Lataiyyah Washington, 36, and her two sons have been living at the Embassy Suites hotel near the Newark airport since early September 2021, when the remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded out their Oakwood Plaza apartment complex in Elizabeth, New Jersey, leaving four residents dead.
After covering the cost of a hotel room for months, the city announced it was abruptly ending that support as a massive snowstorm approached. Around 10:45 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 28, Washington said she got a call from a city official telling her to check out of the hotel in 15 minutes.
The city’s order was impossible for her to follow. When her phone rang, Washington was on the bus with her 3-year-old son traveling to his doctor’s appointment. But more importantly, she had no idea where her family would go.
“I’m stressed out,” Washington told BuzzFeed News that day. “I have nowhere to go.”
As the climate crisis triggers more intense and more frequent disasters, people across the country are relying on government aid to help them get back on their feet after floods, hurricanes, and wildfires. But post-disaster programs may fall short of what families with low incomes actually need to recover.
That tension is playing out in New Jersey, where a shortage of affordable housing has left hundreds displaced by Ida, like Washington, in limbo hoping to find a permanent home in their city before assistance ends and avoid the prospect of starting fresh elsewhere.
“My kids go to school out here [in Elizabeth],” she said. “Their doctors’ appointments are out here.”
Washington said the official who called her, Amira Abdur-Rahman, explained that the city would no longer pay for her room because she had turned down three subsidized housing options offered by her former apartment’s landlord, Community Investment Strategies. There were two one-bedroom apartments — one in New Brunswick about 30 minutes away and another in Woolwich more than an hour away — that may not have met the state’s subsidized housing standards, which say that a home should contain at least one bedroom or sleeping space for every two people, meaning a family of three should have at least a two-bedroom home. Then there was a two-bedroom apartment in Atlantic City, around a two-hour car ride away from Elizabeth. Washington doesn’t have a car.
“On September 2nd, the City of Elizabeth was faced with over 700 people evacuated at Oakwood Plaza Housing Complex,” city spokesperson Ruby Contreras told BuzzFeed News by email. By Monday, Feb. 7, the city reported 232 people in 85 rooms. “When housing became available, the City encouraged tenants to leave the hotels. If tenants turned down multiple housing opportunities, they’re advised the hotel voucher will cease.”
As of late October, city officials were paying $40,000 a week on temporary housing related to Ida, according to CBS New York. But Contreras didn’t say whether that number was current, nor how much federal aid the city has already received to help cover the costs.
