How One Small Family Got a House After the Storm

Posted: 21 February 2007

by Coco McCabe

With her home destroyed and nowhere to go, Aida Reynon was saved--and her home was rebuilt--after a huge outpouring of volunteer support. Oxfam partners SMHA and FDS show what's possible when a highly committed and highly skilled corps of volunteers tackles a problem.

Aida Reynon, a native of the Philippines and the widowed mother of two teenagers, felt she had only one option: to stay put in Lafitte, La., despite the fact that hurricanes Katrina and Rita had destroyed the family’s house on the small plot of land they owned on Fisher Street.

“I don’t have another place to go,” she said. “I have nothing.”

That land, 100 feet by 130, was their anchor—even as winds lashed it and water swamped it. Now, nearly a year and a half after the disaster, it has become a haven once again, thanks to 17 massive pilings driven 20 feet into the ground. On top of them, high above the bayou and even a little higher than new codes require, sits Reynon’s new home, just like an aerie.

For Reynon, a huge outpouring of volunteer support paved the road from homelessness to security. And helping to piece together the many parts of the project—from securing permits to providing funding for some of the construction materials—was the Southern Mutual Help Association (SMHA), one of Oxfam America’s partners on the Gulf Coast.

A model of efficiency, the rebuilding of Reynon’s home is proof of what’s possible when a highly skilled—and highly committed—corps of volunteers tackles a problem. In this case, it was a crew from the Friends Disaster Service (FDS), an arm of the Friends Church, who worked magic in a few short weeks.

“They brought the plans for the house, the tools, and the men,” said Kate Barron, Oxfam America’s community development specialist in Lousiana. “And then they went above and beyond and brought furniture and linens...”

“...and towels and appliances, an electric stove,” continued Reynon. “They gave me a washing machine, a dryer. They gave me heating and cooling.”

In the end, the house—three small bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen/dining/living room area—cost just $32,000.

One of the Firsts for Lafitte

The house, moss green and strapped tight to its pilings with a series of hurricane ties Reynon helped to install, is one of the first in Lafitte to be completed from scratch, said Barron. And it has given folks a jolt of inspiration: People have been dropping by to check out the plans.

But as impressive as it is, it’s just one house among a sea of need, and it’s not likely the experience can be easily replicated for the tens of thousands of other families along the Gulf Coast itching to get out of their FEMA trailers. In Reynon’s case, good fortune—piles of it—came her way in the form of attentive advocates and experienced builders. In this reconstruction, that kind of luck seems to be the rare exception.

And while her house went up quickly, getting to the groundbreaking was an arduous process—and symptomatic of the problems that affect countless Gulf Coast hurricane survivors as they struggle to rebuild their lives.

“Me? I don’t have no insurance and I do not know what to do,” Reynon said. “I wanted to (rebuild), but if you’ve only got a little money, I said I didn’t know how to start.”

And at first, FEMA wasn’t any help. But with assistance from Southern Mutual Help Association and Tim Kernan, the mayor of Jean Lafitte, Reynon appealed and eventually got $23,000 in aid. She banked it, and when the time came poured it into materials for her new house.

Meanwhile, depression had begun to sap her energy, and worry her children. All of them were living together in a FEMA trailer on Fisher Street. Reynon was thankful for it—“that trailer saved me...even if it’s so tiny, I had a roof”—but she could not shake the weight of her burdens and the fear she knew her children had of being homeless.

“I don’t want to get out. I don’t want to see no one,” recalled Reynon, a slim and vivacious woman. “I don’t want to go nowhere. That’s why my kids worried.”

But all of that is behind her now.

On Christmas, Reynon and her children slept in their new house. As she recalled that night, tears welled up in her eyes.

“'Mom, I'm dreaming,' the little one said. I said 'No, you're not. Wake up! We have a house!”