HOUSTON — Cheryl Conley curled herself against a wall of the George R. Brown Convention Center on Friday, watching a family hauling their things to the exit, wishing she could do the same.
Forced to leave her boarding house by Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters, Conley was on her fourth day at the emergency evacuation shelter, and starting to panic.
She has epilepsy and a heart condition, and had left all but a couple of her 12 medications behind in her frantic flight to safety. She had nowhere to go, no one to call for help.
“People have forgotten about people like me,” Conley, 34, said, beginning to cry. “I just want a home to go back to.”
The yearning for home is a near-universal lament here. Harvey is estimated to have destroyed or caused major damage to more than 12,300 single, mobile and multi-family homes in Harris County, the Texas Department of Public Safety said. Many more were affected or suffered minor damage. The full extent of the damage is not yet known.
Some of the people who lived in those homes can afford to find a new place to live while they rebuild or decide whether to move away. But there are also others like Conley who have no idea where they will go.
Often, their only hope is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is offering loans to help homeowners rebuild and short-term housing assistance — hotel rooms and rental subsidies for others whose homes are uninhabitable or inaccessible. The agency said it is also speeding up claims under the National Flood Insurance Program, but the program only benefits people who had coverage before the storm.
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