Puerto Rico’s disaster survivors struggle amid new storms — and without long-overdue assistance | Opinion

Forgotten. Olvidados.

As yet another tropical storm leaves Puerto Rico in tatters, that’s how its residents feel — forgotten. From Hurricane Maria to a series of devastating earthquakes to COVID-19, the people of Puerto Rico are struggling but remain invisible to the Trump administration and most Americans.

FEMA officials and Puerto Rican authorities are pointing fingers at each other, deflecting responsibility for the shared negligence of providing sufficient assistance to disaster survivors. More than 20,000 families who applied for aid to repair their homes after the earthquakes were denied any assistance from FEMA, and most surely will be facing any disaster during the pandemic with damaged homes. Many are calling our legal hotline for help, sharing stories that highlight the grim reality for thousands of Puerto Ricans being denied federal assistance. Most of them are women and elderly. Many do not have internet access or the ability to send a text message.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the situation worse, shutting down FEMA’s Disaster Recovery Centers since March. Only a handful have recently reopened, making it difficult, if not impossible, for most people to submit applications for housing assistance in person. This leaves FEMA’s app or website as the only method for accessing disaster relief. But many in the disaster zone don’t have broadband internet access, and where there is access, many don’t have the appropriate equipment to connect to it.

As the hurricane season heats up, earthquake survivors are still living in tents. Worse yet, because of the pandemic, FEMA is resorting to remote inspections to verify occupancy, ownership and damages. But it’s difficult to do inspections from a distance. Many survivors do not have the skills or knowledge to answer technical questions regarding the stability of their home’s foundation. (Do you?) So, only a third of applicants are approved for housing assistance.

While FEMA recently began to accept a sworn statement as alternate proof of housing ownership, the document is not available on its website. Many times, the only legal obstacle for receiving aid is the inability to submit this document. Nonprofit legal groups are filling the gap by making it available on their websites, but it is difficult for people with limited technical knowledge or without internet access to learn of this alternative.

Community groups shouldn’t carry this burden; FEMA and local authorities have a duty to help survivors access it on their web pages, sending it to survivors by mail or email and helping them to submit it.

The deadline to request initial assistance ended on July 2, even as two earthquakes — of 5.3 and 4.9 magnitude —shook the island on July 3, just two of more than 10,000 tremors since the beginning of the year. This economic relief may be the only help that people receive to fix their homes, as Congress has failed to approve housing-reconstruction funds.

Puerto Ricans need the federal government’s help. FEMA must reopen all of its Disaster Recovery Centers, permit in-person re-inspections of damage and provide ample access to the sworn statement to prove housing ownership. And Congress must pass the bipartisan Housing Survivors of Major Disasters Act (S1605, HR2914), which will make housing assistance possible to current and future survivors of hurricanes and earthquakes.

Amid the fresh challenges of COVID-19 and the latest storms to hit the island, we owe it to Puerto Rico’s disaster survivors to deliver this long-overdue assistance.

Emily Colón Albertorio is the executive director of the Instituto de Educación Práctica (IEP) of the Bar Association of Puerto Rico, a nonprofit organization that offers legal assistance to disaster survivors.