John Guidroz

FEMA spokesman Manny Broussard said Monday that its direct housing mission after Hurricanes Laura and Delta is taking longer than it should, but the agency is trying “to house people as quickly as possible.”

Broussard responded to a March 11 letter sent by Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter to Robert Fenton Jr., a FEMA senior official, heavily criticizing the agency’s temporary housing plan. As of Monday, 1,354 occupied housing units are on approved sites, including private property and commercial sites, Broussard said. Some of those units also include FEMA’s direct lease program, in which the agency pays to repair apartments and homes damaged by the hurricanes so they can be leased directly to housing applicants.

“Disaster recovery is never fast enough for people who have been severely impacted,” he said. “It is a detailed process.”

Hunter also criticized FEMA for not working sooner on securing group sites for temporary homes. Broussard said FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have worked since September to find and secure group sites. Because FEMA is responsible for building group sites from the ground up and managing them, getting one set up can take months, he said.

“We tried to avoid it because we recognized early on that the housing process would be difficult,” he said. “When we saw that they would be needed, we began the process. The difficulty is finding property that fits the criteria.”

The first two potential group sites underwent wetland delineation, but floodplain

 issues took them out of consideration, Broussard said. Other sites were rejected for different reasons.

“There are zoning restrictions and variances that need to be considered,” he said. “Some property owners decided not to participate, and some property was too far away to connect to utilities. We’re trying to build sites close to people’s homes so they can continue to work on repairing them and be close to schools and their jobs.”

The Calcasieu Parish Planning and Zoning Board will consider a rezoning request for property at 750 Goodman Road at 5:30 p.m. today. The land is being considered for a 211-space group housing site, with a request to rezone from single-family residential to manufactured home park.

Placing temporary housing units on property offered by the Lake Charles Housing Authority was something the Department of Housing and Urban Development and FEMA agreed it could not do, Broussard said. Hunter said in his letter that FEMA and the department “balked” on the offer.

“We’ve got to house everyone who needs housing, and we would only be able to work with HUD-authorized applicants,” he said. “Everyone who needs housing is equal in our world. A HUD voucher would have put those people ahead of everyone else.”

Finding commercial pad sites has also been challenging, Broussard said.

“They’re very limited in Lake Charles,” he said. “We have leased virtually everything we can.”

Setting up temporary housing takes time, with Broussard calling every unit “its own construction project.”

“Each housing unit requires water, sewer and electrical hookups,” he said. “It’s about a 30-day process per housing unit from start to finish.”

Broussard said FEMA doesn’t like comparing one natural disaster to another. He said Hunter’s letter referenced the 2018 storm Hurricane Michael, in which FEMA housed just under 1,000 people over roughly six months.

“For Laura, we had licensed about 1,250 families at the 6-month mark, plus we dealt with Hurricane Delta,” he said. “There’s always different factors that come into play. That’s why I’m saying it’s kind of hard to compare disasters.”

Broussard said Fenton will likely have senior FEMA leadership in Lake Charles meet with Hunter to address his concerns.

Individuals with property that may meet FEMA’s direct lease criteria can send emails to  realtor@1800agentmatch.com, bhutchens@ehotelgroup.com, dave@cwis-llc.com, and mrockland@synergyhousing.com.FEMA trailers

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