Rebuilding and Resiliency Questions Post Harvey. Part II of Journal

Houston Harvey Flood 2017 – Part II

Congratulations to everyone for officially making it through hurricane season, which ended , November 30th. Coincidentally, thatwas exactly 90 days from the peak of the Hurricane Harvey Disaster and the last day to apply for FEMA in Texas. Hard to believe 3 months have gone by since we evacuated here in Houston. Since then, Irma and Maria have devastated many other parts of the USA.  Although this has not been the most active season, it has certainly been one of the most impactful and potentially expensive with damage estimates from $300-$475 billion. Katrina, for comparison caused an estimated $100 Billion in damage. Now that the spectacular daily news images have found other fodder, it is the people who have been affected who must deal the less glamorous process of rebuilding slowly. How does this happen? Where does the money come from? Lessons learned? I will continue to tell our small story here.  

Part 6: Rebuilding and FEMA

I like to walk around the neighborhood in the mornings and the evenings. To the casual observer, our part of “West Houston” looks fine. Grass growing on the lawns, no trash on (most of) the curbs, and no visible external damage to homes. Take a closer look. No people inside, no furniture seen through the windows, and at night clearly visible empty rooms – a Hollywood movie set seen starkly after hours. During the day it resembles more of an FBI stakeout, with dozens of white windowless contractor vans on every corner. Of the close to 100 homes, less than a handful are occupied. This is a lucky neighborhood - we are all rebuilding – at a “quick” pace. That said, let’s remember that only about 1 of 6 people affected by Harvey had flood insurance.  

Not going into the details of the first month after Harvey for now; it took almost a month for us to clean, gut, and dry the house, so we could start rebuilding. Two months have gone by since then and maybe we are a half way to the house being fully restored. That is, we have painted walls, doors and a floor. No kitchen, bathrooms, showers etc on the ground floor.  That is much better than many others who do not have the economic resilience of Katy - where they are still waiting for money to start rebuilding, or, even worse, living in a contaminated home that has not been fully re-mediated.

Here are some of the lessons learned thus far:

1)     If you do not know about construction; learn fast. While there are plenty of volunteers, often they are learning on the job. So being able to even direct people as to what to do is a huge help. There has been an extreme shortage of skilled and even unskilled labor during this crisis. I think it behooves us all to learn more of these basic skills that our American predecessor pioneers had, and then take the model of being all able to just help ourselves but help our neighbors raise the figurative barn.

2)     There are plenty of people who will charge you 2-3x the pre-storm rates, so be willing to pay, wait, or do it yourself (see point 1).

3)     The shortages come in waves, and knowing what to buy (and when) is an important part of planning. Even the big stores like Home Depot could not get this right: first no sheet rock for 150 miles of Houston (then completely overstocked), then no doors (don’t get me going on the 3 days searching for door hangers), and then out of many types of lumber.  

So, what do you do while you rebuild? Hotel’s at $4000-7000 per month? Forget about finding a FEMA hotel anywhere in town, and there were certainly many people in shelters. Now, it is hard to find someone does not have a friend or often stranger who has either stayed with them or someone they know well. RVs have become a popular choice – although most seem to belong to friends or relatives of those using them. The RV rental companies clearly have not found their niche in this market, while the rental market is completely saturated. We, like many people, where way too optimistic about getting home, rebuilding and everything else and spent 2 weeks fruitlessly looking for an apartment. We got lucky and were able to rent a house short term, but others have ended up with a year lease or have had to move far out of town.

So, who is paying for all this and how are we managing?? First, I have to say there is an incredible amount of generosity and compassion among Texans who have and continue to volunteer to rebuild homes, and to let people live with them. One of the lucky aspects of what happened here is that the damage was sporadic – some neighborhoods flooded to a house, and others a few blocks over completely dry. This has allowed people to help each other in a much greater way. Roughly speaking there are about 1,000,000 homes/households in the greater Houston area and about 10% or 100,000 homes were damaged (and let’s be clear – if water stands in your home for a week there is no light damage). I often wonder – at what percent damage does civil society begin to fray and we stop helping each other and look out only for ourselves? Puerto Rico clearly was damaged to an extent unbelievably worse than Houston – we do not hear much in the mainstream media – I wonder if being an island community had made them more resilient and created a greater community strength there?

The FEMA money’s impact only goes so far and the ability of the program itself to maintain integrity (or the political will behind it) is at question as more disasters happen. Just to give the plain facts: About $1.4 Billion has been disbursed among 900,000 applicants (100,000 households) in the greater Houston area which is roughly $1,500 per person or $14,000 per household. How far does this go? Two independent studies based on insurance and construction surveys showed that the average household sustained well over $100,000 of damage to their home, in addition to all the personal property losses, loss of income, rental costs during reconstruction and often loss of vehicle. Without getting into the details of annual incomes and savings of those owning homes, it is clear that finding $100,000 to recover will be a huge financial burden that people will be paying off for decades, if they can at all.  

And I do not ask these questions without purpose….

How do we learn to create RESILIENT Communities to both minimize damage in the future, but also to help us rebuild faster and better, and lose fewer lives?  How do we improve our ability to be a sustainable (some would call a “complete”) community with a higher quality of life when this happens in the next years, and then again?

My teams at Climate Impact Capital and Texas Innovates are participating in several efforts to understand local issues and find resilient solutions for Houston’s Future.  

Please let us know your thoughts in how we can rebuild smarter, and not just for disasters like Harvey!!!