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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-disaster-relief/">https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-disaster-relief/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">For a Puerto Rican Community in a FEMA
Flood Zone, Disaster Funds Promise Little Relief</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Alleen Brown - September 22,
2019</div>
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<p><u>Colorful houses line</u> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
</div>
<blockquote data-reactid="213">
<p>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.</p>
</blockquote>
<div data-reactid="215">
<p>No corresponding restrictions on construction will
apply to private developers interested in flood-prone
territory. In fact, the Puerto Rican government’s <a
href="https://www.cdbg-dr.pr.gov/en/action-plan/">action
plan</a> 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.</p>
<p>“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 <a
href="https://idebajo.wordpress.com/">Jobos Bay
Eco-Development Initiative</a>, 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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
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<div data-reactid="218">
<h3>Cycle of Abandonment</h3>
<p>For months, President Donald Trump has repeatedly
stated, incorrectly, that Puerto Rico has received $92
billion in relief funding. In reality, about <a
href="https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/english/nota/theagonyofthereconstructionprocess-2518926/">$49
billion</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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, <a
href="https://www.globalchange.gov/nca4">according
to</a> 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 <a
href="https://www.npr.org/2019/04/17/714098828/climate-change-was-the-engine-that-powered-hurricane-marias-devastating-rains">five
times</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/07/24/puerto-rico-protests-ricardo-rossello-la-junta/">eject
the island’s governor</a>, Ricky Rosselló. Protests
exploded after the local Center for Investigative
Journalism released <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/07/the-889-pages-of-the-telegram-chat-between-rossello-nevares-and-his-closest-aides/">Telegram
messages</a> between Rosselló and an inner circle of
government advisers and associates, revealing the <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/07/the-pillage-of-public-funds-in-puerto-rico-going-on-behind-the-chat/">private
interests</a> 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>The organization Ayuda Legal provided assistance to
communities navigating the byzantine recovery process
after Hurricane Maria hit. Its lawyers have since <a
href="http://www.ayudalegalpuertorico.org/quienes-somos/">become</a> key
advocates for holding the government accountable to
the needs of the most devastated parts of the island.</p>
<p>“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
<a
href="http://www.ayudalegalpuertorico.org/2019/08/12/programa-de-reconstruccion-reparacion-o-reubicacion-r3/">blog
post</a> 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.”</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“If the inspections were flawed, then the CDBG funds
are also flawed,” explained Ariadna Godreau-Aubert,
Ayuda Legal’s executive director.</p>
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<blockquote data-reactid="233">
<p>Four percent of Puerto Rico’s population has already
abandoned the island since 2017.</p>
</blockquote>
<div data-reactid="235">
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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. <a
href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/26/puerto-rico-population-2018/">Four
percent</a> 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.</p>
</div>
<div data-reactid="249">
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
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<h3>Floodplains or Opportunity Zones</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/08/the-players-behind-the-companies-commissioned-for-puerto-ricos-recovery/">lobbyists</a>
until very recently was Rosselló’s former campaign
manager Elías Sánchez. Sánchez was <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/07/the-pillage-of-public-funds-in-puerto-rico-going-on-behind-the-chat/">involved</a>
in the infamous Telegram chat and <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/07/the-pillage-of-public-funds-in-puerto-rico-going-on-behind-the-chat/">reportedly</a>
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 <a
href="https://www.latinorebels.com/2019/06/12/formerrossellocampaignmanager/">investigated</a>
by the FBI for influence-peddling.</p>
</div>
<blockquote data-reactid="253">
<p>Properties once determined too vulnerable for
rehabilitation could become newly valuable only after
residents have been pushed out.</p>
</blockquote>
<div data-reactid="255">
<p>Alliance for the Recovery of Puerto Rico, which was
only <a
href="http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2019/09/impossible-to-keep-track-of-all-recovery-contracts-granted-by-the-government-of-puerto-rico/">registered</a>
as a company in July 2018, is part of the holding
corporation that managed an earlier Maria recovery
program steeped in <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/us/fema-puerto-rico-housing-repairs-maria.html">controversy</a>
for spending homeowners’ awards on markups, overhead,
and middlemen rather than repairs. ICF Incorporated
ran the <a
href="https://www.ibtimes.com/long-road-home-2062255">reviled</a>
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 <a
href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/2310">hired</a>
by FEMA in 2004 to design a hurricane preparedness
plan that proved to be deeply inadequate when Katrina
hit.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
</div>
<div data-reactid="258">
<p>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.</p>
<p>In a <a
href="http://www.ayudalegalpuertorico.org/2019/07/09/ayuda-legal-puerto-rico-presenta-querella-ante-hud-por-faltas-en-guias-cdbg-dr/">complaint</a>
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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
</div>
<div data-reactid="261">
<h3>Resilience in the Hurricane Belt</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
</div>
<blockquote data-reactid="262">
<p>Lozada and Colón spent years before Maria pushing for
a dike to be constructed, but the project was
repeatedly put off.</p>
</blockquote>
<div data-reactid="264">
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
</div>
<div data-reactid="275">
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/01/trump-administration-place-new-restrictions-billions-aid-puerto-rico-amid-islands-political-crisis/">pressure</a>
from Trump, HUD <a
href="https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_19_115">announced</a>
plans to appoint a monitor to oversee the disbursement
of new funds to Puerto Rico.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.businessinsider.com/300-million-contract-whitefish-puerto-rico-ryan-zinke-2017-10">high-profile</a>
hurricane recovery <a
href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/fema-official-arrested-for-fraud-over-hurricane-maria-recovery-effort-in-puerto-rico.html">scandals</a>
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 <a
href="https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060860193">spokesperson</a>,
the department will not deliver the mitigation funds
until the federal monitor is in place.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
</div>
<div data-reactid="278">
<p>After Hurricane Georges caused widespread flooding in
1998, for example, FEMA paid for many residents of a
community west of San Isidro to be <a
href="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">relocated</a> to
a low-income housing project, but some families were
never placed, so they never left. In 2009, FEMA <a
href="https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/nota/elgobiernotendriaquedevolver150millones-599925/">threatened</a> to <a
href="https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/nota/elgobiernotendriaquedevolver150millones-599925/">force</a> 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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://peoplelivehere.press/2019/07/18/one-decade-later-villas-del-sol-is-still-rebuilding/">has
not been installed</a>.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p><i>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.</i></p>
</div>
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