Hurricane damage

[Cookiely]

I'm confused about the story below. Wouldn't the landlord have insurance that would cover the damage? If they have a lease, couldn't the couple go to the courts, deposit their rent money, until things are made habitable. Any ideas?
Feb 20, 2005

Rules Trap Renters Who Can't Get Help For Hurricane-Damaged Home
JUDY HILL


F ramed by a deep ditch on one side and fish-farm ponds on the other, the narrow dirt road is no wider than a car.
It's so difficult to navigate and is so filled with deep potholes, Niaya Coady warns, ``Sports cars can't get back here.''

SUVs traveling 5 mph have a hard time, too.

If it weren't for the nearby developments with streets named Soaring Eagle Drive, Panther Trace Boulevard and Lakeside Vista Drive, you would swear you were a hundred miles from nowhere.

Cows graze on one side of a rickety fence. Horses on another.

In the clearing at the end of the narrow dirt road in Riverview, roosters crow, ducks quack.

But this pastoral site is a crossroads, of sorts. The place where suburbia's ravenous appetite seems poised to take its next bite.


Home Sweet Modest Home

``It's hard to find this kind of place anymore around here,'' says Coady, 41, who shares it with three horses, several ducks, a flock of chickens, two rabbits, numerous cats and dogs, one potbellied pig and her husband, Mick.

Which explains why the damage imposed by Hurricane Jeanne on the couple's single-wide mobile home in late September is so cruel.

They want to stay there. They need to stay there. They believe they could not find another home close to their jobs that would accommodate their menagerie.

But wide tin shingles flap from the roof in any breeze. Windows remain broken, covered with cardboard and plastic.

The air-conditioning unit now leans against the mobile home, its support foundation eroded by high water.

Niaya and Mick, 32, who works as a roving field supervisor for U.S. Security Associates, cleared most of the downed trees, repaired the fences and righted the fowl coop upended and damaged by the storm.

But they don't have the money or the ability to repair the roof, the windows or the steps leading inside the mobile home.


Effects Still Linger

They both have physical problems that hamper their efforts.

Niaya, who bathes dogs part time at the Pup Tent in south Tampa, struggles with degenerative joint disease that cost her a job as a security officer. Mick has epilepsy, which he controls with medication.

``I know how to fix things,'' Niaya says, ``but I can't.''

She won't let Mick climb on the roof. He is, after all, the couple's main source of income.

They are the working poor, getting by on $32,000 a year, $2,400 of which must be spent on Mick's medication.

She drives a 1990 Ford Econoline van with about 200,000 miles on its odometer. The van is crucial because it's outfitted to accommodate the wheelchair she uses occasionally. Mick drives a 1992 Pontiac Grand Am, with similar mileage.

Rent on the place they consider heaven is $500 a month. The landlord can't afford to fix the mobile home. He had hurricane damage of his own to contend with. The federal agency that assists folks in emergencies, FEMA, can't help them because they are renters.

They're trapped by circumstances.

``We're just ordinary people trying to get by,'' Niaya says.

``Do you know of anyone or any agency that could help us?''

Good question.

Are there answers?

The Coadys aren't the only folks around still struggling with last year's hurricanes.



To read Judy Hill's Web log, go online to TBO.com, keyword: Weblogs.

This story can be found at: http://www.tampatrib.com/MGB07DISD5E.html

[Lindaloo]

He should have had landlord insurance on the mobile home. Although, I do not know of anyone who issues a landlord policy on mobile homes. He could have received help from FEMA though.