This week, leaders celebrated the strides Lake Charles and the surrounding region has made in recovering from the historic slew of disasters that struck the city and region, beginning with Hurricane Laura on Aug. 27, 2020.

At the Lake Charles Event Center on Aug. 27, local officials, representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state agencies tasked with recovery and others involved in rebuilding the region, discussed lessons learned and achievements made over the past four years.

Lake Charles, coined the “most weather-battered city in America” by The Weather Channel, was on its way to becoming the “most resilient city” after the devastation caused by two major hurricanes, a flood and an ice storm, according to Mayor Nic Hunter.

Hunter, whose vigorous advocacy was crucial in securing federal aid for the region, touted the city’s successes in rebuilding damaged homes and recruiting developers to add to the housing stock, which was decimated by the storms and flood.

“We will have more rental units than we had before Hurricane Laura,” Hunter said, pointing to several new developments planned and in progress across the city, including an ambitious project turning a former public housing complex into a mixed-income neighborhood featuring rental units, community areas and commercial space.

Funded with $40 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Choice Neighborhood Initiative project will replace a public housing complex that was severely damaged. 

Bringing back those who have been displaced has proved to be a challenge, in large part because of the delayed arrival of federal aid. 

The aid for long-term recovery took more than two years to arrive. In the meantime, many displaced residents, facing a lack of local housing alternatives, moved away and have been hard to reach, according to the Lake Charles Housing Authority. 

“That’s been a problem,” said Avonda Biggs, the project’s coordinator with the LCHA. “We’re still searching.”

Even for those who can be found and are eager to come back after years of displacement, a return to their old neighborhood will take time. The large-scale project, which broke ground earlier this month, will take years to complete. 

Still, local officials involved with the project say it was necessary to make a big change, even if it takes more time. 

“I felt that we had to think bigger than getting people into housing tomorrow,” Nicole Miller, Calcasieu Parish’s program director for disaster housing recovery and chair of the Lake Charles Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, told The Advocate in May 2023. “We just can’t keep putting duct tape on the same solutions and expecting them to work.”

The project will be built to the highest current standard of hurricane resiliency, making it less susceptible to damage from future storms, and offers far more units and amenities than the previous housing complex.

Homeowners too have had a tough road to recovery. Many lost money to shady contractors performing shoddy work, fought lengthy court battles with their insurance providers to fund repairs or waited years for federal aid to repair damage and make their homes livable again. 

Federal aid in the form of Community Block Development Grants for disaster relief didn’t arrive until late 2022 and has since been disbursed through the state’s Restore program. The state was awarded a total of $1.05 billion for recovery from hurricanes Laura and Delta.

As of Aug. 26, the Office of Community Development awarded 1,817 grants in southwest Louisiana. A study estimated that 50,000 housing units were damaged by Laura and Delta. Only a relatively small portion of those would likely qualify for the program. For example, homeowners with FEMA-assessed damages below $3,000 or those who carried a certain level of insurance aren’t eligible.

Local and state officials acknowledged that the process has had its challenges, despite the state’s efforts to make the program more accessible by lowering the damage threshold and insurance levels to qualify. 

“We still think that FEMA undervalued the damage to some of these homes,” Hunter said. Pandemic social distancing requirements meant that many assessments took place virtually or from afar, which likely led to damage being missed. 

“That was a major hurdle,” Hunter added. “I hope there were some lessons learned.”

Indeed, lessons were learned, said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who heads the agency and spoke at the summit. “During the pandemic, we were forced very quickly into doing things remotely and virtually, and so we had to figure out ways to do that,” Criswell said. “While we figure that out and overcome the challenges that we experienced in 2020 and parts of 2021, with some storms, we also learn how to use technology better.”

Moving forward, Criswell said, the agency is using technology to help get money into the hands of disaster survivors faster. Drones and satellites can now scan areas hit particularly badly enabling administrators to allocate emergency relief funds to residents immediately, shortcutting the often lengthy process of waiting for individual inspections. 

For southwest Louisiana residents, that newfound proficiency with technology comes too late. While a comprehensive reassessment of damages was floated when the Restore program struggled to find enough qualified applicants, no such reassessment took place. Those whose properties were undervalued and assessed to be below the threshold to qualify missed out on federal recovery funds.  

Then there are those kept out by the requirements associated with federal funds. One main requirement is that homeowners must have clear title to prove that they owned the property at the time of the storm, a major hurdle according to disaster relief groups and local officials. 

Hunter said the city is helping residents in need resolve title issues, especially in cases where the home is still in the name of a family member who died either prior to or in the two years after the storm, before the application process for the state’s relief program started. According to Hunter, the City of Lake Charles supports local nonprofits in hosting seminars to educate residents on the importance of succession planning. 

“That’s something that we are doing our best with,” Hunter said. If title issues can’t be resolved, he added, “we connect them with other nonprofits and faith based organizations who don’t have that requirement.” But four years after Laura made landfall, most nonprofits involved in the rebuilding process have left town, run out of funding, or both. 

Some of the area’s most vulnerable residents have been left behind. Some have simply lost hope, worn down by years of paperwork and waiting.

In Starks, north of Lake Charles, where the pine trees grow tall, Theresa LeBoeuf still lives in a trailer issued by FEMA. When Laura hit, it sent four of those pine trees through the roof of the homestead she and her fiance were living in at the time.

FEMA gave them $500 in emergency assistance and the trailer they still live in today. And the rent it is scheduled to go up rapidly. Working at a local grocery store making $200 a week, LeBoeuf said she doesn’t have the money to repair the home herself, or to pay for the increased rent on the trailer.

After going through at least 10 FEMA representatives over the past four years, LeBoeuf said she is exhausted. “It’s gotten so frustrating,” LeBoeuf said. “I don’t even want to deal with anyone anymore.”

A few miles further south, in Vinton, Anthony Felix’s family home was made unlivable by storm damage. When his mother died in March 2021, Felix went through the steps to have the deed transferred. But when he applied for the Restore program, he was told he was ineligible unless he could prove that he resided in the home at the time of the storm by providing documentation such as a cable or utility bill. 

Felix, who said he can’t provide that kind of proof because while he lived with and took care of his elderly mother, all relevant bills were still in her name while she was alive. Slowly, he began to give up on the process. “I gave them everything that I had,” he said. 

Felix now lives in an apartment complex just a few blocks from his family home. Whenever he can, he tries to set aside money from his disability check to pay for repairs. “I’m saving all my pennies,” he said. So far, he estimates he has spent $15,000 of his own funds on repairs, but the home remains unlivable, leaving him to utilize a Section 8 housing voucher to pay rent at the apartment complex down the road.

In North Lake Charles, where homes with blue tarps, torn off siding and caved-in roofs still dominate much of the landscape, many residents find themselves in a similar position. Without  clear titles to the homes their families have lived in for generations, they stand to lose what is often the biggest asset passed down to them. In an effort to clean up remnants of the storms’ wrath, the city has begun to issue demolition orders on homes that haven’t been repaired.

The visual divide between the still-damaged neighborhoods north of Interstate 10 and the largely recovered downtown showcases what researcher Hannah Friedrich described as a deeply uneven recovery. Friedrich, a researcher at Arizona State University, spent several months interviewing local residents about their recovery experience.

“There’s a real gap,” Friedrich said. “While I think it’s important to celebrate what has been done, there has to be a conversation about what’s still going on.” Whether Lake Charles residents consider themselves recovered from the devastation of four back-to-back disasters, she said, “depends what your address is.”