Last year, the Pine Ridge Reservation was hit with a series of severe storms that damaged nearly 200 homes beyond repair. FEMA stepped in to provide housing assistance. This week, the last of the damaged homes are being replaced.
Brian Hvinden is with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He says the three bedroom, manufactured homes are permanent living spaces instead of makeshift shelters like other FEMA projects. Hvinden adds that the housing helps not only families but other groups.
“The disaster really impacted people from all walks of the community so some elderly couples, some families with children, multi-generational families, some in cases where it’s a single individual living in the home. So it was really all segments of the community that were impacted by the disaster and that are benefiting from this program,” says Hvinden.
Hvinden says that even though this phase of FEMA assistance is over, the organization is still working on repairing other peoples’ homes that were also damaged but not destroyed by the storms. He says FEMA has repaired 55 homes with another 50 to go.
