FEMA can kind of suck
I own a small apartment house in Asheville. It doesn't make much money, I mainly do it to maintain my connection to the community and have a place to stay, all the rents are below market and I have a diverse group of folks there. I'm proud I'm able to participate in this way.
Lots of trees came down in the yard, thousands of dollars in damages, from Helene. I called FEMA. Their response was it's not your primary residence, no love. What about the other tenants? Common areas are not 'primary residences.' So I expressed some frustration, and the FEMA person really sucked at their response.
They said it was totally fair that I should be responsible, out of pocket for trees. I asked why that was? Their reponse was "this conversation is over," and they hung up. The answer from a decent person would be, I understand your frustration, but FEMA isn't set up to handle this circumstance. Please reach out to SBA.
Here's why this sucks. If I were a recent transplant to Asheville with my multimillion dollar single family residence right next door to my apartment house, thousands of dollars would flow to you from FEMA for your tree damage. I, and my low income tenants, get squat. That is a shameful misallocation of resources.
I've looked, and there is apparantly no assistance to folks in my situation (and nothing available to my tenants). Had the consequences been worse, I would be forced to sell my property, and five decent, hardworking folks would now be forced to find substandard housing. What a world we live in.
That sounds like an incredibly frustrating time for you. I'm sorry you're going through such an awful experience. But it doesn't look like FEMA provides any financial assistance with replacing trees, regardless of whether it's a primary residence or rental property. The FEMA simplified procedures policy (PDF warning) has only two mentions of trees, both in the context of tree removal regarding hazards that prevent access to the housing. The person on the phone was right that there wasn't assistance for your situation, but they seem to have been mistaken about why they weren't going to help you?
Not to say it isn't frustrating for NoblePath and details here are quite limited, but it seems to me (to play a bit of Devil's Advocate):
While their motivations might be noble, ultimately NoblePath's property is a business, not their primary residence, and the damage is inconvenient, but not actually impacting the actual residence itself. As a business and a landlord, it is ultimately NoblePath's responsibility to secure their business' property, not FEMA's.
I had considered giving a response along this vein, and decided that, while it may be true, it was less helpful to talk about landlords and homeowners than it was to try to cut to the core of the problem, which was a seeming misapprehension regarding what FEMA is actually there to help with.
It’s not my primary residence, but it is that of the tenants. If the business has an enexpected emergency expense beyond what it can afford, suddenly those tenants are out of a home. It’s unfair that my affluent neighbors don’t have to absorb that cost, but my tenants do.
And this would be the case even at market rate property. Rents would be going up at those, renters are having to pay more than single family detached properties through no fault of their own.
I think you bring up a great point about the apartments being a business. It sounds like OP is running an apartment differently than most landlords, which is pretty cool, but when you do things differently sometimes the system screws you, because it's not designed for you. Apartments, all housing really, is a profit machine in the US and because of that decision, FEMA isn't designed to help them. In the American business world, you were responsible for aggressively raising rents to compete with other apartments and buying more property, investing, or at least saving some of the large profits you made from raising rent every year. That money pays for the tree repair.
I'm not saying any of that is true or accurate, just that FEMA doesn't serve you, because it sounds like you're not running your apartments to make the maximum profit. So you get screwed, because America values money over the human right to housing.
In my case the trees were in fact posing hazards, they were threatening power drops. Pretty sure they are covered for single family detached housing.
What this does is force landlords like me raise rents, disadbantaging my tenants to the benefit of the already more privileged.
FEMA is totally overwhelmed right now. They had two major hurricanes in one year this year.
The worker shouldn’t have been rude with you on the phone, but basically if you’re able to wait for insurance to kick in, you don’t need the little bit of help they can give. That money is reserved for people who have lost their homes and are currently homeless and can’t afford a hotel.
FEMA needs more federal support. The storms are only going to get worse. They need probably like twice the budget they’ve got right now. They’re short staffed, the reserves they have to give out aren’t large enough and a lot of their protocols are outdated. We’re in trouble right now. Theres no help for a lot of people who need it.
Tbf we don’t know what
“expressed some frustration” means. FEMA operator may not be the one starting the rudeness.
For the record, my statement was “that seems really unfair to my tenants.”
I’m not sure this is how it’s working. Plenty of affluent homeowners are receiving significant aid if my information is correct.
Yep, and more than that, we really need a comprehensive nationwide infrastructure hardening project. Climate change is going to keep hitting, and it is going to keep hitting harder. Unfortunately, with how political and financial momentum work, we will almost certainly remain in a reactionary posture as these blows come.
I'm having a bad day at work today, so I'm going to reply to your one statement here and it honestly might be less than perfectly kind. The expectation that any publicly facing worker should realistically have to constantly empathize with every individual they interact with in every situation is totally wrong. All the while we dismiss any obligation of the person interacting with the worker to empathize with their situation at all. You're asking a call center worker to justify a government policy to you that they have no part in making.
That’s a decent reframe. It doesn’t excuse his behavior, though. Sure they’re overworked, but they’re decently paid. This wasn’t a call center person, this was a senior adjuster. Their job is to help residents, of which 5 families will be impacted by their actions. I run very small margins to keep rents low and people housed. I’ll be fine, but if I can’t make the finances work, those folks are out of a house.
I think it should be okay to share a story about bad customer service even if it’s also understandable that the other person in the phone conversation is under a lot of pressure, too. It’s a thing that happened. There is usually room for improvement.
And you should be able to do that without having all your decisions questioned. We only know what you tell us. But along those lines, it sounds like your margins might have been too small in retrospect? There wasn’t enough of a buffer to cover the deductible for unexpected expenses. Though, anticipating the effects of unexpected weather events can be hard to get right.
It’s annoying to see others get more disaster relief, but hard to judge without knowing their situation, too.
Wow, that’s terrible. It sounds like you don’t have insurance for this, either?
I don't know what kind of insurance NoblePath has but they're insanely slow right now/basically unresponsive. I have a place in Boston that has been dealing with water damage completely unrelated to anything going on with Florida and my insurance companies have been giving me the runaround about all this stuff, because they've been "doing work for the hurricane".
I do, but it’s a high deductible.
To me this is what your insurance is for and why high deductibles are risky. Yeah the guy on the phone was apparently rude, it happens and while not "appropriate" like, it's at best a "hey Bob, take your fifteen and be calmer on the phone" sort of a correction. And maybe you were the 35th conversation that day from a landlord wanting them to cover something.
It shouldn't make you raise rent because the cost of paying your deductible should be included in your business plan. It shouldn't make people homeless because you should be taking care of it.
When you said it wasn't fair to your tenants, that sounds like you actually felt it wasn't fair to you. Because the tenants fall under your business plan responsibility. I understand there's other aid out there for small business owners and I hope they're able to assist because tragedies like that do throw even good business plans askew, but I'd encourage you to lower your deductible if it's not affordable.
Hey, just wanted to say - yeah that’s shitty, especially in your situation where you aren’t owning the property as a retirement plan or to boost profits, but to provide affordable housing/community and basically just covering costs through rent.
It sucks that the only response from FEMA was basically telling you your best option is to get a disaster relief loan from SBA, especially since it looks like SBA isn’t even able to offer new loans right now. I certainly see how unfair it seems (to both you, and your tenants even) that personal homes that are owned by people who could more likely afford repairs without FEMA assistance are the ones getting the assistance.
I hope you are able to get something figured out, and are able to keep both you and your tenants safe & out of further harms way. Hopefully this doesn’t end up putting you too deep in a hole financially.
It is maybe worth going through insurance just in case something else happens, but that will likely raise your rates anyway even if you don’t meet the deductible. The whole situation stinks, it seems like a once in a lifetime disaster, that hopefully is only once in a lifetime. I think it does make sense that you might have to raise rent in this scenario, and hopefully your tenants are understanding, even though they were also likely impacted.