CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Tuesday closure of RISE West Virginia’s office in White Sulphur Springs doesn’t mean the end of recovery services for Mountain State residents still trying to get into permanent homes more than two years after the June 2016 Flood, according to a state response leader.
Seven additional case managers were in the process of being hired to work the RISE cases from Greenbrier County and other counties now shifting to oversight from West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active In Disaster or VOAD due to long delays with RISE.
It’s an important step in the flood aftermath, said Jenny Gannaway, VOAD executive director.
“I feel better about disaster recovery now, I feel better than I have felt in a long time,” Gannaway told MetroNews. “I think we’re on the right track to really start getting people help.”
Since June 2016, Gannaway said VOAD had closed 1,606 cases throughout the flood zone in central and southeastern West Virginia by either completely rebuilding homes, providing housing repairs and materials or buying houses and mobile homes.
“We did all of this work with donated dollars and volunteer labor,” Gannaway said.
As of Tuesday, Gannaway estimated VOAD was closing in on providing $30 million in services since the flood.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency grant made available through the state Department of Health and Human Resources beginning in Feb. 2017 has also helped fund VOAD’s Disaster Case Management program.
By comparison, the administration through RISE of nearly $150 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was largely on hold from mid-2017 until early this year.
Of the 551 cases still open with VOAD Disaster Case Management in the affected counties as of Tuesday, Gannaway said they’ve determined more than 200 could have qualified for RISE funding, but VOAD stepped in because “nothing was happening.”
“To see that you have all this money come in which could have been a good resource for the cases we had and it not happen was frustrating,” Gannaway said.
“However, I do think right now we are on the right track and we are in better shape than we’ve been in two years to be able to use this RISE funding correctly and wisely to get people back into a home.”
Earlier this year, responding to complaints about RISE management, Governor Jim Justice appointed Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, West Virginia’s adjutant general, to oversee RISE.
Gannaway called it “the best thing that could have happened because he has that disaster mindset.”
Since June, Hoyer has shifted RISE cases to VOAD, adding to its separate Disaster Case Management efforts, to allow for better coordination.
The two programs have different requirements.
“By having it under one umbrella, you can look at both programs and the case managers collaborate together to get that family in the best place and the best position possible to get help and to recover,” Gannaway said.
The total number of fully completed RISE cases was 16, according to the latest report from Hoyer’s office released last week.
Of the 434 outstanding RISE cases involving West Virginians still awaiting permanent housing, the West Virginia National Guard determined 130 required total construction, 109 required some type of rehabilitation, 106 required placement of a new mobile home and 89 had “undefined needs.”
In all, 148 of those RISE cases were in Greenbrier County.
For VOAD’s Disaster Case Management, 82 cases were still open in Greenbrier County as of Tuesday while 476 cases had been closed there, according to Gannaway.
Going forward, “We are not going to stop until we have every family recovered,” Gannaway pledged.
The White Sulphur Springs office that shut down with the end of July had originally been secured as space for Horne, the consultant hired through the state Department of Commerce to oversee administration of the HUD recovery dollars before the delays.