African American homeowners struggle to rebuild after flood
13th September 2016 · 0 Comments
By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer
Many rural and urban African American homeowners who were flooded in south-central Louisiana last month face a host of worries, especially if they’re low-income or seniors. Some of them are dealing with yet another high-water event. Those who received letters from Federal Emergency Management Agency denying them aid have little money for repairs. Others are watching their physical health deteriorate. Homelessness is a risk for people who lost their dwellings. And down the road, some flooded residents could be priced out of housing by the kind of gentrification seen in New Orleans after Katrina.
In one of the worst cases, the African American subdivisions of Pecan Acres and Pleasantview outside of New Roads in Pointe Coupee Parish flooded again last month. They’ve been in a continuous struggle with water. The Pecan Acres subdivision has officially flooded 16 or 17 times since it was founded 45 years ago, former Pointe Coupee Parish Police Juror Albert Dewey Dukes said last week. He represented the community for two decades before retiring in December. “In August, most of the homes in Pecan Acres were damaged or destroyed as the Portage Canal overflowed again,” he said.
Governor John Bel Edwards toured Pecan Acres on August 30 and learned of its problems for the first time then.
“Pecan Acres never should have been developed, at least not for homes,” Dukes said. The area was a swamp and a former dumping spot. The community relies on a drainage pump, the canal and a levee to keep water out. “The authorities can’t even get in to clean the canal, and it hasn’t been dredged in years,” he said. The parish police jury is working on a project now to improve drainage and raise the levee, however.
Water has receded in Pecan Acres since mid-August, and Americorps volunteers have helped clean out homes. “Most of the families are doing the rebuilding now themselves,” Dukes said. “Many of them are getting FEMA letters denying them assistance. That’s because their homes are in a flood zone, and they haven’t had the money to pay for the flood insurance that’s required.”
Those who can rebuild are likely to stay, even with the constant threat of being inundated. “Most of them can’t afford to move,” Dukes said.
After flooding from Hurricane Gustav in 2008, Pecan Acres residents joined in a class action suit, claiming the parish was derelict in its drainage management. A drainage pump failed in Gustav’s rainfall, causing the canal to overflow and flooding homes. In 2012, residents received part of a $2 million insurance settlement.
In July of this year, the parish police jury solicited bids for a Pecan Acres flood-control project, financed by a FEMA hazard mitigation grant to improve drainage and strengthen barriers. The parish hopes to raise the levee along Bayou Pointe and Portage Canal.
Educator Monica Fabre grew up in Pecan Acres after her parents bought a house there in 1971. “They had been sharecroppers until the last cotton gins closed here in 1967,” she said. “Then they scrimped and saved, picking pecans to buy their dream house.” The community’s 16 or 17 floods over 45 years were the recorded ones, she said. In fact, Pecan Acres flooded many more times than that. “Families had cinder blocks or bricks so we could raise our furniture off the floor before it rained,” she said. “We would wade off from home in the morning to get to school.”
Floodwater from the Portage Canal contains residential and industrial waste water, Fabre said. “People have been dying from cancer and long-term illnesses here younger and at higher rates than they should have,” she said. “My mother died at 56.”
“The soil and water needs to be tested for toxins,” Fabre said. “But the parish may be afraid of what it will find.” The state’s Department of Environmental Quality hasn’t done any recent sampling in Pecan Acres, she said.
Fabre was pleased that Governor Edwards visited Pecan Acres last month. “He put us on his radar screen,” she said. “The state should have had us there all along.” After his visit, Edwards released a statement saying that his administration is now aware of the area and its residents, and will do all it can to address their needs.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore, who grew up in Pointe Coupee, met with Pecan Acres residents a number of times from late August to early September. He participated in a town hall meeting there last Thursday.
Fabre said residents of Pecan Acres and Pleasantview are the working poor and seniors on fixed incomes. “They can’t afford flood insurance because that would mean not paying their electricity or other bills,” she said. Since the August flood, many have received rejection letters from FEMA because of not having insurance. And for residents who do qualify for FEMA’s up to $33,000 for home repairs, those payments are seldom the maximum amount and are only intended to cover basics, she said.
As for the availability of federal Small Business Administration loans to cover the bulk of a homeowner’s repair work, “my guess is that, based on income, only three to five percent of families in Pecan Acres and Pleasantview would qualify,” Fabre said.
Meanwhile, many of those residents are taking advantage of the state’s Shelter at Home program, which is independent of FEMA. Shelter at Home provides up to $15,000 for repairs that can make a house safe while owners rebuild. “That gets your plumbing and lights running and a hot plate going,” Fabre said.
Someday, resident buyouts could be an option for Pecan Acres and Pleasantview. “But it really isn’t feasible for seniors in their eighties and nineties to move,” Fabre said.
Fabre said members of her family in greater Baton Rouge, about 37 miles southeast of Pecan Acres, also flooded in August. “My cousins and other relatives in Baker, Zachary and North Baton Rouge all had water for the first time ever,” she said. Baker is a small, mostly African-American city in East Baton Rouge Parish, and Zachary is a city—about half white and the rest Black, Asian and Hispanic—in East Baton Rouge. North Baton Rouge is a mostly Black neighborhood in the capital.
Fabre worries that urban areas like North Baton Rouge, which is blighted but has affordable housing, might become gentrified as the city recovers. “Eleven years after Katrina, some New Orleaneans living in Pointe Coupee are still trying to move home, but they can’t afford Orleans now because of its gentrification,” she said.
Isaiah Marshall, managing partner at consultants Sable International in Baton Rouge, has a number of concerns about African Americans who flooded in and near the capital.“North Baton Rouge and Monticello were hit pretty hard,” he said. Marshall is a former director of the now-dormant Baton Rouge Black Chamber of Commerce. Monticello is a mostly African American community in East Baton Rouge Parish.
“The water’s gone, but some of the homes that flooded in these areas still aren’t gutted,” Marshall said. Flood victims with poor credit histories are frustrated as they search for loans and decent housing, he said. In African-American areas that were inundated, the need for mental health services is expected to grow. Nonprofits and Black-owned small businesses will struggle for assistance as they try to recover.
Following the flood, homelessness will be on the rise, Marshall predicted. He noted that the large shelter at Baton Rouge River Center is scheduled to close in mid-September. Early last Thursday, the shelter housed 419 evacuees, down from 11,000 in mid-August, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services said.
This article originally published in the September 12, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
