Tents, sheds become makeshift homes in EKy. as residents seek long-term housing after floods
Angela Cornett loved living in the brick house her grandfather once owned, nestled against a steep hill near Troublesome Creek, but it was badly damaged by flooding in Eastern Kentucky last month.
Cornett, 53, said she pushed through chest-deep water inside the house in Perry County to escape out a bedroom window, grabbing onto tree branches and then climbing the hill in the dark with her boyfriend, John Jones.
The house isn’t fit to live in, and she hasn’t been able to find another place nearby to rent or buy, Cornett said.
Cornett, sitting among salvaged items and donated goods on the porch at the wrecked house, said she doesn’t want to leave the county but feels she doesn’t have a choice.
She plans to either go west to Laurel County, more than 60 miles away, to live near one of her sons, or move into a mobile home that Jones’ mother owns in adjoining Knott County, requiring the renters to move out, Cornett said.
“There’ll be a lot of people who have to move out of here,” she said.
The housing market was tight in the area even before the flood for a variety of reasons, including the long downturn in the coal industry that hurt the economy, creating little incentive for developers to build.
The market has gotten tighter after the flood destroyed or left hundreds of houses uninhabitable. That has left people searching for new homes, with some living in tents as they contemplate life after the flooding and wait to see what kind of housing relief might come from FEMA or the state.
Residents using tents, sheds for shelter
Kentucky Emergency Management said that as of Tuesday, the American Red Cross reported a total of 1,648 homes were destroyed or “majorly damaged” by flooding.
The Red Cross count showed Breathitt County with the most damage to homes — 100 were listed as destroyed and 498 with major damage — but Letcher, Knott and Perry counties also lost hundreds, and there was damage to homes in several other counties as well.
There were 325 displaced people staying at two state parks on Wednesday and another 55 across four shelters in Hazard, Hindman, Jackson and Whitesburg, according to Kentucky Emergency Management.
The agency said there were 225 people staying in travel trailers the state set up as emergency temporary housing, meaning the total number of people in some form of emergency, short-term shelter was just over 600.
The state had another 89 travel trailers ready to be occupied, and is looking for sites for others in anticipation of being able to buy more, Kentucky Emergency Management said Wednesday.
In applications to the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky for assistance, residents reported even higher numbers of homes destroyed, 1,722 listed as total losses and 3,986 as partial losses, said Gerry Roll, the chief executive officer.
The foundation has received 8,012 applications that include a total of 22,599 people, Roll said.
Many people are staying with family members and friends, some are staying in their damaged homes and still others are sleeping in tents outside their old homes.
There are shelters available, but people have varied reasons for camping, including wanting to be close to home while continuing to try to clean and salvage items, or because their vehicles washed away and they wouldn’t have transportation from a shelter to their home.
Some just can’t face leaving their home. Others have pets they don’t want to take to a shelter, and several told the Herald-Leader they are camping in yards to ward off looters.
Relief agencies are still delivering food and water.
Jack and Sherry Alsept are among those staying in a tent in the yard at their home at Rowdy, in Perry County, which was badly damaged in the flood. They are still trying to clean and salvage items, and also are concerned about looting.
Alsept said someone stole a window air-conditioning unit from the house the first day of the flood.
They’ve cooked on a gas grill, used hanging camp showers to clean up and burned tiki torches to try to keep bugs at bay. Their clothes stay damp in the humidity, and Sherry Alsept got her hair caught in a fly strip in the tent one night.
“The heat is oppressive,” she said. “It’s been hard on all of us.”
Jack Alsept said they want to stay at the site of their old home, but the house isn’t livable and it’s not yet clear what they will do. One potential is to set up a shed on the hill across the road, he said.
That shed washed away in the flood but is intact and lodged in debris on the bank of the creek downstream.
Wiley Messer said he has been staying in his truck or a tent set up under a tree behind the mobile home he rented in Perry County, which was destroyed in the flood.
He said he had looked for homes to rent or buy but hadn’t found anything. He may have to move to Michigan, where he has family, if he doesn’t find something.
Someone donated the tent and and air mattress, and Messer has been eating donated, boxed military meals, called Meals Ready to Eat.
Messer said he wanted to be near his old home in case FEMA or the landlord came by, and to guard against looting. He had a 30-30 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and a pistol with him, joking “You loot we shoot.”
“It sucks when you gotta use the bathroom,” he said of living outside. A neighbor whose house survived the flood has let him use the bathroom there.
Andrew Fugate, a former truck driver, slept in his car after the flood made his house in Perry County unfit to live in, then bought a storage shed measuring 8 feet by 20 feet and had it put on blocks in a gravel parking area outside his old house.
“Had to have a place to go,” said Fugate, who is 75.
He ran a cord from the damaged house so he would have electricity for lights and a window air conditioner, but hasn’t run water to the shed because he plans to move it to a spot on higher ground nearby before winter. He goes to his brother’s house to use the bathroom.
Housing shortage growing
Many people are still searching for places to live nearly a month out from the flood.
Shafter Haddix, who lives in Perry County and owns rental housing, said he had 50 calls in two days after the flood from people looking for new residences, and was still getting calls in recent days.
He owned a four-unit apartment building at Dwarf that was damaged so badly he doesn’t plan to repair it.
Haddix said he is working to get more rentals ready, but that will take time. He had paid to have a water meter installed at one unit before the flood, but the water company didn’t get to it in time and has been so swamped making repairs since, the unit still doesn’t have a meter.
Haddix said relatively flat sites in Eastern Kentucky left behind by surface mining could be used for housing, but that would require installing electric and sewer service.
“I don’t know where they’re gonna find places for people,” he said.
Michelle Jones, a real-estate agent with RE/MAX Legacy Group in Hazard, said Wednesday the agency had been getting calls nearly non-stop from people looking for homes, but the supply of places to rent or buy is limited.
The demand is such that some homes have been selling above the asking price, Jones said.
“There’s just not a lot to choose from,” Jones said.
Jones said some people whose homes were damaged last month want to get away from creeks out of concern over potential future high water.
“Nobody wants to be around water,” she said.
People throughout the region that flooded in July have said the waters, pushed by torrential rainfall, came up very quickly and inundated sites that had never flooded that badly within memory.
There have been 39 deaths linked to the flooding.
Waiting on funding
Hargis Epperson, who is coroner in Breathitt County and manages the Dream Homes mobile home dealership in Hazard, said the cost of mobile homes and site-built houses has gone up significantly in recent years.
The lowest-cost singlewide mobile home available on the lot recently was more than $50,000. Many people who lost homes in the flood don’t make enough money to qualify for a loan, Epperson said.
Others wiped out in the flood lived in older mobile homes they had inherited or paid off, and don’t have enough income to replace the home.
Most residents didn’t have flood insurance, either because of the cost or because their neighborhood hadn’t flooded previously so they didn’t see the need.
The median household income in Breathitt County from 2016 through 2020 was $29,538, compared to the U.S. level of $64,994, according to the U.S. Census.
Epperson said state leaders should consider measures such as waiving the 6% state sales tax on mobile homes for flood victims; helping people buy land for home sites outside flood zones; and subsidizing housing payments.
“You’ve gotta be creative in a time like this,” he said.
Some flood victims whose homes were destroyed or badly damaged have received the maximum FEMA payout of just under $38,000, but an agency spokeswoman said this week that the average grant has been almost $8,000.
For many people, that wouldn’t be enough to cover the cost of replacing or repairing a home, local officials said.
FEMA has said its grants are designed to address basic needs and help people get back on their feet, not fully compensate them for all losses, but Gov. Andy Beshear and others have said the agency needs to increase grants to disaster victims.
“FEMA has got to change,” said state Rep. Angie Hatton, a Democrat from Whitesburg.
Breathitt County Judge-Executive Jeff Noble told the Herald-Leader that housing needs must be a priority as state leaders consider how to help the flood-damaged counties.
Noble said he is concerned that without public or private financial help for people who need homes, the county will lose residents.
FEMA said in a news release this week that it is working hard with the state to make sure people displaced by the flood have safe places to stay temporarily.
The agency approved direct temporary housing assistance in Breathitt Knott, Perry and Letcher counties, which can include providing travel trailers or leasing housing that is ready to occupy.
But because it takes time to put such assistance in place, it “is not an immediate solution for a survivor’s interim and longer-term housing needs,” the agency said.
In addition, some people won’t qualify.
“Therefore, it is important that partners at all levels — local, Commonwealth, other federal, nonprofit and private sector — work together to fill any gaps,” FEMA said in the release.
State lawmakers are in a special session this week to consider a package of aid to the flood-damaged counties, including money to fix schools, roads and bridges. It’s not clear whether the legislation will include money to help people get houses.
An early draft of the bill included $15 million for housing, but the current version does not designate any funding specifically for housing.
Roll, with the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, said it would be a big mistake to not appropriate money immediately to help people given the number who need homes.
“We need to help them now,” Roll said Thursday. “Even $50 million would be woefully inadequate.”
Beshear has mentioned that finding long-term housing solutions for people in Eastern Kentucky will be a complicated issue.
Also complicated is the solution in the interim, between now and when the General Assembly might appropriate more state money for those who have been displaced. Beshear said “a mix” of solutions is needed, referencing travel trailers, finding open apartments and even developing property.
“It may be that we come together and we rebuild some towns that coal companies built more than one hundred years ago,” Beshear said in a news conference Thursday.
Perry County Judge-Executive Scott Alexander, who described the affordable housing situation there as a “crisis” even before the flooding, said he hopes the flooding will help expedite plans to create more housing.
The region has an opportunity to emerge from the disaster in better shape on housing than before, he said.
In the interim, the county is looking at putting 40 more travel trailers at a park.
“We’re scrambling,” he said.
Staff writer Austin Horn contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 25, 2022 at 2:06 PM.
