CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Getting a handle on West Virginia’s housing need following the devastating 2016 flood hasn’t been easy.
Following one of the worst disasters in West Virginia history, nearly 3,500 homes were deemed structurally damaged by FEMA. At least 1,500 homes were destroyed, state officials said.
But those bottom line numbers have not been so simple.
The question has been not only how many homes need replacing but how much federal money is necessary to meet the need — and what is the best use of that money.
There are a few reasons for the evolution of West Virginia’s post-disaster housing need.
One is that the enormity of the disaster meant state leaders were taking educated guesses at first in an attempt to swiftly request federal relief dollars.
Another is that volunteer organizations met more of the housing demand than anyone had anticipated initially. When that became apparent, state officials in different camps disagreed over how much housing need remained to be met by government resources.
Now, as West Virginia RISE continues to assess cases, the numbers may go up or down.
“The numbers have oscillated greatly over time, and I think they continue to oscillate,” said Delegate Stephen Baldwin, D-Greenbrier, who suggested a year ago that the state should complete a housing assessment to clarify issue.
West Virginia just passed the third anniversary of the devastating storm that killed 23 people. The recovery continues at a frustrating pace.
And for state officials and observers, it’s been a challenge just to define the numbers of what the recovery needs to be.
West Virginia MetroNews went over documents and communications obtained through multiple Freedom of Information Act requests.
The news network also examined public statements about the housing need and interviewed officials on all sides of the disaster relief effort.
How much housing need has the state had? That has depended on when the question was being asked and who was assessing it.
Hundreds without houses, millions of dollars
The earliest compilation of numbers seemed to be in a Sept. 13, 2016, report. That report, presented by then-Emergency Management Director Jimmy Gianato, showed 1,400 homes destroyed and 2,300 with substantial damage.
It noted that 90 percent didn’t have flood insurance and estimated that housing repairs and replacement costs could exceed $160 million.
Adjutant General James Hoyer, the state’s point man on flood relief, said in an interview this past week that the numbers were a best guess based on an overwhelming situation and time constraints to apply for federal disaster dollars.
At the time, Hoyer said, state officials were trying to meet a deadline as Congress consider appropriations.
“We had a couple of days to give a number,” he said. “So everybody erred on the side of the higher number because we didn’t want to come in with something low and not have enough money.”
“I don’t know. I guess some people could say that was wrong. But we were trying to do the best by the people of West Virginia by saying ‘Here’s what the FEMA claims number show. Let’s go with that number.’ You go with that number, you get an allocation based on the political process in D.C.”
A few months later, West Virginia received a commitment for $104 million in disaster relief funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
But a March 21, 2017, report on West Virginia’s unmet needs concluded that would not be enough. State officials suggested the severity of the damage to homes had not been calculated fully and that thousands of the most vulnerable citizens had not been counted.
That report suggested West Virginia’s unmet housing need was $295,493,724.
State officials were crunching those numbers because the state Department of Commerce was preparing to make a pitch for more money. A March 28, 2017, email from then-Development Director Kris Hopkins described an upcoming meeting with then-Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher.
“In preparation for the meeting with Secretary Thrasher on Friday, I would suggest that we be prepared to show him a potential roadmap with a timeline on how we can actually execute this ask for additional funding,” Hopkins wrote.
The following month state officials were still describing the need for more money. An April 25, 2017, press release providing updates on the RISE disaster relief effort included a statement from Gov. Jim Justice, touting the $104 million already on hand.
“We need more, but it’s a start,” Justice stated.
Thrasher noted in the press release that the state was working to secure more.
“Despite the money that the state has received, there remain tremendous unmet needs,” Thrasher stated. “We are ready to make an additional request that could total more than $400 million, and we are working every single day to tell West Virginia’s story.”
By June 23, 2017, West Virginia was marking the one-year anniversary of the flood. Recovery still had a long way to go.
On July 17, 2017, Thrasher and Justice both had their names on a memo to disaster relief applicants. It praised the money awarded from HUD and emphasized efforts to gain more.
“The funding we have secured from Congress is not enough to fulfill all our unmet needs and assist every impacted citizen, but the Governor and Cabinet Secretary of Commerce will continue our fight to get more funding for West Virginia,” the state officials wrote.
Their efforts paid off with an additional $45 million from U.S. Housing and Urban Development.
Looking back, it’s unclear if the state officials actually had a clear idea of the demand or how far the money would go, said Paula Brown, deputy director of emergency management in Greenbrier County, location of some of the worst flooding.
“In the beginning they didn’t have a handle on numbers but they had a wealth of money that they thought would address those needs,” Brown said in a telephone interview last week.
Volunteers make progress, questions arise
A major factor was the efforts of voluntary organizations, which pitched in to rebuild hundreds of homes.
Jenny Gannaway, the chairwoman for West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, said the faith-based and nonprofit organizations that were moved to help flood victims were able to complete hundreds more homes than anyone had originally believed.
“We have completed over 2,300 cases and got families either rebuilt in their house, repaired their house or replaced with a mobile home,” Gannaway said.
“That is where the big discrepancy is, I think. In the beginning, nobody thought the voluntary agencies would do that much work.”
Hoyer, in an interview last week, agreed.
“You’ve got all these donated dollars and people start recovering and that piece, so now the number changes,” he said.
All that success by volunteer groups led to questions among state officials about how best to use the $149 million available from U.S. Housing and Urban Development.
On Nov. 7, 2017, Gov. Jim Justice convened a meeting to talk about how best to use the money available from HUD plus the millions more dollars in mitigation grant funds available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The group that gathered noted that the volunteer groups had already rebuilt or rehabbed 1,000 homes. Participants questioned whether there was $100 million left in unmet housing needs, or if some of the funding should be reallocated to support infrastructure and economic development.
“Conversation was started by General Hoyer, who indicated that he did not feel that housing was any longer the top priority,” according to the minutes of the session.
“He indicated that through the state VOAD and other faith-based groups, at least half of the 2,000 homes damaged in June 2016 had been repaired/rebuilt. Therefore, housing was no longer the top priority.”
The state officials who gathered wound up agreeing that infrastructure should be the top priority, followed by economic development and then housing.
As the meeting neared its conclusion, the group decided to start talking with U.S. Housing and Urban Development about how the federal disaster relief dollars could be shifted.
A regional HUD official who was there, Julie Alston, indicated it was possible but would not be easy because of the federal agency’s requirements that a certain percentage of the funding be allocated directly to housing. Whatever does not still needs to be tie back into housing.
Alston also cautioned the state would have to demonstrate that it had met the housing needs: “Something not easily done as the state had just submitted a substantial amendment to their Administrative Plan that was still based on a significant unmet housing need.”
Although West Virginia has continued to talk about shifting the priority for the money available from HUD, the agency recently confirmed that there has not been any official request to do so.
Divides over unmet need
This philosophical divide became an issue within the Justice administration.
Thrasher, now running for governor, a few weeks ago described strong differences of opinion over how many houses were left and how government resources should be used to meet the need.
He said, “General kept calling me and saying ‘Listen, you’re going to have a whole lot of money left over, and we’re going to need it for infrastructure projects.’ And I said ‘Hey, I’m all about infrastructure projects. But I’m sure housing and Urban Development has a ‘housing’ in front of it.’ They want to make sure housing requirements are taken care of first. Any monies we have left over, absolutely we’ll run over to infrastructure.”
In Thrasher’s memory, Hoyer would say, “Well, your crowd is saying there’s 800 or 1,000 homes, Woody.”
And Thrasher says his response was, “Well that’s what they’re coming up with.”
He says Hoyer would respond, “Well, we’re out here in the field and we know there’s 200 or 300 homes that need to be done.”
Thrasher concluded, “It turned out there weren’t 200 or 300 homes. There’s still 500 homes and it would be a whole lot more except it’s fallen by the wayside because nothing is being done, and they’re still receiving applications today.
“But we were pressured by Jimmy Gianato and, to some extent General Hoyer, to say ‘Look you’ve got a whole bunch of money; let’s divert a bunch of that money over to infrastructure.’”
Brian Abraham, general counsel for the Governor’s Office, says the volunteer efforts significantly reduced what remained to be done on housing. Thrasher was the one who miscalculated, Abraham said at a press conference this spring:
“Woody and his team would come in and brief the governor’s office: ‘RISE is doing great, RISE is doing great. We have 1,200 homes we need to rebuild or reconstruct. And of the $150 million, that’s over $100 million of it.’
“At the same time when you’re sitting at the governor’s level and you’re hearing from the DHSEM folks and the VOAD individuals who are running the RISE database that are have access to it and they go ‘Those numbers are way off. We don’t have 1,200 people that need a new home.'”
Abraham said the dispute continued until Thrasher’s resignation.
“They were wed to that number. We didn’t want to direct that money but first thing that HUD requires and the first thing this governor was committed to was getting every victim satisfied fully first. Then we wanted to see: Do we have money for mitigation, infrastructure, all those things that HUD then allows the money to be used for?
“But there was just no willingness over there to accept the fact that their numbers were wrong. And certainly that has proven right now to this day, factually, that they were way, way off.”
On Feb. 20, 2018, after months of buildup, West Virginia got the go-ahead from HUD to start using the millions of dollars in disaster relief funding.
But, behind the scenes, the question of shifting how the funding would be used continued.
Email exchanges from early March, 2018 — less than a month after West Virginia got the OK to use the money and during a halt on flood relief because of questions over a management contract — show that state officials were discussing what bureaucratic steps would be necessary to shift how the money would be used.
Among those discussing the issue were Abraham, Hoyer and then Emergency Manager Gianato, along with MaryAnn Tierney, administrator for FEMA Region III.
Tierney said the first step in any shift would be determining what housing need really remained.
“As you know, the WV Department of Commerce has provided data to support a substantial housing requirement while your offices believe the housing requirement is much less than described,” Tierney wrote.
In late March, 2018, alerted to West Virginia’s operational pause on flood relief, Housing and Urban Development was asking questions about the state’s intentions.
The federal agency wrote that “the prospect of substantial reallocation of CDBG-DR funds from housing to economic development or infrastructure activities necessarily raises questions regarding the Department’s prior certification of State capacity and the State’s implementation of the grant in a manner consistent with the requirements of the applicable Federal Register Notices.”
Abraham responded on April 6, 2018, on behalf of the state.
He wrote that HUD had been misinformed.
“While we are reviewing our current unmet housing needs, we are doing so to ensure that no public funds are misspent or wasted on unnecessary projects,” Abraham wrote.
He continued, “Our efforts are not as a result of questions arising from our prior certification of the grant but rather the realization that hundreds of homes have been constructed by volunteer organizations in the time period following the submission of the grant.
“However, no direction has been given to request a reallocation at this time.”
Thrasher was forced out shortly after that, and Hoyer was named the point man for long-term flood relief.
By June 24, 2018, a legislative audit asked whether West Virginia’s government had helped any flood victims at all get back in their houses.
“As such, the Legislative Auditor questions whether any individual homeowner has received full assistance from the RISE West Virginia flood recovery program.”
The situation now
As of this past week, RISE has completed 51 homes. Forty-eight are mobile homes and three were built on site.
The most recent report says there are 423 housing cases in RISE.
Of those, 291 have been assigned to construction management, which is the part of the process from signing an agreement for the work up to actual construction.
HUD continues to list West Virginia as a “slow spender,” which indicates the state’s pace for closing out the $149 million disaster grant.
Getting a handle on the numbers and how West Virginia is using that enormous financial resource is a frustration for members of the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding.
“I think it is being made confusing. That’s one of the things we’ve asked is to have some good accounting of these numbers,” said Delegate Dean Jeffries, R-Kanawha, one of the committee’s co-chairmen.
He said the committee has asked for regular updates in writing but has yet to receive them.
“We’re not at all happy with the reporting we’re getting and the numbers,” Jeffries said, “and I think that needs to be more concrete.”
Hoyer said he wants to be able to show that all those who lost their homes are under roof, but he said that will still take time.
“These people want relief and the governor is on me every day to make sure we’re moving as fast as we possibly can but to make sure we meet the requirements,” he said last week.
Justice, speaking at a press conference last month, said his heart goes out to homeowners who are still waiting for relief.
“I’m going crazy to make sure we get every single one of these homes where these people were ravaged by the flood, that we get every single last one of them under construction before the end of the year,” Justice said. “I am going crazy about that.”