Housing Challenges Mount for Puerto Ricans Who Fled to the Mainland After Hurricane Maria

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When Hurricane Maria barreled through Puerto Rico in September, single mother Desiree Torres and her three children safely holed up in a neighbor’s sturdy cement home as the wind and rain raged outside.

Her own modest home, a second-floor, two-bedroom abode covered in aluminum siding in Las Piedras, about 45 minutes south of San Juan, didn’t fare as well. The Sept. 20 storm tore away pieces of the ceiling, blew her clothes dryer out into the yard, and soaked and twisted nearly everything that she and her children owned. The former ground agent at San Juan’s airport found some of her belongings scattered in her neighbors’ trees after the hurricane had finally moved on.

“The only thing I have right now is my walls and part of the ceiling,” says Torres, 31.

With no adequate housing, electricity, or running water, Torres did the only thing she could think of: She and her children, ages 2, 8, and 14, left for the mainland United States.

More than seven months after the deadly hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico, the island is still struggling to recover. But while the world’s attention has focused on this Caribbean island, a U.S. territory, a less publicized drama has been unfolding closer to home. The Puerto Rican natives who left for the mainland are now facing challenges nearly as overwhelming as the destruction they left behind.

Left: Flooded neighborhood in Catano, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 22, 2017, and the same neighborhood six months later.

RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images

Securing permanent housing, the critical need that drove so many from their towns and villages in the first place, has been a daunting task for these refugees crashing on the couches of friends and family, or staying in crumbling hotel rooms paid for with government-funded housing vouchers.

With the last of those vouchers set to expire on May 14 and few affordable housing options in sight, many live with the fear that they’ll be forced to enter the homeless-shelter system—or return to their still ravaged Puerto Rican communities.

There are now an estimated 135,000 Puerto Ricans who have settled on the mainland since the storm, according to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York City. (Residents of Puerto Rico all have U.S. citizenship.) The largest group of islanders, about 56,500, are living in Florida. Many have gravitated to the central portion of the state, which has a large Puerto Rican community. Florida has the most relocations, followed by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Torres and her children initially came to Orlando, FL, in October, because a relative had offered to put them up. She had also heard there were jobs available at an airline that Torres had worked for in Puerto Rico. It wasn’t Torres’ first time living stateside. She was born in the Bronx, NY, and moved with her mother to Puerto Rico when she was 16.

But shortly after their arrival, the job openings vanished, and Torres and her aunt stopped getting along. Within a week, she was looking for another place to live. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued her hotel vouchers, but the extension on those vouchers is set to expire this month. When Torres contacted government officials about Section 8 and other subsidized housing, she says she’s gotten the runaround.

Torres spent the last few months in a bleak, two-bedroom efficiency at a Super 8 Motel on the outskirts of Orlando, while she was job hunting and trying to save up some money for an apartment of her own.

The motel, with a torn, brown awning out front, is sandwiched between an IHOP and a strip mall featuring a coin laundry and a convenience store advertising cheap beer in neon lights. Her temporary home features a four-burner, countertop stove but no oven. A wooden stick holds two broken cabinets closed. Her youngest son sleeps in a used crib that the owner of the motel gave her.

Desiree Torres at the Super 8 Motel in Kissimmee, FL.

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 What storm survivors are up against in Florida

Torres eventually found a full-time job as a maintenance supervisor at a construction company. She hopes to sign a lease for a two-bedroom apartment in Kissimmee this week.

“A lot of people from Hurricane Maria are still struggling. They’re still stressed,” says Torres, who had worried constantly about what she would do if the FEMA housing voucher extensions hadn’t gone through. “It’s still not easy. Right now, I need to get a better job with a better rate to get my apartment.”

Fear and desperation are a common refrain among displaced islanders, particularly those without family and friends they can stay with stateside. There were 2,370 Puerto Rican families receiving government vouchers to stay in hotels in 34 states and in Puerto Rico as of April 30, according to FEMA.

The vouchers were extended until May 14 on a case-by-case basis.

Activists rally at City Hall in New York City in support of Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria, as FEMA hotel vouchers are set to expire.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“Housing is the key hurdle here in Central Florida,” says Rep. Darren Soto (D-FL). The Orlando-area congressman was born in New Jersey, but his father is from Puerto Rico. “If you come here knowing nobody, without money for a [security] deposit for an apartment, which can be $2,000 to $3,000, it can be much more difficult” to find a place to live, he says.

There are plenty of jobs in the region, particularly in the area’s many restaurants, hotels, and theme parks, he says. But these are typically low-paying positions. The minimum wage in Florida is $8.25 an hour, which is about $17,160 annually if workers clock 40-hour weeks for the entire year.

Meanwhile, the median rent for a one-bedroom in Orlando was $1,050 a month as of May 1, according to the rental website Apartment List. Median home prices in Orlando metro area were $315,050, according to the most recent realtor.com® data.

As for the new homes coming on the market, most of them aren’t priced for locals. They’re often being built for wealthier out-of-towners and foreigners who only stay in them for a few weeks when they’re in town. That doesn’t leave much left over for hourly workers.

“In Central Florida, affordable housing is nonexistent,” says Carlos Guzmán, president of the National Puerto Rican Leadership Council Education Fund, an Orlando-based group that matches high school students with volunteer mentors.

Even those with some cash are having a hard time finding rental apartments, says Bruce Elliott, the former president of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. That’s because many recent transplants may not have steady employment or stellar credit—which most mainland landlords require before offering a lease.

And many survivors on the mainland need more than just jobs and housing. They need transportation to get to job interviews and work, which can be difficult without a car, and day care. Even those eligible for subsidized day care often don’t have enough for the deposit. There are language barriers holding them back from finding work in some cases. And they need pots, pans, clothes, and just about everything else that they lost in the storm.

“Some of them came with nothing,” says Maribel Cordero, a volunteer case manager at Coordinadora de Apoyo, Solidaridad y Ayuda (CASA), part of the Puerto Rican Action Initiative. They distribute supplies to folks who have come to the Orlando area since the hurricane, as well as connect them with various government and nonprofit aid services. “It’s very rough. [Sometimes] it’s too much.”

But there are a few happy endings. Orlando-based real estate agent Rose Kemp has had Puerto Rican clients who have purchased homes since the storm. One family bought a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home for $195,500 last year. The family sold three properties in Puerto Rico to come up with the money for the purchase, which included furnishings.

“The people who were selling didn’t have a need for a majority of the furniture, the dishes,” says Kemp of Re/Max Town Center. “It was such a blessing.”

Living with family can be challenging as well

Moving in with family members can give storm survivors a platform on which to get back on their feet. But it can be a recipe for strain, as many family members may be crammed into a very small space.

After Hurricane Maria blew away the roof and walls of single mother Wanda Idelis Andino Hernandez‘s three-bedroom home, she and her four children left behind their lives in Toa Alta, Puerto Rico. In November, they moved in with her brother, Reymond Andino, his pregnant wife and their small son, in a small mobile home in Orlando—along with Hernandez’s parents, her other brother, and his wife.

Interior of Wanda Idelis Andino Hernandez’s home in Puerto Rico

Wanda Idelis Andino Hernande

In January, there were 12 people living in the two-bedroom trailer. One of Andino’s friends gave them four mattresses so everyone would have a place to sleep. Hernandez slept on the couch while her four children shared one of those mattresses.

“It’s getting very crowded,” Hernandez says through a translator. She cries more since the storm over everything she’s lost, but believes, “It’s better for the kids [that we] stay here.”

To make money, Hernandez cleans houses once in a while. The rest of the time, she takes care of her children, one of whom has epilepsy. She tried to get temporary housing, but was told there has been nothing available since the storm.

“I just want to get back on my feet and figure it out here,” she says. (Realtor.com met with Hernandez and her family in January, but have been unable to get in touch with her since.)

Wanda Idelis Andino Hernande and her family in Orlando

Wanda Idelis Andino Hernande

Trouble back home in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico had its share of problems even before Hurricane Maria hit. In May 2017, the territory filed for bankruptcy to reduce about $123 billion in debt and owed pension payments. Nearly 170 public schools were closed last year to save money, and the unemployment rate, at 10.6%, was more than 2.5 times the national average. About 44% of residents were living in poverty, some in shacks cobbled together over the years with spare materials.

In the wake of Maria’s devastation, however, it’s much, much worse.

The territory’s Gov. Ricardo Rosselló asked for more than $94 billion in aid in November. He got just $16 billion. Following an outcry, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced in April that Puerto Rico would be getting additional funds of more than $18.4 billion.

But it may not be enough to convince displaced Puerto Ricans to return to their homeland, regardless of the challenges they may be facing on the mainland.

“Some of them may not have good homes to go back to,” says Rep. Soto, who visited the territory in March. He saw plenty of still-destroyed homes and blue tarps from FEMA serving as temporary roofs. Most homes were back on the electric grid, but there are still some families without power.

FEMA is providing financial grants for homeowners to make minimal repairs to their primary residences. It has disbursed grants to 452,000 storm victims, according to the agency. The average amount of housing assistance provided was just $2,997.80, to pay for things like repairs or rent while a home is being repaired. (That doesn’t include emergency grants for things like child care, urgent medical needs, and essential items that must be replaced.)

That’s well under what many islanders need.

“They’re treating Puerto Rico like a piece of dirt,” says Jimmy Torres-Vélez, president of the Orlando-based Puerto Rican Action Initiative. He travels back and forth between the territory, as his wife and son are still there.

“The problem is: People can’t go back,” he says. “Go back to what? They might have electricity, but they might not have a roof.”

Additional reporting by Vanessa Velez

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