Paul and Donna Heinrich say they are happy with the trailer they purchased from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They lost their Gilchrist home to Hurricane Ike.
HITCHCOCK — Fifteen months ago, Paul Ray and Donna Heinrich had a view of the water from the porch of their house in Gilchrist. These days, they overlook a row of rundown trailers and a pot hole-filled road in Hitchcock.
That suits them just fine.
Because for the first time since Hurricane Ike washed their house away — not to mention all of their belongings — the Heinriches are homeowners again. On Thursday, they became the 53rd family in the county to purchase their Federal Emergency Management Agency mobile home from the government.
They bought the two-bedroom temporary housing unit for about $3,000, but the peace of mind it brings was priceless.
For the Heinriches the mobile home is not the place they will stay in their retirement years. In fact, Donna Heinrich is hoping to be in a new home “within six months.”
It is, however, a temporary respite as they wait for the county to launch its property buyout program and the couple fights with the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association.
Their land in Gilchrist is one of the 500 properties the county likely is to buy with federal dollars and turn into green space. They plan to use that money as the down payment on a new house.
“We know this isn’t part of a 30-year plan for us, but it takes the pressure off of us,” Paul Ray Heinrich said. “We have a place we own, and that lets us look for our new home when the time comes.”
It was the day before last Thanksgiving when the Heinriches moved into the FEMA mobile home that is parked in a space of a mobile home park in Hitchcock. When they moved in, all they had was three days worth of clothes, a laptop computer and their wedding rings taken when they evacuated ahead of Ike.
Now?
“This is a FEMA couch, a FEMA chair; the dining room table is from FEMA; the beds are from FEMA,” Donna Heinrich said. Even the coffee pot, donated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was given to the couple by FEMA.
“FEMA has been really good to us,” she said.
Still, the Heinriches faced possible ouster from their mobile home as recently as September. Like hundreds of others displaced by the hurricane and living in the government-provided temporary housing, Donna Heinrich said they were told repeatedly, “You need to find a new place to live. This won’t last forever.”
When they first asked to buy the mobile home, FEMA said the unit could be bought for $16,000, Donna Heinrich said. The agency also appeared to discourage the effort to buy the mobile home, she said.
Almost out of the blue, though, the couple’s new FEMA caseworker set the wheels in motion in September, and last week they signed the ownership papers.
Brad Craine, a FEMA spokesman, said the agency sold 524 of its temporary housing units to Texas residents who lost their homes to Ike. Of those, though, only 10 percent have been sold in Galveston County.
The regulations regarding the sale of FEMA mobile homes account for the low percentage of sales in this county, even as more and more residents push to buy.
Rule No. 1: The person buying the mobile home has to be the person getting FEMA assistance and the living in that home.
Rule No. 2: The resident must be able to obtain all the necessary utility and electrical permits to keep the mobile home on the site it is located.
It is Rule No. 2 that has thwarted most efforts to purchase the mobile homes. In cities such as Galveston, Hitchcock and La Marque, city codes prohibit mobile homes except in designated mobile home parks.
The city of Galveston last week reviewed extending the deadline for people living in privately owned mobile homes or recreation vehicles while they repair their hurricane-damaged homes. That decision, though, won’t affect the 136 FEMA mobile homes still on private property on the island.
Even in the unincorporated areas of the county, where there are fewer restrictions, obtaining the permits has been a struggle because the majority of those government-issued mobile homes are located within the 100-year flood plain.
The county will not issue permits in those areas unless the mobile homes meet federal flood insurance standards, which would require, at the minimum, elevating the mobile homes by as much as 15 feet.
That has frustrated many residents of the Bolivar Peninsula and a handful in San Leon who are living in government-issued mobile homes and are feeling the pressure by FEMA to move on. The agency’s temporary housing program ends in March, but the agency already has warned dozens of residents they face an earlier exit because FEMA claims they are not doing enough to find permanent housing.
For residents who are like the Heinriches, waiting for the county buyout program or some sort of insurance settlement, the clock still is ticking. FEMA is insisting on housing plans that can be secured sooner rather than later, agency spokeswoman Patricia Bach said.
The rules are somewhat different for residents in mobile homes at the county’s two FEMA community sites. Those families are able to purchase their mobile home and move it somewhere else as long as they can obtain the proper permits, Craine said.
That exception, though, applies only to the residents in the High Island and Galveston FEMA mobile home communities.
+++
FEMA Mobile Home Sales
Statewide: 524
Galveston County: 53
Private property sales: 35
Mobile home park site sales: 13
Community site sales: 5
Details: Upon completion of the sale, the applicant or members of the applicant’s household will no longer be eligible to receive FEMA housing assistance. Applicants who do not wish to participate in the sales program will continue to be eligible to stay in their units as long as they meet the
