When did it start taking a policy memo to ensure people are the priority?
In this case, homeowners, whose houses were devastated by the June 23, 2016 flood in West Virginia.
Up until May, our state was apparently operating under bridges and roads first, families later.
Let’s be clear. Both are a priority. But we lean toward relief for families living in campers for three years first.
It’s almost beyond belief that the state has completed only 50 homes out of 456 cases since a storm raged across parts of southern and central West Virginia.
Those 50 homes were completed under the RISE program, funded by more than $150 million in U.S. Housing and Urban Development money.
We have expressed our outrage at the pace of this building on several occasions in the past and continue to question it. But for now, we direct our attention at the other primary source of funding for flood relief in the wake of this disaster.
That is, hazard mitigation grant funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The state has $67 million in hazard mitigation money at its disposal from FEMA.
Though this money is dedicated to reducing the impact of future disasters, it can also be used for housing.
That includes buyouts of homeowners, flood-proofing and building homes above ground level.
Though the Justice administration disputes this, documents point out in November 2017 state officials opted to make infrastructure, not housing, the priority for this money.
That included a $5 million emergency operations center and a host of other infrastructure contracts — many still not underway or completed.
Though the new policy memo doesn’t note this former priority, which came into question once homeowners began protesting, it does put people before projects.
Gov. Jim Justice recently said, “I’m going crazy to make sure we get every single one of these homes … under construction before the end of the year, I am going crazy about that.”
He’s probably going crazy about a lot of other things, too, including his roads initiative, legal and financial woes, a political uprising and 20,000 angry school teachers.
But it’s encouraging this policy memo communicates a real change in priorities, that was obvious initially.
It does not take three years to build several hundred modest homes or cut checks, especially when you have more than $200 million at hand.
Perhaps we need a memorandum of understanding to ensure a timeline for building these houses. Unlike a memo, that’s a legal document.
But, on second thought, we’ll just wait until we see it to believe it.
