Coastal Louisiana struggles with housing crisis after Hurricane Ida

Judy woodruff:

The Atlantic hurricane season started June 1, but people in Southeast Louisiana are still recovering after being hit last year by one of the strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall in the state.

Communities correspondent Roby Chavez went back to visit the rural coastal areas where Hurricane Ida's 150 mile-per-hour winds left behind a housing crisis.

Roby Chavez:

Nine months after Hurricane Ida hit her neighborhood in Terrebonne Parish, Precious Shephard still has no electricity.

Precious Shephard, Louisiana Resident:

Still running a generator, not being able to store food the way I used, eating fast food daily, it's like I'm still living in a storm.

Roby Chavez:

After Ida, this entire affordable housing complex was deemed uninhabitable and most of Shephard's neighbors moved away.

Precious Shephard:

It feels like a ghost town.

Roby Chavez:

What has kept you here?

Precious Shephard:

I actually had nowhere else to go. So, when I came home and seen my unit wasn't as damaged, I was like, well, stay home.

Roby Chavez:

And amid a driver shortage, her school bus driving job was busier than ever. But the single parent's $23,000-a-year salary is hardly enough to cover the daily costs of eating out or the gas-guzzling generator.

Precious Shephard:

It only runs about 16 hours before it runs out of gas and have to be filled again.

Roby Chavez:

And how much does that guys cost?

Precious Shephard:

Oh, about $50 to $60.

Roby Chavez:

That's per day.

In an area with a poverty rate around 15 percent, Ida has had a lasting impact on those who can least afford it, especially when it comes to stable housing.

Ursula Ward stayed here because she feared she couldn't easily access health care elsewhere.

Ursula Ward, Louisiana Resident:

I have heart issues. I have fibromyalgia and I have digestive issues. And I would have to go and try to find those kinds of doctors in a new location all over again.

Roby Chavez:

But with most of her neighbors gone and no working streetlights, she doesn't feel safe at night.

Ursula Ward:

It scares me with the darkness back here, and not knowing if nobody's there, and not knowing who's watching me when I'm leaving and coming home.

Roby Chavez:

It's unsettling for Ward, who lives by herself.

Do you kind of feel left alone here?

Ursula Ward:

I'm very alone. I cry all the time. Like, right now, I'm starting to get emotional, but I'm trying to, like not, cry right now. But it's just hard. It's just, like, kind of hard to deal with.

Roby Chavez:

In hard-hit Cocodrie, a coastal fishing village just south of New Orleans, Heather Young, her fiance, her children and grandchildren are among about 8,000 Louisiana households still in trailers provided by FEMA and the state.

Heather Young, Louisiana Resident:

It's been, like, the hardest thing I have ever did and been through, and losing everything.

We threw all our clothes, toys, furniture, appliances — everything had to go.

Roby Chavez:

The family of seven set up camp next to their ravaged home on the water, where Young's fiance works as a fisherman.

Heather Young:

I have never actually seen underneath the tarps. And the other day, I did and I just cried. It's very heartbreaking to see home that.

Roby Chavez:

Just down the road, Cecil Lapeyrouse's store has been an anchor of this community for over 100 years.

Cecil Lapeyrouse, Cecil Lapeyrouse Grocery:

Your biggest item here is gasoline — gasoline, bait, refreshments.

Roby Chavez:

But the store remained close, while 70-year-old Lapeyrouse spent his retirement savings on repairs.

Cecil Lapeyrouse:

It's a lot of work, plus a lot of mental stress.

Roby Chavez:

And how much money have you kind of put into the recovery?

Cecil Lapeyrouse:

I'd want to say close to probably 100, close to $100,000.

Roby Chavez:

And that's out-of-pocket cash?

Cecil Lapeyrouse:

Out of pocket.

Roby Chavez:

Lapeyrouse could not afford insurance. So he says he spent his own money at a time when the shuttered store brought in no income.

But at least, he says, his house is livable.

Cherakee Bradley, Louisiana Resident:

We never lived like this before.

Roby Chavez:

In Raceland, Cherakee Bradley is making do in a badly damaged home. Her mom, who lives next door, says she needs help to fix her home too.

Cherakee Bradley:

She wrote a letter to FEMA. She got denied. And they keep telling her she has insurance, and she doesn't.

Roby Chavez:

As for Cherakee and her three kids?

Cherakee Bradley:

Their solution was to find someone to stay with or a relative, or that's it. But who? Who? Because everybody's suffering right now.

Roby Chavez:

FEMA says it has paid out over $1.2 billion in recovery funds, including more than $700 million for housing assistance. But residents and advocates say it's still not reaching some of the most vulnerable.

John Long, FEMA:

Recovery is a very long and difficult process. It takes years.

Roby Chavez:

FEMA federal coordinating officer John Long.

John Long:

We can't wave a wand and put things back the way they were. There are unmet needs. There was not enough affordable housing before the disaster.

And so, when a hurricane comes and destroys that, it just becomes a very difficult situation. And that's part of why recovery takes so long.

Roby Chavez:

What do you say to your own people that said, we are struggling?

John Long:

It's always a struggle. And I can't tell you that we dropped any one particular ball. There are a couple of hundred people, just FEMA people, working to coordinate and make this entire mission work.

Roby Chavez:

Adding to the difficulty, says Lafourche Parish Administrator Mitch Orgeron, critical infrastructure still needs to be fixed.

Mitch Orgeron, Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, Administrator:

We have some pump stations that were damaged. We need to be able to pump the water when it rains.

Roby Chavez:

Forecasters expect this to be an above-average hurricane season. And that could mean trouble for places like coastal Louisiana, where so many people are still reeling from Hurricane Ida.

Even in non-hurricane storms, Heather Young feels unsafe in her temporary trailer.

Heather Young:

If the wind gets too bad, it feels like you're going to flip.

Roby Chavez:

So it's shaking?

Heather Young:

Yes, it shakes. If the wind is bad, it does.

Roby Chavez:

So you don't even stay in there sometimes?

Heather Young:

No. We take the kids, and we will come to the car. We feel safer in there because it don't shake, and in case we'd have to leave.

Roby Chavez:

You can just get going.

Heather Young:

Yes.

Roby Chavez:

FEMA warns, nobody should ride out a hurricane in a trailer.

John Long:

We make a point of telling people when they move into a fruit FEMA unit, if the parish tells you to evacuate, evacuate.

Roby Chavez:

With so many still in trailers, Orgeron says they will have to evacuate almost double the number of people if a hurricane hits Lafourche Parish.

Mitch Orgeron:

And one of the things that we have to consider is, how do we move those people if we have a hurricane? Certainly can't write a hurricane out in a camper.

It certainly weighs heavy.

Roby Chavez:

Cecil Lapeyrouse's grandfather built his store in 1914.

Cecil Lapeyrouse:

It's a big tradition and it's heritage. That's the big thing of what's making me go and keep going.

Roby Chavez:

He finally reopened on Memorial Day, but he says he simply can't take another destructive hurricane.

Cecil Lapeyrouse:

I'm not going to try it again. I'm not going to try and redo it again, because, I mean, this is a lot.

Roby Chavez:

Not doing it.

Cecil Lapeyrouse:

I wouldn't do it again.

Roby Chavez:

Commercial crabber Chad Canezaro, who is still rebuilding his house, told us the same thing.

Chad Canezaro, Commercial Crabber:

The last three years, I have evacuated seven times for storms, and then Ida was the worst, obviously. I'm not sure I can take another one down here, to be honest with you.

Roby Chavez:

With so much uncertainty remaining, this hurricane season, the state plans to have extra evacuation shelters due to the high number of people still dealing with unstable housing.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Roby Chavez in coastal Louisiana.