Residents in a Louisiana city devastated by 2020 hurricanes are still far from recovery

LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — Every other day Lois Malvo waits for her son to bring six buckets of water from a spigot in the backyard. He then bathes his 78-year-old mother using water heated on the stove and washes her with a spray pump he bought online.

It’s been four years since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in southwest Louisiana, and Malvo is still without plumbing. Unable to afford repairs without federal funds she fears will never arrive, Malvo lives in a crumbling home where the floor sags and wires poke from the ceiling.

In the midst of peak hurricane season, recovery continues at a creeping pace in a community the Weather Channel once called America’s “most weather-battered city.”

Some residents in Lake Charles, a mostly Black city where one-fifth of the population live in poverty, are still stuck in similar conditions. They fear they’ve slipped through the cracks, even as some have been approved for federal funds but face a nearing deadline to close on their award or risk losing it.

Some homeowners are caught in legal limbo with insurance companies they say gravely underestimated their damage. And others still can’t find housing after the hurricanes destroyed apartment complexes and neighborhoods.

“It’s very, very frustrating to live like this,” Malvo said. “Sometimes I’m so down I just feel like giving up.”

State of Lake Charles

Hurricane Laura tore through Lake Charles in August 2020 as one of the most powerful storms to strike Louisiana. Six weeks later, Hurricane Delta followed the same destructive path.

Evacuated residents returned home from the storms to catastrophic damage.

The hurricanes inflicted an estimated $22 billion in damage throughout the U.S., according to the National Hurricane Center, with Louisiana taking the brunt of the hit. Delta and Laura were also blamed for causing 49 direct deaths nationwide and in the Caribbean.

Today there are signs of rebuilding and growth in parts of Lake Charles. But other areas appear frozen in time. Students learn in modular classrooms outside a still-unusable high school. A 22-story office building, once a city icon, remains an abandoned eyesore and is slated for demolition. FEMA-issued blue tarps covering damaged roofs have disintegrated to tatters.

Federal funding delays

Residents waited years for substantial federal funding as Congress dealt with another crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic.

It wasn’t until 2022 — a year and a half of struggle later and months after Louisiana grappled with more disasters, flash flooding and Hurricane Ida barreling into Louisiana’s southeastern coast communities — that financial relief homeowners longed for was announced.

Of that, $1 billion was allocated to Louisiana Restore; the state’s program tasked with distributing federal funds to homeowners impacted by natural disasters. More than 8,000 homeowners affected by Laura and Delta completed the first step to qualify. About 60% were invited to apply based on factors like the extent of their home’s damage, according to Restore’s assessments.

Tasha Guidry organized grassroots efforts, assisting dozens of people to qualify for Restore.

Guidry’s home was rebuilt by Restore, but like other residents The Associated Press interviewed, she acknowledged it was a tedious process.

“A lot of our people gave up because they didn’t understand how to navigate the process,” she said.

Restore received 3,935 applications from homeowners impacted by Laura or Delta. About two-thirds were offered funding, totaling $201 million. So far, $91 million has been distributed among 1,444 homeowners. Some 1,400 others were rejected, and a few thousand weren’t approved to apply.

Another 440 homeowners approved for Restore funding have just two months left to close on their award or risk losing it.

Rejection reasons vary from having FEMA-assessed damages less than $3,000, carrying a certain level of insurance, homeowners being unable to account for prior recovery money they received or missing documentation.

In total, 80% of the program’s $1 billion fund has been earmarked to homeowners impacted by the 2020 or 2021 hurricanes. Around $169 million “remains unobligated,” according to the state.

Insurance woes

Terra Hillman lives in the backyard in a FEMA trailer that she calls a “sardine can” while her damaged brick home is rotting away.

The insurance company paid her about $30,000 despite the estimated $300,000 in damage to her home. And she’s received notice that she’s violating local ordinances by remaining in the trailer..

“I don’t really know how much more I can take it,” she said.

The hurricanes resulted in more than 200,000 residential property claims filed in Louisiana, according to data from the state Department of Insurance. Insurers paid out at least $5 billion in claims to homeowners. According to a report by NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Laura alone caused an estimated $17.5 billion in damage to Louisiana.

Residents and officials say insurance companies have made recovery harder for Lake Charles. Some homeowners were forced into litigation to get fair deals. Others couldn’t afford the time or cost of a court battle, settling for a fraction of what they believe they’re owed.

As claims mounted, a handful of companies declared bankruptcy or fled Louisiana, shifting tens of thousands of claims to the state’s bailout program. Louisiana’s insurance crisis continues, with fewer companies doing business in the state, resulting in higher premiums.

Housing crisis

The hurricane damage left affordable housing in short supply. None of the city’s 463 public housing units are currently livable and hundreds of Section 8 houses were lost, according to Ben Taylor, executive director of the Lake Charles Housing Authority.

Many like Ramona Breaux and her two children, were forced to leave. Breaux, 60, went to live with relatives in Houston after her rented, subsidized home burned down.

“I want to come home,” said Breaux.

The city’s population dropped an estimated 6.2% from 2020 to 2023, the 12th steepest decline in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said the city is doing what it can. New housing developments expected to be finished next year should leave the city with more rental units than it had before the storms.

Post-hurricane trauma

The hurricanes left residents grappling with trauma and anxiety.

Darleen Wesley and her family spent years living in a home with boarded up windows and a leaking roof while battling their insurer in court. They’re finally back in their home after living in a backyard workshop during construction.

But her daughter panics when it thunders. Wesley tries not to think about what might happen when the next hurricane hits.

“And then I’m right back where I started,” she said. “How do I prepare for this again?”

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Cline reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.