TERREBONNE PARISH, La. — Melissa Champagne and her daughter spent part of their Thursday afternoon at the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center trying to find a place to live.
“I’m staying at my cousin’s house right now, with my two kids and my mother,” said Champagne as she waits in line.
Champagne says it’s been a difficult two months after Hurricane Ida destroyed her Bourg home.
“We lived in an apartment, which was a two-story and now I have a skylight and I lived on the bottom floor,” said Champagne.
Champagne applied for the state’s temporary housing program two weeks ago, hoping to get a travel trailer. So far, nothing. Just steps from where she waits in line there are more than 200 trailers in the civic center parking lot, just sitting.
“First ones started showing up about two and a half weeks ago,” said Terrebonne Parish director of planning and zoning Chris Pulaski.
Pulaski says getting trailers to people should be a seven to ten-day process, but it’s taking much longer. Part of the reason is that there’s only one contractor for the entire region. Another is because of steps required by FEMA to ensure the state is reimbursed.
“That’s sort of the frustrating part that we have going on right now,” said Pulaski. “At the end of the day there are federal guidelines to follow and steps to follow because that’s how FEMA requires and operates.”
Pulaski says the state trailer program is meant to bridge a gap until FEMA’s direct housing program comes online which could take four to six months. In Terrebonne Parish, Pulaski says right now, there are almost 3,000 households in need of temporary housing. That need isn’t being met.
“In terms of travel trailers with people living in them, there are eight,” said Pulaski.
Most of those eight are at the Civic Center, being used by first responders.
“People ain’t got nowhere to go,” said David Livas who was also standing in line, waiting to talk to someone about temporary housing.
The slow process has folks like Livas, who lives in Houma and lost his home, wondering if he will ever find housing. He’s been staying with a friend in the meantime.
“If it wouldn’t have been for her, letting me stay with her, I don’t know where I would be right now,” said Lavis.
Shelters and tent camps are set up in some areas and a hotel voucher program is getting some use, but Pulaski says the trailer program needs to move faster.
“It tugs at your heart because these are the people that you see at the grocery story every day or they’re in your community,” said Pulaski.
A community where people like Champagne just want to have a place to call home again.
“We can’t even find rental places,” said Champagne. “There’s nothing available.”
The state and federal government are working to identify sites to send multiple trailers, but so far, none have been determined. The civic center in Houma is a staging area for those trailers, which means they can be sent to multiple parishes, not just Terrebonne.