November 10 is the deadline to submit assistance requests to FEMA.

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