In the case of Lake Charles, the agency’s individual assistance payouts weren’t enough to fill a gaping hole in the city’s housing stock: The storm damaged about half the structures in the surrounding parish, and more homes fell to the subsequent disasters the following year. Mario Tama / Getty Imagesīecause most of this money is targeted to individuals and families, though, it’s seldom enough to help a community achieve a full recovery, regaining its pre-disaster population and restoring businesses and organizations that shuttered after the storm. Residents of Lake Charles, Louisiana, walk through flood waters from Hurricane Delta toward their home, which they were still repairing after damage from Hurricane Laura on October 10, 2020. The agency spent about $1 billion on the immediate recovery from Laura, which caused around $19 billion in total damages. FEMA distributes this money out of a multi-billion-dollar pot that it can use for whatever disasters happen in a given year, and most of it helps pay out people who’ve lost their homes or their belongings. In the immediate aftermath of a major disaster like a hurricane, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, arrives on the scene to distribute aid money to victims. Because funding depends on the whims of a gridlocked Congress, it often arrives after many people have already been forced to leave their homes for good. However, the late arrival of this money also highlights the limitations of the federal disaster relief system. The money represents an unexpected boost for the ailing region, whose population has declined by at least 5 percent since Laura - one of the fastest rates in the nation. That’s enough to put a significant dent in the $3 billion of unmet needs that Governor John Bel Edwards has said remain from the 2020 storms. Late last month, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, announced that it will send $1.7 billion in extra hurricane relief money to Louisiana around $450 million will go to Lake Charles to fund long-term housing repairs. More than a year later, the region has now received an unexpected deluge of federal relief. Climate change has not only made extreme weather events like these more severe and less predictable, but it has also eroded the marshland barrier that once protected coastal Louisiana from storms as they made landfall. The Louisiana city of 85,000 has been hit by four major disasters in the last two years: The double-whammy of Hurricanes Laura and Delta in the summer of 2020 was followed by a deadly ice storm that winter, plus another devastating flood last spring. “We’re still where we were two years ago,” said Guidry, who helps connect area residents with legal services and housing. When Tasha Guidry drives to work at her office on Ryan Street, she passes houses with blue tarps still stretched over their roofs, decaying buildings that will soon be torn down, and restaurants that open for a few hours a day, if at all. Eighteen months after Hurricane Laura, the streets of downtown Lake Charles remain eerily quiet.
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