[News] For a Puerto Rican Community in a FEMA Flood Zone, Disaster Funds Promise Little Relief

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-disaster-relief/ 



  For a Puerto Rican Community in a FEMA Flood Zone, Disaster Funds
  Promise Little Relief

Alleen Brown - September 22, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Colorful houses line_ the winding streets of the San Isidro 
neighborhood of Canóvanas, Puerto Rico, some missing walls or windows, 
others with roofs that are partially caved in. In late summer, the fruit 
trees are weighted with passionfruit, starfruit, and bananas, alongside 
intermittent piles of bricks and dilapidated vehicles. Driving through 
his neighborhood, Luis Colón points out what recovery looks like two 
years after Hurricane Maria.

Colón, a member of the local community board, stops by the home of 
38-year-old Melissa Velázquez and her four kids. Her roof leaks every 
time it rains, but she was denied assistance from the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency, because, like most of her neighbors and about half 
the population of Puerto Rico, she does not have a formal title for her 
property.

Nearby, Daisy Dolores Morel’s home is still inundated with an inch of 
fetid water the color of pea soup. Morel was denied aid after Maria in 
part because she had previously accepted funds from FEMA. The agency 
often conditions recovery money on the purchase of flood insurance; 
those who can’t afford it are penalized when the next storm hits.

Colón’s tour pauses to take in the view from the limestone hills 
overlooking San Isidro. A sea of grass blankets one side of the 
neighborhood and numerous blue tarps cover the rooftops below. Like many 
of Puerto Rico’s most impoverished communities, San Isidro was built 
informally on the island’s coastal plains in response to a housing 
crisis. Homes were constructed without permits, land titles, or urban 
planners on a public wetland so environmentally precarious that for 
years federal officials prevented Puerto Rico from even providing public 
utilities like drinking water in the area.

Most of the neighborhood’s residents meet the poverty threshold, many 
are immigrants from the Dominican Republic, and some are undocumented. 
Located in a flood zone at the heart of the Atlantic hurricane belt, San 
Isidro is one of the most vulnerable communities in the world to the 
intensifying climate crisis.

Now, the island is set to receive a new round of relief funding intended 
for low-income residents whose homes remain in a state of disrepair. The 
Department of Housing and Urban Development’s R3 program stands for 
Repair, Reconstruction, and Relocation, but for much of San Isidro, the 
first two R’s are unlikely to apply. Instead, the only option for relief 
will be to relocate. That’s because the HUD funds come attached to a new 
FEMA flood map that designates more than 250,000 homes across Puerto 
Rico as virtually ineligible for reconstruction because of their 
susceptibility to flooding. Another portion of the HUD money will go to 
flood mitigation, but those funds won’t be available until long after 
relocations have begun. And for those unable to prove they own their 
homes, there may be no help offered at all.

The need to reduce the vulnerability of people living in flood zones is 
undeniable. But for Puerto Ricans whose only reliable resource during 
Maria was their community, relocating select neighbors, one by one, to 
different parts of the island may only serve to deepen deadly isolation 
during the future storms that will inevitably come. Determining how to 
justly relocate low-income neighborhoods in flood zones, and who will 
benefit after they leave, are among the most pressing climate justice 
questions of our time.

Legal advocates and community organizers across Puerto Rico are sounding 
alarm bells that the relocation plan provides ample opportunities for 
developers and politicians to clear away impoverished communities that 
stand in the way of valuable land or political ambitions.

    How to justly relocate low-income neighborhoods in flood zones, and
    who will benefit after they leave, are among the most pressing
    climate justice questions of our time.

No corresponding restrictions on construction will apply to private 
developers interested in flood-prone territory. In fact, the Puerto 
Rican government’s action plan 
<https://www.cdbg-dr.pr.gov/en/action-plan/> asserts that some of the 
billions of dollars in recovery funds will be used to promote 
“opportunity zones.” The zones were created via Republicans’ December 
2017 tax overhaul and offer tax breaks for developers building in census 
tracts that contain high levels of poverty. A whopping 98 percent of 
Puerto Rico has been designated as opportunity zones, compared to 12 
percent of all U.S. census tracts. Where the opportunity zones overlap 
with flood zones, the government may provide subsidies for development 
in the same types of environments it denies reconstruction funding.

“When you get deeper in terms of public policy and deeper in terms of 
the details in the action plan, and you put them in context with FEMA’s 
new maps of flooding and the context of the opportunity zones, you start 
to see that this is not for the people of Puerto Rico but instead about 
using the crisis after Maria to create a reorganization of the 
territory,” said Roberto Thomas, director of the Jobos Bay 
Eco-Development Initiative <https://idebajo.wordpress.com/>, which has 
been working with hurricane-impacted communities on the southern coast. 
“They’re trying to get a lot of communities displaced because they think 
they live in a place that can be an opportunity for other projects like 
tourism.”

Colón, too, is deeply cynical about the relocation program. He’s seen 
developments built on the wetlands seemingly with ease, such as a nearby 
Walmart. But his community has always been treated as a thorn in the 
side of local politicians. “What they want is to weaken the community so 
that they can throw it out later,” Colón said. “We’re fighting because 
if the funds are being released, we want them to truly help those who 
need it.”


      Cycle of Abandonment

For months, President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated, incorrectly, 
that Puerto Rico has received $92 billion in relief funding. In reality, 
about $49 billion 
<https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/english/nota/theagonyofthereconstructionprocess-2518926/> 
has been approved for the island’s recovery, and only $20 billion has 
been disbursed. The bulk of the recovery funds that remain, about $20 
billion, will be distributed through HUD’s Community Development Block 
Grant program.

Those funds represent the “next step in the rebirth of the island,” 
according to the Puerto Rican government’s action plan, meant not only 
to rehabilitate the thousands of homes still stuck with FEMA’s blue 
tarps for roofs but also to stimulate economic growth, reduce 
emigration, transform the energy system, and protect against future storms.

Puerto Rico, along with every nation on the globe, will indeed require a 
kind of rebirth as the climate crisis deepens. Under the best-case 
scenario, if humans reach peak CO2 emissions mid-century, the seas 
around Puerto Rico will rise 1 to 2 feet by 2100, impacting 8,000 
structures, according to <https://www.globalchange.gov/nca4> the 
U.S. government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment in 2018. Under a 
worst-case scenario, where emissions continue to rise, seas could rise 9 
to 11 feet. A study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the 
amount of rain dumped by Maria was five times 
<https://www.npr.org/2019/04/17/714098828/climate-change-was-the-engine-that-powered-hurricane-marias-devastating-rains> 
more likely to occur under the fossil fuel-altered climate conditions of 
2017 than it was in 1950. Warmer seawater will fuel increasingly 
frequent Category 4 and 5 hurricanes as the years go on.

Rather than usher in a just transformation of the island, the plans for 
the funds in Puerto Rico seem likely to replicate a pattern of 
profiteering that is pushing portions of island further and further behind.

The plan was authored by an administration so corrupt and incompetent 
that in July, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans went out into the 
streets to eject the island’s governor 
<https://theintercept.com/2019/07/24/puerto-rico-protests-ricardo-rossello-la-junta/>, 
Ricky Rosselló. Protests exploded after the local Center for 
Investigative Journalism released Telegram messages 
<http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/07/the-889-pages-of-the-telegram-chat-between-rossello-nevares-and-his-closest-aides/> 
between Rosselló and an inner circle of government advisers and 
associates, revealing the private interests 
<http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/07/the-pillage-of-public-funds-in-puerto-rico-going-on-behind-the-chat/> 
that governed the island. Most galvanizing was a text from Rosselló’s 
then-chief financial officer, who said they should feed the cadavers of 
those killed during Maria to their critics.

As the streets filled with demonstrators, Rosselló’s government was in 
the midst of finalizing its guidelines for $775 million in Repair, 
Reconstruction, and Relocation funding. The program’s launch was among 
Rosselló’s final actions before he stepped down.

The organization Ayuda Legal provided assistance to communities 
navigating the byzantine recovery process after Hurricane Maria hit. Its 
lawyers have since become 
<http://www.ayudalegalpuertorico.org/quienes-somos/> key advocates for 
holding the government accountable to the needs of the most devastated 
parts of the island.

“Given the current situation that the country is facing, of corruption 
and mismanagement of federal funds, there is a unanimous concern across 
the island that the R3 program is going to be another abusive scheme 
like the others that we have experienced since hurricanes Irma and 
María,” the organization said in a blog post 
<http://www.ayudalegalpuertorico.org/2019/08/12/programa-de-reconstruccion-reparacion-o-reubicacion-r3/> 
shortly after the rules’ release. “Currently, the policy of the action 
plan and R3 program lends itself to displacement and discrimination 
toward families that are in risk zones or that don’t have titles.”

While the R3 program covers repairs for minor damage in flood and 
landslide zones, it does not offer money for reconstruction of homes 
still “substantially” destroyed, a threshold that a large proportion of 
San Isidro would meet, according to lawyers with Ayuda Legal. Those 
living in homes with extensive damage may instead be offered a voucher 
to relocate, of an amount equivalent to their home’s value. If they 
can’t find a new home, the government will build one, outside of any 
flood zone, based on a series of approved design models.

Approvals for R3 aid will be based in part on a FEMA inspection process 
that was widely criticized for being slapdash. According to Ayuda Legal 
attorney Verónica González-Rodriguez, some contractors were paid based 
on how many homes they could inspect in a day, some didn’t even enter 
the homes, and others spoke no Spanish. Neighbors with nearly identical 
circumstances ended up with vastly different results.

“If the inspections were flawed, then the CDBG funds are also flawed,” 
explained Ariadna Godreau-Aubert, Ayuda Legal’s executive director.

    Four percent of Puerto Rico’s population has already abandoned the
    island since 2017.

Demand for assistance is likely to far outweigh the supply. So even in 
flood-zone communities, only a select fraction will be offered money to 
relocate. In the end, as Godreau-Aubert put it, “It’s a relocation plan 
that is not only inadequate but is no plan at all.”

Without adequate aid, some of those who flee seeking safety from storms 
never return. As communities depopulate, services like schools and 
courts are eliminated, leading to a larger exodus. Four percent 
<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/26/puerto-rico-population-2018/> 
of Puerto Rico’s population has already abandoned the island since 2017. 
Puerto Rico’s relocation plan has potential to accelerate the process, 
leaving both those who stay and those who go a little more isolated.

It’s aging adults like Ángel Luis Román Martínez who most worry Colón. 
The 79-year-old had to be rescued by the Red Cross after he weathered 
Maria inside his wooden house. From his living room, a blue tarp peeks 
through the holes that remain in his roof. His floorboards sag, and 
whenever it rains, everything is damp. But in San Isidro, at least there 
are people who look out for him.

When he returned home after the storm, Román Martínez fixed up the place 
with the help of a neighbor. As for FEMA, “They put on the tarp here, 
nothing else,” Colón explained. The last time Román Martínez met with 
the agency, they gave him a flyer that said “R3.”


      Floodplains or Opportunity Zones

Already, the R3 program has a few clear winners. Four companies have 
been awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to administer the program, 
but all have records that raise red flags.

AECOM is a multinational corporation based in Los Angeles that 
specializes in engineering services. According to an investigation by 
the Center for Investigative Journalism, one of AECOM’s lobbyists 
<http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/08/the-players-behind-the-companies-commissioned-for-puerto-ricos-recovery/> 
until very recently was Rosselló’s former campaign manager Elías 
Sánchez. Sánchez was involved 
<http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/07/the-pillage-of-public-funds-in-puerto-rico-going-on-behind-the-chat/> 
in the infamous Telegram chat and reportedly 
<http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/07/the-pillage-of-public-funds-in-puerto-rico-going-on-behind-the-chat/> 
remained one of the most powerful figures in the Roselló government even 
after he’d moved from a government position back to the private sector. 
He’s reportedly being investigated 
<https://www.latinorebels.com/2019/06/12/formerrossellocampaignmanager/> 
by the FBI for influence-peddling.

    Properties once determined too vulnerable for rehabilitation could
    become newly valuable only after residents have been pushed out.

Alliance for the Recovery of Puerto Rico, which was only registered 
<http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/09/impossible-to-keep-track-of-all-recovery-contracts-granted-by-the-government-of-puerto-rico/> 
as a company in July 2018, is part of the holding corporation that 
managed an earlier Maria recovery program steeped in controversy 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/us/fema-puerto-rico-housing-repairs-maria.html> 
for spending homeowners’ awards on markups, overhead, and middlemen 
rather than repairs. ICF Incorporated ran the reviled 
<https://www.ibtimes.com/long-road-home-2062255> Road Home program in 
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and was fined $1 million by the 
Louisiana Recovery Authority for failing to meet the program’s goals. 
And Innovative Emergency Management was hired 
<http://inthesetimes.com/article/2310> by FEMA in 2004 to design a 
hurricane preparedness plan that proved to be deeply inadequate when 
Katrina hit.

A list of approved construction firms has not been released yet, but 
since the R3 funding is reimbursement-based, very few small, local 
construction companies are likely to be able to participate.

Which private actors will find ways to use recovery funds to profit off 
the FEMA flood zones remains to be seen. San Isidro is located in the 
northeastern interior of Puerto Rico, but many of the flood zones are 
located on the coast. “In the coastal zone, you’re going to find very 
poor, black communities,” Godreau-Aubert explained. “At the same time, 
you’ll find tourism and the millionaire investors who are being 
attracted by tax incentives.”

Although the guidelines for the R3 program state an intent to maintain 
vacated land as open space, to potentially be used for parks, 
agriculture, camping, or unpaved parking lots, the language does not bar 
new private development. Equally worrisome, no plans have even been 
released for $8.3 billion designated for mitigation to protect 
communities from future flooding. Properties once determined too 
vulnerable for rehabilitation could become newly valuable only after 
residents have been pushed out.

In a complaint 
<http://www.ayudalegalpuertorico.org/2019/07/09/ayuda-legal-puerto-rico-presenta-querella-ante-hud-por-faltas-en-guias-cdbg-dr/> 
filed with HUD, Ayuda Legal demanded that deed restrictions barring 
redevelopment be applied to property acquired through the relocation 
program and that mitigation be an option before relocation. So far, the 
government hasn’t budged.

“A just recovery has to respond to the necessities and the desires of 
the people,” said González-Rodriguez. Too often, she continued, “the 
assistance that they receive really doesn’t conform to their needs but 
to those of others — others that could be the government, others that 
could be private companies, others that could be the hotel that is in 
the community. That’s true in San Isidro as much as it is in all of the 
poor communities of Puerto Rico.”


      Resilience in the Hurricane Belt

In some sections of San Isidro, residents arrived in the wake of another 
storm, Hurricane Hugo, in 1989. Some say they were offered land by a 
former mayor eager to build a base of voters.

Jannette Lozada, a petite woman with a commanding presence, has been the 
community leader of San Isidro’s Valle Hill section for 17 years. “They 
call us invaders, and I am not an invader,” Lozada told The Intercept, 
referring to a derogatory term used for squatters. She was pregnant with 
her fourth child, she says, when her stepmother told her that the mayor 
of Canóvanas was giving out land. She had nothing at the time. Her home 
and many others in the Santurce neighborhood of the capital, San Juan, 
had been destroyed by Hurricane Hugo. “I came here, and they gave me this.”

Community leaders play an important, if under-appreciated, role in 
places like San Isidro. Lozada is a gatekeeper, peacemaker, and 
organizing hub of Valle Hill. Few outside organizations operate in the 
neighborhood, but, if asked, people like Lozada and Colón can tell you 
exactly who needs help and what they need.

When it starts to rain, Lozada’s phone often rings. It’s her neighbors 
calling, crying out of fear of the next storm. Maria flooded the 
neighborhood with up to 10 feet of water, destroying hundreds of homes. 
For months, there was no running water or electricity, and residents 
relied on donated products like Ensure to stave off hunger. The rain 
gives her anxiety too. “Now September is coming, which is the worst 
here,” she said.

    Lozada and Colón spent years before Maria pushing for a dike to be
    constructed, but the project was repeatedly put off.

To Lozada, a dike is the only answer to the question of how to protect 
San Isidro from future flooding. She and Colón spent years before Maria 
pushing for one to be constructed, but the project was repeatedly put 
off. They blame the delay on Canóvanas Mayor Lornna Soto, with whom the 
community board has clashed.

In the spring of 2018, Soto told press that the city needed to find $20 
million to pay for the dike and that the HUD funds might make the 
difference. But she said completing the project could take one to three 
years (which translated to many community members as one to three 
hurricane seasons) and would still require dozens of people to relocate. 
She did not mention the dike in a separate presentation she made about 
the municipality’s plans for the recovery funds.

As Lozada sees it, the neglect is a question of politics. The community 
board doesn’t support Soto or the pro-statehood PNP party, so the mayor 
doesn’t prioritize the one thing that could save San Isidro. Soto denied 
a request for an interview.

Lozada said she’d love to see a federal monitor come in and keep a close 
accounting of the way the recovery money is spent. In fact, in the wake 
of Rosselló’s resignation, under pressure 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/01/trump-administration-place-new-restrictions-billions-aid-puerto-rico-amid-islands-political-crisis/> 
from Trump, HUD announced 
<https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_19_115> 
plans to appoint a monitor to oversee the disbursement of new funds to 
Puerto Rico.

But federal oversight has not proven an effective tool to beat 
corruption and mismanagement on the island. The fiscal oversight board 
imposed by the Obama administration to oversee debt restructuring has 
imposed extensive austerity measures on the island, yet corruption 
scandals have continued, and calls from Puerto Rican residents to audit 
the debt have been disregarded. Meanwhile, some of the most high-profile 
<https://www.businessinsider.com/300-million-contract-whitefish-puerto-rico-ryan-zinke-2017-10> 
hurricane recovery scandals 
<https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/fema-official-arrested-for-fraud-over-hurricane-maria-recovery-effort-in-puerto-rico.html> 
have involved federal officials, not Puerto Rican officials. In the end, 
the monitor may only serve to slow down projects like the dike. 
According to a HUD spokesperson 
<https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060860193>, the department 
will not deliver the mitigation funds until the federal monitor is in place.

If it’s not going to be a dike, Lozada isn’t wholly opposed to 
relocation. But for the process to be fair, she argues, it needs to be 
planned via community assemblies, with an option for neighbors to move 
together to a new location that shares some of San Isidro’s best 
qualities, like its semi-rural quality, which allows neighbors to raise 
chickens and enjoy the lush vegetation.

“That is what I want,” she said. “If there’s going to be a relocation, 
that it be just, that it truly, truly help us.” But that’s not how it 
usually goes.

After Hurricane Georges caused widespread flooding in 1998, for example, 
FEMA paid for many residents of a community west of San Isidro to be 
relocated 
<https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/request-precautionary-measures-iahrc-regarding-villas-del-sol?redirect=human-rights/request-precautionary-measures-iahrc-regarding-villas-del-sol> to 
a low-income housing project, but some families were never placed, so 
they never left. In 2009, FEMA threatened 
<https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/nota/elgobiernotendriaquedevolver150millones-599925/> to 
force 
<https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/nota/elgobiernotendriaquedevolver150millones-599925/> the 
Puerto Rican government to return millions in federal funding if the 
structures in the neighborhood, known as Villas del Sol, weren’t 
removed. That August, the Puerto Rican government shut off water and 
electricity in the area, leading to outbreaks of dengue fever and H1N1. 
Police entered with bulldozers, liberally deploying pepper spray and batons.

The Villas del Sol community resisted forced eviction, and finally, in 
2010, agreed to relocate to a plot of land that had been provided by a 
wealthy donor. But nearly 10 years later, the infrastructure promised by 
the government in return still has not been installed 
<https://peoplelivehere.press/2019/07/18/one-decade-later-villas-del-sol-is-still-rebuilding/>.

“Many people are going to take the money, but me, I say one thing: Here, 
I live well. Here, the kids still play in the street,” Lozada said. With 
its high rate of poverty, environmental insecurity, and active drug 
trade, life in Valle Hill is not always easy. But it’s the type of place 
where neighbors help each other weather a storm. “Sometimes I may have 
wanted to go, but, I’m saying, where would I go?”

/This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of 
more than 250 news outlets that aims to strengthen coverage of the 
climate crisis./

-- 
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