Houston, Texas (KTRK) – Manuel Benitez III still couldn’t believe what he saw when Hurricane Harvey made landfall on August 25, 2017.
The bamboo that floated on his shelf was the only thing that could save him from the first floor of his Kingwood home after it was submerged by 7 feet of water five years ago.
“I had furniture floating around and it broke all the windows on the first floor,” Benitez said. “Then the chaos really started because everyone was looking for contractors and they couldn’t get them. I never expected this much damage. I didn’t know – I had never been involved in a flood and this house had never been inundated.”
But five years later, Benitez is no longer home. After years of delays trying to get repayment assistance from Houston Homeowners Assistance ProgramBenitez said the help came too late for him.
The city offered him a check for $35,790 after four and a half years of the storm, but he said the program’s rules required him to live in the house for another year. By then, he said he was so behind on taxes that he couldn’t own the house anymore. He refused the check and gave up.
“It’s a (bad) deal,” Benitez told 13 investigators Ted Oberg. “I would gladly have (the help, but) instead of paying taxes on my house, I had to spend it on repairs, so I kept kicking the can on the road hoping I’d get something to cover everything, but I didn’t have enough.”
13 Investigators have found that the problem of getting recovery aid to victims soon after a disaster is greater than just Hurricane Harvey, or even the state of Texas.
Since 2017, $183.5 billion in federal funds nationwide have been earmarked for long-term disaster recovery programs, including mitigation projects, building and repairing homes for disaster victims, or providing victims with reimbursement for reconstruction expenses out of their own pockets.
Our investigation found that only $81 billion, or 44%, of that funding has been spent, according to FEMA data.
Part of the problem stems from federal rules, which require Congress to pass an actual law to allow assistance programs. This means that for every large-scale disaster, Congress has to meet and pass a new federal law that would allow the allocation of assistance for long-term recovery programs.
“I think there’s a misconception that all that kind of money is being pumped right out into the community and that’s really not what’s going on,” said Chris Currie, director of the GAO’s Homeland Security and Justice Team. “There is a lot of money being spent on response issues, rescuing people, helicopters, water, food, getting people to safety, but most federal dollars are spent on disaster recovery years and years later. … That means society doesn’t stand still. on his feet as fast as he can.”
Onerous rules meant that it took 16 months from the day Harvey struck for the first victim of the storm to apply for federal housing assistance in Houston.
“The recovery phase can often be the disaster after disaster and the most frustrating part for state and local officials who have to deal with managing and implementing these very complex programs,” Corey said. “If we can’t get to the point where we simplify these programs, just to rebuild the way things were, it’s going to be very difficult to rebuild things to withstand future risks, and that’s what we have to do because we’re going to see more and more disasters.”
Our investigation found that in Texas, only $13.1 billion was spent out of the $29.2 billion available.
We looked at how other cities across the United States spent their disaster aid and found millions more were not spent.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Federal Grant Expenditure Report shows that New York City still has $174 million left to spend on a project to protect lower Manhattan. The city only spent 1% of the money sent over five and a half years ago.
Orange County in upstate New York spent only 8% of the federal aid earmarked for them to recover from Hurricane Irene, which struck in 2011.
The report shows that New Orleans has $123 million, and California has $35 million in the bank that was supposed to help rebuild after the 2013 fire.
Currie said that even after the funds are approved, the government still has to establish guidelines for the program and work with states and local communities to decide how to spend the money.
“There is a tremendous amount of process and paperwork up front to get to the point where you can start planning to spend the money,” he said. “This could take years, if not more than a decade. The example I like to use is in Louisiana and Hurricane Katrina. FEMA and other agencies are actually still cutting checks for recovery projects after Hurricane Katrina (which hit in 2005).”
Getting funds to communities faster is a problem that U.S. Government Accountability Office auditors have recommended fixing for years.
“We’ve pointed out the issues of slowness with that before and the administrative burden that it causes, and I think that’s why it’s important to point out that Congress really needs to take action here to do something about it to speed up the program,” Corey said.
Over the years, US Congressman Al Green, a Democrat from Texas, introduced the bipartisan Disaster Recovery Reform Act in an effort to push Congress to solve the problem by establishing a permanent set of rules when disaster strikes.
If passed, the law would get help to storm victims faster because they would no longer have to wait for approval of funds and program guidelines on how to spend federal aid.
Green said the law passed the House twice, but lost the Senate both times.
“It makes sense to have something codified so we know what the rules of the road are,” Green said. “It doesn’t make sense for us to have people who might be new to the process…we have to devise a way that we’re going to deal with these concerns, so it makes sense, to have good old common sense, they’ll have to ration the process so that everyone has An idea of what to expect when a hurricane hits and they will strike again and again.”
The city, state and federal government all agree that a standard set of rules is needed so that victims can get help faster.
“The city is 100% behind the standing mandate of[Disaster Recovery for Community Development]that way it doesn’t require congressional action to pass the funding,” said Bill Kelly, the city’s director of government relations.
overdue aid
In Houston, the city’s assistance program is designed to help homeowners affected by Hurricane Harvey, such as Benitez, by making up for their own expenses or repairing and rebuilding their damaged homes.
Five years after the storm, Houston’s program helped only 6.5% of the 10,229 people invited to apply for assistance, according to the city’s latest report on July 31. The city issued 391 reimbursement checks, rebuilt 204 homes and completed repairs to 71 more.
The city of Houston didn’t provide us with the number of people, like Benitez, who gave up or dropped out of all of its programs, but he said “there were 63 applicants who voluntarily withdrew from[the home rebuilding program]before the initial eligibility determination.”
The Houston Department of Housing and Community Development initially agreed to speak with 13 investigators about recovery programs, but canceled four days before our scheduled interview, saying the department director was no longer available.
In response to our questions, the city said, “While we had hoped to do more (recovery), we had many successes given the challenges we faced in the beginning.”
The city said that funding wasn’t available until 2019, and there were multiple management changes for some disaster recovery programs.
“The money is not arriving soon enough, which means that programs are unable to start helping people immediately after the storm when they need it most. In this case, the storm (Harvey) was in 2017. (Texas State Office year) we got the money from (the US Department of Housing and Urban Development) in 2019. Then we worked with the GLO to implement our programs.” “The only way the programs could have started sooner is if the City of Houston had direct allocations from HUD. Unfortunately, going through a third party creates additional requirements, steps, and delays, which means delays in getting much-needed assistance for our residents. .”
For past natural disasters, the GLO led the recovery effort, but after Harvey, the city of Houston fought back and secured a direct $1.2 billion appropriation to rebuild homes damaged by the storm.
In April 2020, the GLO announced it would take over the program, saying the city had “impeded” the recovery of thousands of victims of the 2017 floods.
See also: 13 Investigations: GLO to control Harvey’s recovery after Houston’s ‘disabled’ aid
Since taking over the City of Houston program, GLO said it has reconstructed 547 homes, with 101 more under construction and 866 approved and pending. GLO says it has also completed 5,184 homes in 48 counties outside of Houston and Harris County after Harvey.
The GLO agrees that changes can be made to allow disaster recovery funds to reach communities faster.
In a statement, GLO spokeswoman Brittany Ecke said: “The current process of requiring a new set of regulations with each grant is not effective. Coding rules (disaster recovery for community development) would certainly speed up the business plan process, which is required before programs can start. The process of drafting and approving the action plan currently takes at least six months, including amendments.While many of the GLO’s recommendations for disaster assistance have been made at the state level, overhauling how money from Washington reaches to impact communities will benefit those in need to help.”
Green said that legalizing disaster assistance rules would help get money to communities faster, but still required states to distribute funds appropriately.
“It’s a negative effect on people who don’t get the help they need,” Green said. “That’s not a good thing. I hope we can improve it, but I’m still dismissive of it: Texas is a state that discriminates against minorities. It has a history of doing that, and until we face that fact, it’s hard. Poor people in Texas are discriminated against, no matter what color they are.” .this bill that we wish would put Texans in class.”
RELATED: Congressman Al Greene calls on Texas to ‘discriminate’ in disaster assistance
Currie said there is agreement across the board that the system is very complex and needs to be simplified.
“The time between disasters is shrinking across societies. It’s more and more frequent, and so I think the pendulum is starting to shift so people know they can’t ignore disasters after one happens, because there may be another that happens a year from now or two years from now.”
Houston didn’t answer our questions about why it took Benitez so long to receive help, which he said he eventually had to turn down.
Earlier this month, Benitez visited his old neighborhood for the first time since the home was sold. Memories flowed back.
Benitez loved this home, and after all the hard work he put in to fix it up after the storm, he said it was perfect. He was looking forward to spending the summer in the backyard, enjoying cooking with his grandchildren. But this did not happen. He ended up moving to a smaller house in the spring.
“If they hadn’t taken so long to issue the help checks, I would have stayed here,” Benitez said. “I was totally ready to have this house for the rest of my life.”
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