BRATTLEBORO — On Aug. 27, 25 of my neighbors and I were evacuated from our homes because of Irene's imminent flood worries. Brattleboro was hit surprisingly hard and in some unexpected ways.
I live in Melrose Terrace, a subsidized housing development for the elderly and disabled. I had waited two years for an apartment there and had moved out of the Brooks House two weeks before it burned down.
Melrose Terrace is my home. I can wheel outside, I have a ramp, I have an adapted bathroom where I'm safer from injury. It's safe, clean, and well-maintained. It's a model of what public housing should be.
It is now two months later, and we're still homeless. I am temporarily in the woods of Maine. My belongings are scattered to five places.
Each building had its level of damage from Irene, ranging from a thin layer of muck on some of the floors to several feet of muck washing through the apartment. They are solid brick buildings on deep cement slabs. Nothing moved. There was exterior damage, but that's all been repaired.
We had to move all of our belongings out and find places to stay while repairs were done. The town of Brattleboro told the Brattleboro Housing Authority, which owns Melrose Terrace, to do so.
My apartment looks new again. The buildings were declared structurally sound, though some sustained a lot of flooding.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the line nobody seems to have checked what the correct procedure was with FEMA and National Flood Insurance Program, and things were done bassackwards. This is causing us all to remain homeless while the bureaucratic bickering goes on.
The reasonable solution is apparent to everyone, it seems, except our Town, whose employees continue to throw monkey wrenches instead of managing the repairs the way it should be done, by FEMA calculations.
This is insanity.
Winter and the holidays are coming. Stop with the nonsense and let us go home.