By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
PENSACOLA, Fla. — MaryKaren Carli has been hunting for an apartment for more than a year. The single mother, who works as a bartender, waitress and restaurant manager, moved out of the house she was renting after Hurricane Ivan destroyed part of it last year.

Dana Mausso folds laundry in a makeshift shed in Gulf Breeze, Fla., next to where her home is being rebuilt from Hurricane Ivan.
By Mari Darr-Welch, AP

Since then, Carli, 43, has been on a frustrating, fruitless mission to find a home she can afford for herself, her son, Anthony, 20, and her daughter RaeAnn, 16. She visits five to seven places a week, but everything she sees is out of her price range, out of her daughter's school district or so mold-infested she's afraid to take it.

Making matters worse, Carli says, a drop in tourism in Florida's Panhandle has sharply cut business at the restaurant where she works. Her pay is down by more than half, from $800-$1,000 a week before Ivan to $370 in a recent paycheck.

"It's been devastating," Carli says, sipping coffee in the kitchen of the government trailer where she has lived since January. "I was hoping by Christmas I would have something. But it's not looking good."

Hurricane Ivan, the third of four major hurricanes to strike Florida last year, hammered Pensacola on Sept. 16, 2004. It made landfall at Gulf Shores, Ala., carrying winds up to 130 mph. But the brunt of Ivan's storm surge walloped the coast to the east — Pensacola and the Florida Panhandle.

The storm destroyed thousands of homes in the Pensacola area and damaged thousands more. It caused $4 billion to $5 billion in residential damage, says Rick Harper, head of the Haas Center for Business Research and Economic Development at the University of West Florida.

"What tended to get destroyed was a lot of expensive dwellings on the water and a lot of substandard dwellings that may have been old, not constructed to meet new codes, or houses with substandard additions," Harper says.

Today, the nation's attention has moved beyond Florida's disastrous hurricane season of 2004, which produced hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne in addition to Ivan. And Hurricane Katrina this year has redefined the USA's definition of a devastating storm.

But Pensacola, still struggling with a shortage of affordable housing, may offer a glimpse of what's to come on a larger scale in areas of Louisiana and Mississippi that were smashed by Katrina.

Even before Ivan, according to government agencies and non-profit groups such as Rebuild Northwest Florida, Pensacola lacked enough "workforce" housing — houses and apartments for firefighters, police officers, nurses, teachers and waitresses.

The problem has grown more acute because of an influx of Hurricane Katrina evacuees from Louisiana and Mississippi:

• Some evacuees have moved to the front of the line for scant rental housing because of more generous federal housing benefits. The average family displaced by Ivan got about $1,000 in rental housing benefits, and the average Katrina family about $2,300, says Pat Hubbard, Pensacola's housing director.

• Some apartments in the $550-$700-a-month range that Ivan destroyed or damaged are being converted into pricier condominiums. In July, investors converted the 144-unit Briarwood apartments into condominiums; the 276-unit Royal Arms apartment complex was bought by Sacred Heart Hospital for expansion.

• Some rental houses are now being occupied by owners whose primary residences were destroyed or damaged. Formerly affordable rental properties have been snapped up by speculators with an eye toward renovating and reselling them.

Affordable rents wiped out

Reflecting Ivan's impact on housing costs, the average rent in Pensacola for an apartment of 950 square feet rose 27% to $825 from February 2004 and February 2005.

In addition, the pace of residential repairs of Ivan's damage has been slowed by disputes between homeowners and their insurance companies, the rising costs of materials and a labor shortage caused by the drain of workers to Katrina-battered Louisiana and Mississippi.

"The thing that has shocked me is how much longer it is taking to get all the housing stock back online than I had anticipated," Harper says.

Hurricane Katrina two months ago dwarfed Ivan's impact. Katrina destroyed or heavily damaged 492,106 homes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the American Red Cross says. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in October that 400,000 to 600,000 Katrina-displaced households in Louisiana and Mississippi would "need to find long-term housing."

In Pensacola, Hurricane Ivan destroyed about 2,000 affordable rental units and 5,000-6,000 homes, Hubbard says. "There isn't anything for them to rent," she says. "And when there (is) something, it isn't affordable."

Ivan destroyed or damaged homes occupied by the city's most economically vulnerable residents, says Bishop John Ricard, leader of the Catholic Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee and founder of an effort by clergy from many faiths to ease Pensacola's housing shortage.

"The people with full-time jobs who couldn't afford to buy a house were living in those units," Ricard says. "Ivan made a very bad situation even worse. A lot of people are living in trailers provided by FEMA. Many are still living doubled up with relatives."

As of last week, 2,510 families lived in FEMA trailers in the three Pensacola-area counties, according to Karen Szulczewski says, an agency spokeswoman.

Time running out for trailers

When Ivan hit, Debra Ellick, 52, was living in a large, $550-a-month apartment near Pensacola Bay. She could grill on the grass behind her patio. Her place was a short ride or bus trip from downtown.

She stayed in the apartment after Ivan, but mold-related illnesses finally drove her out. She has been in a FEMA trailer since July.

Ellick says her ordeal has been traumatic. "I hate it," she says. "If the wind blows, the trailer is shaking like crazy. ... It's a very humbling experience."

Under federal law, families can remain in FEMA trailers for up to 18 months after a federal disaster declaration, Szulczewski says.

For victims of Ivan, the cutoff date is March 16. Families pay no rent and must be re-certified monthly.

Ellick says she doesn't know what she'll do in March.

"All the rents have either doubled or tripled," she says.

Szulczewski says there are many people like Ellick in the trailers.

"You have some who are elderly, who may live on Social Security or some other (assistance)," she says.

"But most of these people work. If they're homeowners, they're still trying to rebuild. If they're renters, their landlords didn't repair their unit, or the landlord sold the unit, and there's just no rental resources within their price range available," she says.

For two years before Ivan, Carli and her children lived in a three-bedroom, one-bath house for $550 a month. The storm tore off part of the roof and caused other damage. "Black mold came in," Carli says. "We were just constantly getting colds, coughs."

Carli figures she'll pay at least $750 a month when she finds something. "That's the average price of the very lowest I've seen," she says. "I couldn't pay any more. A lot of people couldn't."

Unlike some cities facing similar problems, Pensacola has plenty of land for housing, says Garrett Walton, co-executive director of Rebuild Northwest Florida, which was formed after Ivan. "We don't have a shortage of land for apartments," he says. "What we have is a shortage of money."
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