Whenever there is a natural disaster, like a hurricane, tornado or flood, it is often the poor, with few possessions to begin with, who lose everything. Such was the case with Hurricane Katrina and such is the case with Hurricane Ike. Galveston was hard hit by the storm and the 2,200 families living in 975 units of the four public housing projects for the poorest Galvestonians - Oleander Homes, Cedar Terrace, Palm Terrace, Magnolia Homes - were especially hard hit.
Rhiannon Meyers, a newspaper reporter wrote a gut-wrenching article that illustrates the pesonal pain those who are the poorest among us suffered from Hurricane Ike. I thought it was well worth reproducing. Here is Meyers' article:
PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS ANGRY, CONFUSED
By Rhiannon Meyers
The Galveston County Daily News, September 24, 2008
GALVESTON — The housing projects echoed with the sound of doors cracking and giving way.From Oleander Homes on the west end of Broadway to Magnolia Homes near The University of Texas Medical Branch, residents of Galveston’s public housing projects battered their way through the front doors of their flood ravaged apartments Wednesday to get a glimpse of what was left.
They kicked at the doors with frustration, sometimes punching holes through the rotten wood. A Galveston Housing Authority crew, carrying a crowbar and a makeshift battering ram, smashed through every door that wasn’t already open.
Same scene.
When the doors gave way, they revealed a scene that looked the same at every cookie-cutter, first-floor apartment north of Broadway: refrigerators splayed, face down, on the floor; moldy couches at odd angles; a thick layer of brown slime coating the floor; a rotten, rotten stench.
Jasmine Woods, 12, wrapped a purple Ball High School T-shirt around her face and navigated her way through the devastated apartment on her mother’s instructions to salvage only beds and school clothes.
The stuff they saved filled half of the smallest U-Haul truck she and her mother could find.
Many questions.
Frustrated residents tossed trash in the streets and chunked their clothes from upstairs windows.
Deandre Womack, who lives with his grandmother in Palm Terrace, flung with fury whatever wet clothes he could save into his car. As he got in the car to leave, his grandmother asked him to lock the house.
"You can’t close the door, grandma — I broke the lock," he said. "They can have what’s in there, anyway."
Angry residents stopped every car that drove by the housing projects to search for answers.
Latrice Walker, who’s five months pregnant, cornered the housing authority crew that was battering down doors.
"What are y’all doing?" she shouted. "I live here — you can at least give me some answers."
She cornered a smartly dressed housing authority building supervisor and started peppering him with the same questions everyone was asking Wednesday morning: Where am I supposed to live? How long do I have to get my things out? Where is FEMA? Where is the housing authority? Are they going to tear this place down?
‘Really bad.’
John Williams, the maintenance director, answered Walker ’s questions. "We do not have housing," he said. "There is no housing. Trust me, I lost my house on the West End . It’s just really bad."
Residents are angry and confused, said one of the crewmembers battering down doors. He declined to give his name, saying he couldn’t talk to the media. But he said he hoped the "real story" gets out about what’s happening in the housing projects.
The maintenance worker, who lost his home in Ike, said residents were told they have until Friday to remove their belongings. Many residents live in apartments there, though they’ve never signed a lease. He’s worried they may not qualify for federal assistance. Even if they do find a hotel to stay in, FEMA requires a credit card first and "these people don’t have credit cards," he said.
Overwhelming.
Many residents are chronically ill. Some said the sights they are seeing are overwhelming them.
Relatives of Lena Lewis, old and fragile with diabetes, kicked at the back door of her first-floor apartment in Oleander Homes until it splintered and swung open, revealing floors slick with grime and appliances where they weren’t there before."
Everything’s turned upside down," niece Delores Young reported back to Lewis, who waited at the door. "There’s mud all the way through. I’m so used to your floors shining. … This is depressing. You don’t even know where to start."
Young broke through her aunt’s front door. Lewis walked in, slipped on the grime in her house shoes, walked outside and yanked off her rubber gloves and respirator, blaming the rush of emotion on her "diabetes acting up."She clenched her fists and looked out over the rest of the damaged homes, as tears, magnified by her lenses, streamed down her face."I need somewhere to stay — I can’t live here," she said, her voice shaking. Young grabbed her shoulder. She said: "You know what, Aunt Lena? You can’t be in here. It’s no good to be here."
‘Nowhere to go.’
In a quiet voice, Young told Lewis she was tired of being a burden.
Eighteen people moved into Young’s place since Ike slammed into the island. Young recently found out she no longer has a job.
Calmetta Lundy, who lives in Palm Terrace, said she’s living in a house, with no electricity, in La Marque with 27 people, including a newborn and two elderly people with heart disease.
Others shared stories of living with dozens of relatives and friends on the mainland and jumping from house to house when the relationships became strained.
Tomeka Lott, has been living from "pillar to post" since Ike hit, hopping between various relatives and friends with her two children. Their wet school clothes were strewn around the house.
"I’ve got nowhere to go," she said.
Refusing shelter.
Many public housing residents said they left on the bus and were moved from shelter to shelter until they found rides back to Galveston . Citing uncomfortable conditions in shelters, they said they refused to stay in a shelter run by the city.
But they’re homeless, otherwise.
David Latrigue rescued a pair of lace-up boots he wore when he worked for the ferry landing from his Oleander Homes apartment and photographed the rest of the damage. He thought, as he crossed the causeway, "We’re going to come back to nothing." He was right.
"They’re going to tear these places down," he said.
His friend, Charles Schinette agreed: "It’s going to look like a mini Third World country."
At Oleander Homes, Carolyn Gamble sat outside clutching a muddy TV remote. She said she knew from watching the news that her home was gone, but she had to see it. From the watermark on the walls, it seemed like the floodwaters licked her ceiling. Her belongings, which she estimated at $4,000, were covered with mold, mud and mosquitoes.
She packed some things in a truck, but had nowhere to take it.
"Ain’t nowhere to come back to live," she said.
Sadness and joy.
At Palm Terrace, residents gathered around a dead dog trapped in a chain link fence. Neighbors had been taking turns feeding the dog since the old man who owned him died. They named him Duke. On Wednesday, they looked at the dog’s remains with pity and sadness. They survived, but Duke didn’t.
There was a lot of sadness in the projects, but there were some gleeful moments, too.
Helen Roberson, 77, begged a man to crawl through her broken home to find her pet bird, Pretty Boy. When he crawled out carrying the cage littered with seeds and droppings and Pretty Boy clinging to the corner, Roberson broke into a wide smile. "
He’s still alive," she said. "I heard him hollering."
Neighbors looked on in amazement. Some called him a miracle bird. Another lady placed an untouched Bible next to Pretty Boy.
She said she found it in her devastated living room, opened to the page with the verse: "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want."
EDITOR'S OPINION: Oleander Homes, Cedar Terrace, Palm Terrace and Magnolia Homes are old and run-down. Some of these projects were built shortly after World War II. They have long been breeding grounds for drug addiction and crime. In recent times, they've barely been fit to live in and should have been demolished years ago. Housing projects for the poor are a Catch 22. Once established, they soon become delapitated but can't be replaced because there are no other places for the poorest among us to live.
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