Thousands of families in need of temporary housing following Hurricane Harvey continue to face red tape and delays.
This story by Robert Arnold originally appeared in Click 2 Houston.
According to the latest information from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 6,970 families have qualified for some type of temporary housing, yet 5,851 of those families are still waiting for that help.
One evacuee, Dorothy Anderson, can only look at the new FEMA-provided mobile home that was placed on her front lawn several weeks ago.
When FEMA finally delivered a large mobile home, complete with a generator, Anderson was relieved. However, delays in getting water and electricity hooked up and steps built to reach the front door, kept Anderson from moving in. FEMA doesn’t allow someone to move in to a temporary home until it is fully operational.
Texas’s General Land Office is now in charge of getting Harvey-affected Texans temporary homes. However, Land Commissioner George P. Bush said it has to wait for FEMA to provide names of those in need before they can deliver a temporary home.
Bush said FEMA didn’t ask the state to help manage temporary housing programs until three weeks after Harvey made landfall and it took another three weeks to work out the legalities of the project. Bush said this lag time prevented the state from prepositioning mobile homes and trailers or getting advanced contracts in place to purchase these structures. Even after this was hashed out, Bush said FEMA didn’t start providing a list of names of those who need temporary housing until December.