Advocates push for housing money for residents displaced by KY floods: ‘People can’t wait’
Housing advocates pushed the case in Frankfort Tuesday for the legislature to approve significant spending to build houses for hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed by flooding in Eastern Kentucky last summer.
In the absence of such state funding, many people displaced by the flooding are living in camper trailers, while others have moved into storage sheds, put mobile homes back on lots that flooded, or moved back into damaged houses with mold and no heat, advocates said.
“People can’t wait for housing,” said Scott McReynolds, head of the Housing Development Alliance in Hazard, said at a news conference in Frankfort.
The legislature appropriated $213 million last September to begin repairing and rebuilding infrastructure such as roads, bridges and schools hit by the flooding, but did not designate money in that package specifically to build houses.
A coalition of groups that build affordable houses for lower-income people has pushed a plan dubbed AHEART, for Affordable Housing Emergency Action Recovery Trust Fund.
The concept is to create a fund that could be tapped quickly to start building and repairing houses after a disaster such as the tornadoes in Western Kentucky in December 2021 and the flooding in Eastern Kentucky in July.
Advocates were seeking $150 million from the legislature this year and another $150 million next year for the emergency housing fund, along with $115 million for the state’s regular affordable housing trust fund.
Tuesday afternoon, Senate President Robert Stivers, a Republican from Manchester, filed a bill that could serve as a vehicle for funding for housing in the flood-damaged counties.
Stivers said he doubts the legislature will approve new funding for housing this session, but that there is a potential lawmakers will approve shifting money within the disaster-relief packages already approved to provide specific aid for housing.
He did not cite an amount.
“We can’t build, you know, 1,000 to 1,500 homes a year because I don’t think there is the drywallers, the electricians, the plumbers, the gamut of necessary workforce to do that,” Stivers said. “So what is an ascertainable number that we could actually hit once you get everything in place to start construction? So with a lot of questions out there, and we’ve been having meetings on this, we didn’t want there to be a situation where we couldn’t have a vehicle to work with.”
Advocates said that while the state may get federal disaster money later to help build houses, housing organizations need a commitment on state money now so they can ramp up land purchases and plan for construction.
“The legislature really needs to step up for us,” said Terry Theis, whose home in Perry County, handed down through three generations, was destroyed in the July flood. “We still need help and I hope someone is listening today.”
How will Eastern Kentucky rebuild?
There was a shortage of affordable housing in the area before flooding — which resulted in 44 deaths — and the disaster has made that worse.
Two groups released research Tuesday on the impact of the flooding and the estimated cost to rebuild.
According to information compiled from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), there flooding caused some level of damage to 8,940 homes in 13 counties, the report said.
Of those, 542 were destroyed; 4,583 had major damage; 1,186 received substantial damage; and 783 sustained moderate damage, the report said.
Nearly 22,000 people lived in houses damaged in the flooding, and 60% of the households with damage reported their total annual income was at most $30,000, the report said.
“The many low-income families with damaged homes will find it challenging or impossible to rebuild,” on their own, said the report, authored by Eric Dixon of the Ohio River Valley Institute and Rebecca Shelton at the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center in Whitesburg.
The researchers estimated that depending on the approach, it will cost a total of either $453 million or $957 million to replace homes destroyed in the flood and repair damaged homes, and that money from FEMA and other sources will fall far short of the need.
The lower figure assumes building new houses or repairing houses where they were flooded. The higher figures assumes a plan to replace and repair homes on higher ground less prone to flooding, which would be more expensive in part because of the need to buy land.
While much more expansive in the short run, the plan to create housing on higher ground would come out to be less expensive if there are just three more floods in the region over the next 50 years half as severe as the 2022 flood, the report estimates.
That estimate doesn’t count lives that could be saved by moving houses to higher ground, or the time people would save by not having to clean up and repair flooded homes.
The Kentucky Division of Water has said that “future flood conditions and costs from flood damages will likely continue to increase” without considerable action by government, the private sector and citizens, the report said.
“I can’t think of a policy that’s more important than investing in affordable housing for Eastern Kentucky this year,” Dixon said at the news conference.
This story was originally published February 21, 2023 at 5:47 PM.
