Eros Joseph sleeps on the concrete balcony of a squalid apartment building in Homestead. When it rains, she ducks into a car for cover. Her bathroom is a plastic bag. She`s pregnant and afraid her baby is suffering.
Last month, she and her family were evicted from their Homestead home. Now she is out on the street, unable to find a place to rent, a trailer to live in or a tent to sleep under.
Her baby is due any day.
One month after the U.S. military-run tent cities were dismantled, south Dade County is facing a new predicament: where to house hundreds of renters and squatters who are being evicted from crumpled homes and apartments.
Every day, month-to-month renters are coming home to find eviction notices under their doors. The reason: Landlords are receiving insurance checks, and they`re eager to start repairs. They are forcing tenants out on the streets, creating a new wave of homeless.
”What we have on our hands are American refugees,” said Jack Leonard, a Roman Catholic church relief worker who has a dozen evicted families camping out on his yard in Homestead.
”These are our people, and no one seems to care. We`re just turning them back out on the streets.”
Despite repeated warnings from activists that the homeless problem would worsen, there are few long-term plans and even fewer fast solutions. It`s a prospect that could force overcrowding in already run-down apartments and a new influx of hurricane homeless on the streets.
Compounding the problem is thte arrival of the first of thousands of migrant farm workers expected to help harvest crops in south Dade, and there are no places for them to stay.
Already, makeshift tent cities are cropping up behind homes, in vacant fields and along roads.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has a program to house the hurricane homeless in temporary trailers, said it`s doing everything it can to help.
Almost 700 people are on waiting lists for FEMA trailers. Church and community activists say they have met with dozens of newly and soon-to-be evicted residents and warn that hundreds more are living in condemned apartment houses.
”Obviously you can`t anticipate every catastrophic disaster and have an endless supply of mobile homes,” said FEMA spokesman Phil Cogan. ”We have them available here, and we have more coming in every day.”
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Almost 61,000 south Dade residents no longer can live in their hurricane- damaged homes, a recent survey shows. So far, FEMA has set up about 2,000 temporary trailers and plans to bring in 2,000 more.
Meanwhile, no one is certain how many tenants will be evicted.
Community activists say federal, state and local disaster planners should have anticipated the evictions.
”Three weeks ago was the time to do something,” said Lisa Levine, director of the South Dade Immigration Association, which helps solve immigration problems. ”We knew landlords were going to renovate. We knew places were slated for demolition, but nothing was done.”
There are few affordable apartments for rent. And for the poor, moving to Broward or Palm Beach Counties isn`t feasible. Many would be forced to give up jobs because they don`t have cars and can`t commute.
The Red Cross offers residents vouchers to pay rent. But the agency reports that many landlords have rejected them.
”This whole issue is a chronic problem that people have been ignoring,” said Hal Beardall, a lawyer for Florida Rural Legal Services. ”We`ve been speaking to whomever will listen about this, and nobody seems to listen. Where do these people go?”
For now, they`re sleeping in cars, alleys and on the floors of friends`
apartments. They`re staying in damaged homes without water or electricity.
Until a month ago, the military was running four tent cities that cared for 3,600 hurricane homeless in south Dade. The last of the tents were dismantled Oct. 23.
Some activists say the federal government closed the tent cities too soon, a calculated move made 11 days before the election to show the effectiveness of the federal effort.
A presidential task force spokesman denied politics played a role.
”It`s unfortunate that people vest motives where there are none,” said spokesman Steve Hart. ”We were interested in the victims and making sure that the transition occurred quickly from the tents to more permanent housing.”
Almost all of the people who stayed in the tent cities have been moved to FEMA trailers or received other assistance. But the relocation process is moving much slower for those who stuck it out in their damaged homes.
Although FEMA said people in tent cities were not placed on priority lists for temporary housing, activists say it appears that way.
”These people were penalized for having stayed home,” said Maria Escobar, who works for the South Dade Immigration Association.
FEMA said it is assigning trailers, first come, first serve.
”The people in the tent cities were among the earliest to apply,” Cogan said.
Still, FEMA`s assistance programs are creating confusion and delays, community activists and disaster victims said. They said some rules are too inflexible for a community made up of thousands of immigrants. They are often distrustful of government and many times share apartments and homes with two or three other families.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to securing trailers from FEMA is a rule that says only the heads of households-or members of one family-are eligible. In south Dade, FEMA has had a hard time figuring out family relationships and who is entitled to aid.
”The reality is that the households are not Mom and Dad and three kids,” Escobar said. ”These people rent rooms and part of rooms. They don`t have rent receipts.”
In households shared by three or four families, FEMA has either denied the entire household any money or awarded assistance to just one of the families.
But FEMA says it is making some exceptions to its rules.
”We`ve encountered some unusual living arrangements,” Cogan said.
”We`re being as liberal as possible. We walk a fine line between protecting the taxpayers from fraud and making sure people entitled to benefits get them. That`s a difficult line to walk.”
Sorting it out takes time. In two months, Escobar said she can boast only four success stories among her many clients-FEMA gave trailers to four families only after learning of medical problems.
Eros Joseph, the woman forced to sleep on a balcony, and her husband, Pierre, say their landlord boarded up their home and gave them 10 minutes to collect their belongings. Pierre said he looked for a place to live without any luck.
”I don`t feel too well,” Eros Joseph said. ”I`m in my ninth month. I`m worried about the baby because I`d like to have a house before the baby comes. I would like to have somewhere to put him.”
Escobar said Joseph`s trailer application is on hold because FEMA has received 18 other applications from the same address. The agency is trying to sort out who is head of the household.
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”This is five weeks after she has applied,” Escobar said.
Another problem, victims claim, is that FEMA didn`t always explain the rules.
When victims apply for help, FEMA sometimes grants money for rent. But when victims couldn`t find places to stay, they gave up and didn`t ask for help.
FEMA says those victims should have called back to update their applications to get trailers-something some hurricane victims say they weren`t told when they first applied.
FEMA says it sends victims letters in three languages explaining that they should call back if they can`t find a place to live.
”If they can`t find a place to stay, they need to get back to us,” said Cogan, the FEMA spokesman. ”Unless they tell us they need another form of housing, we consider them housed.”