Florida communities scramble to help displaced Puerto Ricans

Puerto Rican Debora Oquendo, 43, makes a phone call to a doctor for her 10-month-old daughter in a hotel room where she lives, in Orlando, Florida, U.S., December 4, 2017.

By Robin Respaut and Alvin Baez

KISSIMMEE, Florida (Reuters) – At Leslie Campbell’s office in the central Florida city of St. Cloud, the phone will not stop ringing.

Director of special programs for the Osceola County School District, Campbell helps enroll students fleeing storm-ravaged Puerto Rico.

Her job has been a busy one. Since hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the Caribbean in September, over 2,400 new students have arrived in the district. That is enough to fill more than two typical-sized elementary schools. Dozens more youngsters show up weekly.

“We’re just inundated, from the minute we come in, to the minute we leave,” said Campbell, who helps families obtain transportation, meals and clothing.

Across the country, state and local officials are scrambling to manage an influx of Puerto Ricans, a migration that is impacting education budgets, housing, demographics and voter rolls in communities where these newcomers are landing.

Florida, already home to more than 1 million Puerto Ricans, is on the front lines. About 300,000 island residents have arrived in the state since early October, according to Florida’s Division of Emergency Management. The influx is nearly 2.5 times the size of the Mariel boat lift that brought 125,000 Cubans ashore in 1980.

Some Puerto Rican arrivals have passed through Florida on their way to New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and other states. Some may eventually return home. But many will not. The island is still reeling months after Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm, wreaked catastrophic damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure. Nearly 40 percent of residents still lack electricity. The economy has been devastated.

For Florida, the inflow of Puerto Ricans is altering public budgets and perhaps the political calculus in a state that President Donald Trump won by a slim margin in 2016. Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens, are on pace to overtake Cuban-Americans within a few years as the state’s largest Latino voting bloc. Many criticized the Trump administration’s hurricane response as inadequate.

Politicians are taking notice. Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott has reached out to these newcomers. The state has opened reception centers where Puerto Ricans can apply for food stamps and Medicaid, the federal healthcare system for the poor. Scott has asked for an additional $100 million in state spending to house arriving families, many of whom are doubled up with relatives or packed into aging hotels.

Washington, meanwhile, continues to wrestle with the question of how to help Puerto Rico, having long rejected the idea of a federal bailout for the insolvent U.S. territory, which filed for a form of bankruptcy in May. Congress appears unlikely to grant anywhere near the $94.4 billion the territory’s leaders estimate it would take to rebuild.

As federal lawmakers dither, state and local taxpayers are watching the tab to resettle islanders grow.

Statewide, more than 11,200 students from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Island have enrolled in Florida public schools since the storms, according to the governor’s office. Most arrived after a deadline that determines state funding based on enrollment, resulting in an estimated loss for local districts of $42 million during the 2017 fall semester, a Reuters analysis shows.

Requests for public assistance climbed by 5 percent in Florida during the last three months of 2017, compared to the same period in 2016, according to state figures. Federal food stamp issuance, driven by victims of hurricanes Irma and Maria, jumped 24 percent or $294 million over the same period.

The state is also seeing more extremely ill patients from Puerto Rico.

Keyshla Betancourt Irizarry, 22, came to Florida in October on a humanitarian flight with her mother and brother. Suffering with the blood cancer Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Betancourt was deteriorating fast on an island whose healthcare system is in tatters.

Now living in Orlando, she is on Florida’s Medicaid plan, which pays for her radiation treatments. The family has no plans to return to the territory.

“I cannot get the best medical help in Puerto Rico, and it has become even worse after Hurricane Maria,” Betancourt said.

Medicaid patients cost the federal government more on the mainland than in Puerto Rico, because Washington caps Medicaid funding sent to its territories. Such costs will only grow if Congress fails to stabilize Puerto Rico, said Juan Hernandez Mayoral, former director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, which represents the territory in Washington.

“You can pay for it in the 50 states or you can pay much less in Puerto Rico,” Hernandez said. “The hurricane has sped up the migration.”

A Reuters photo essay (http://reut.rs/2AQmzh6) captures images of displaced Puerto Ricans in Florida.

CLASSROOM SQUEEZE

Central Florida was one of the country’s fastest-growing regions even before the disasters as Puerto Ricans fleeing a sputtering economy flocked here for jobs in the booming tourist trade. An estimated 360,000 have settled in the area, the largest concentration in Florida.

The Osceola County school district has enrolled thousands of new students in recent years, including nearly 2,700 in 2015-2016 alone. To accommodate them, the district hired more bilingual teachers, converted offices into classrooms, added portable units and built a new middle school. In 2016, voters approved a half-cent sales tax to provide more funding.

Hurricane Maria has compounded the urgency.

“We have students coming without clothes or records. Some are exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress,” said Kelvin Soto, an Osceola County school board member. “We’re handling it well, but it’s straining our resources.”

Recent arrivals include Felix Martell and his five-year-old daughter Eliany, who settled in Ocala, Florida, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) northwest of Orlando. Martell is the sole caretaker for the child after his wife died two years ago. He worried Eliany’s education would suffer in Puerto Rico due to lengthy school closures following Maria.

Father and daughter are now living in a run-down hotel paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Martell has yet to find a job. Still, he said there is no turning back.

“The girl has learned more in three weeks of school here than in the entire semester on the island,” he said. “I am concentrating on her future.”

TIGHT HOUSING

A shortage of affordable housing is acute for Puerto Rican emigres.

The Community Hope Center, a nonprofit in Kissimmee, Florida, south of Orlando, has been besieged with requests for shelter, according to Rev. Mary Downey, the executive director.

“People are calling us and saying, ‘we’re homeless now,'” Downey said. “It’s awful. There is simply not enough housing to meet the needs.”

Central Florida housing is a bargain compared to places such as New York or San Francisco, but it is beyond the reach of many newcomers lacking savings or jobs. Homes under $200,000 sell quickly, and Orlando-area rents are growing faster than the national average. Local officials say the situation could worsen as families that are doubling and tripling up eventually seek their own places.

Deborah Oquendo Fuentes, 43, and her 11-month-old baby girl Genesis Rivera share a FEMA-paid hotel room in Orlando after fleeing Puerto Rico in October. Oquendo, who found a part-time job that pays minimum wage, fears they will be homeless when that assistance runs out this month.

“I don’t have enough money to move to another place,” Oquendo said. “I feel alone, and I’m afraid.”

(Reporting by Robin Respaut and Alvin Baez; Editing by Marla Dickerson)

Is Haiti forgotten? Where is the media? They need our help!

Residents ask for food at the end of a food distribution after Hurricane Matthew in Saint Jean du Sud, Haiti,

By Kami Klein

A Picture. Hopefully for Haiti, it takes only one in this world of media, where the fight to grab the attention of the public shifts in seconds.  

Only a few weeks ago, as Hurricane Matthew made a direct hit on the poor country of Haiti, the news organizations were covering the devastation every hour and prayers were said around the world.  Now, there is an eerie silence in that same media for the Haitian people.

Over 90% of their homes are destroyed. All of their crops annihilated. Drinking water is slowly becoming poison.  There is no electricity and very little protection from the elements.  So many areas in Haiti are impossible to get to because of the damage.  Food is being airdropped but no one really knows the fate of these people shut off from medical help and the basic needs for life.  

Whether it is politically motivated or perhaps just the hunger for new stories to bring ratings in the media outlets, Haiti is already forgotten and the tragedy for these people  is only beginning.  

We will not forget the people of Haiti.

Thanks to Gary Heavin, founder and former CEO of the fitness chain Curves, producer and actor and a remarkable friend to this ministry, we are able to truly be of assistance. Gary has been on the ground and in the air helping Haiti.  He is one of the few that owns a cargo plane that can get to these remote places and has been tirelessly distributing the food and water filtration as well as solar flashlights and other necessities to these desperate people.  We KNOW that what we are sending is getting to those that really need it!   

We ask you to pray for Haiti and for those amazing people who are there in a great time of need!  We are also asking for your help!  It is through your donations that these emergency items for Haiti are possible. If you wish to help Haiti, please see the link below!   

 

Haiti Hurricane Relief

Flood kills 22 people in India, 170,000 homeless

A man rows a boat as they pull out a horse from the flooded river Ganga in Allahabad

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Flash floods triggered by torrential rain have killed at least 22 people in India and forced more than 170,000 from their homes, officials said on Monday, as forecasters predicted more downpours in coming days.

India’s monsoon rains, though vital for agriculture, regularly bring death and destruction. The rain was 35 percent above average in the week that ended on July 6, the weather office said.

Twenty people were killed in the central state of Madhya Pradesh where 70,000 people were left homeless as water rose to dangerous levels along parts of the Narmada river.

Firemen waded through thigh-deep water to rescue women and children in flooded villages while rescue teams used inflatable boats to reach people stranded in urban areas.

“Thousands of people will be evacuated today. We are working on a war footing mode to set up relief camps,” additional home secretary Basant Singh said in Bhopal, the state capital.

“The health department is distributing medicines to prevent outbreak of water-borne diseases.”

Stormy weather also ravaged parts of the remote northeast.

Heavy rain pounded the tea-growing, oil-rich state of Assam killing at least two people. About 100,000 people were forced to take shelter on higher ground, officials there said.

The rain has also swelled the Brahmaputra river, which flows into Bangladesh, to dangerous levels.

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal ordered officials to distribute food, clothing and medicines to people who could not return to their homes.

(Reporting by Biswajyoti Das in GUWAHATI Rupam Jain in NEW DELHI, Editing by Tommy Wilkes, Robeert Birsel)