E. Ky. was in a housing crisis before last year's record flood; slow recovery shows how disasters hit poor areas hardest

Shirley Howard's household is one of more than 100
still in temporary housing. (Associated Press photo)

More than 10 months after the most devastating flood many Eastern Kentucky communities have seen, many families "still haven't returned home," reports Dylan Lovan of The Associated Press. At least 100 families "are living in trailers and hundreds more remain displaced, living with relatives or in damaged homes while they rebuild."

Nearly 9,000 homes in 13 Eastern Kentucky counties "were severely damaged or destroyed by the intense four-day storm that dumped up to 16 inches of rain" last July, "ravaging one of the poorest places in the country. Homeowners in the mountainous region . . . live in flood-prone valleys that offer the only flat land for building homes, an area already suffering a housing crisis before the flood hit. . . . One study estimates it could cost nearly $1 billion to recover the region's housing losses."

Lovan points out, "The challenges in Kentucky are replicated in disasters that strike poor areas nationwide. Low-income families can't qualify for disaster loans, and conflicting rules and separate thresholds for an array of federal aid can slow and complicate recovery, according to national experts." Sally Ray, director of domestic funds for the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, told him, “There’s food insecurity, there's lack of affordable housing, there's lack of access to resources ... and those things are just exacerbated after a disaster.”

"Only about 5% of affected homeowners carried flood insurance, according to a report by the Ohio River Valley Institute and the Appalachian Citizens Law Center," Lovan reports. "Traditional homeowner’s insurance does not cover damage caused by flooding. The report said 60% of the households damaged had annual incomes of $30,000 or less. . . . A single inch of water inside a house can cause more than $26,000 in damage, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. . . . FEMA has doled out about $106 million to victims of the Kentucky flood for repairs, cleanup, storage, moving costs and other short-term needs. The maximum FEMA payout is $39,700, but the average grant was closer to $20,000, said Scott McReynolds, executive director of the Housing Development Alliance, a nonprofit that provides housing and repairs for needy residents in southeastern Kentucky. The group was working with 400 families even before the flood."

A $298 million grant is coming from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for long-term infrastructure and housing needs in the region, but it "could be slow to arrive, and it is unclear how much of it will go to housing, said Rebecca Shelton with the Appalachian Citizens Law Center, who co-authored the Kentucky flooding study." She told Lovan, “The big concern is really the timeline. It will be many months before these (federal) funds are implemented and I don’t know how much longer folks who are still inadequately housed can hang on.”

A fundamental problem in the region is the lack of land suitable for housing. Coal companies still haven't provided any from former surafce-mine sites, but some other private owners have given 125 acres for two sites, and the state has hired engineering firms to design and manage developments.