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2021 Whatcom flood victims face rising housing costs, homelessness

'So much for the American Dream'

Tony Chunkapura sits in the gutted living room of his Everson home May 4. A year and a half after floods ravaged much of northern Whatcom County
Tony Chunkapura sits in the gutted living room of his Everson home May 4. A year and a half after floods ravaged much of northern Whatcom County (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)
By Julia Lerner Staff Reporter

Standing in the joint kitchen/living room of her 100-square-foot RV, 53-year-old Whatcom County resident Maryann Snudden looks tired. 

Practically every flat surface in the RV is covered: The shelves along the walls are filled with books, binders and loose paperwork; the counters are hidden under more paperwork and insurance forms, a box of tissues and canned nonperishable food; the mini fridge is almost invisible beneath cardboard moving boxes containing her personal effects.

It’s a collection of the few items Snudden was able to salvage after the November 2021 floods destroyed everything else at her Everson home. 

The November 2021 floods — the first on late Sunday, Nov. 14, and the second on Nov. 28 — were catastrophic across the region, but particularly in Everson, Nooksack and Sumas in rural Whatcom County, where hundreds of families were displaced.


photo

Water floods into Tony Chunkapura’s living and dining room in November 2021.

(Photo courtesy Tony Chunkapura)


Recovery will take years, and costs have already topped $150 million. In early May, almost 18 months after the floods, the Whatcom Long Term Recovery Group reported between 20 and 50 individuals and families remain displaced from their homes, and almost 300 clients working with disaster case management services still await resources and financial support that could be additional months away.  

In the meantime, Whatcom County is pursuing financial support for homeowners who can’t return to their homes. More than $12 million in new grant funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will allow the county to acquire uninhabitable homes and buildings and raise others with stilts. The initial buyout list includes about 15 homes, including those owned by Snudden and her across-the-street neighbor, Tony Chunkapura.

“Every day we’re fighting, and that’s on top of the emotional damage and psychological damage of going through the flood and losing everything,” Snudden said May 5. 

Before the floods, Snudden lived in her 3,300-square-foot red brick house on Everson’s Main Street for about three years. She lived in the basement apartment and worked out of the on-site shop, where she managed local building maintenance and repairs. 

When the first flood came through, it left about 4 feet of water in her living space. The second flood destroyed her shop and carried away her tools, leaving her jumping from hotel room to hotel room, seeking stability and a roof over her head, with no income.


Last June, she moved into the RV with her 80-pound support dog, Loki. 


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Snudden said her rescue dog, Loki, helps her get out of bed every morning as she deals with anxiety from the floods, depression from losing her home and fear of homelessness.

(Julia Lerner/Cascadia Daily News)


Snudden and Chunkapura, 43, who purchased his house in 2017, both bought homes in what is now designated floodway. Given the extent of the damages, the county declared both irreparable and have slated them for demolition. Both owners are at the top of the buyout list, but the values of their homes are wildly in flux after years of exploding property values during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since he purchased the house in 2017, the value of Chunkapura’s property has almost doubled, he said from what was once his living room. 

In the months that followed the floods, volunteer and charity organizations like Samaritan’s Purse helped gut Chunkapura’s home at no cost to him.

“There’s no guidebook for recovery, no centralized list that tells you everything that you’re supposed to do after a disaster,” he said. “How do you pay off your bills? How do you get to your next home? All of my money is tied up in this current property. How can I move on?” 


photo

Drywall has been removed from the bottom of the walls, exposing the beams, hallways and other rooms of what was once Tony Chunkapura’s home.

(Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)


The house was a well-preserved memorial to midcentury modern design with massive windows, dual fireplaces and a lot of private land where his Airedale terrier, India, could run around. Chunkapura invested his time and money fixing up the house in the years leading up to the floods, restoring and painting the exterior walls, installing new floors and planting dozens of rose bushes. 

“This was my dream,” Chunkapura said last week. “This was the result of so many years of work.”


photo

From beneath a blossoming cherry tree, Tony Chunkapura looks at his Everson house. From the exterior, his home looks intact and livable, but the interior is gutted following significant damage from the flooding.

(Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)


The days after the flood were “a blur,” Chunkapura said, of pulling his belongings out of his house, finding a new place to stay, attending city and county town halls and calling his mortgage company, his insurance, his friends and family. Those calls haven’t stopped, and each month, he has to call to extend the deferral on his mortgage payments. When the county buys his house, though, he hopes he’ll be able to recover. 

Even with the anticipated buyout, the money won’t be enough to put Chunkapura or Snudden into comparable homes in Whatcom County, where housing is limited and costs continue to rise.


photo

The muddy lower line on Tony Chunkapura’s home marks the height the water rose to during the flooding. The upper line marks the height he’d have to raise his house, if he would have stayed, to avoid future flooding.

(Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)


And, the county said, there’s little indication of when the funds will be available for Whatcom, or when the sales will go through.  

“The federal process is taking a long time,” said Paula Harris, the county’s river and flood manager. “We have two of these grants, and because of the level of damage, they’re supposed to be on the ‘fast track’ for FEMA review.”

That review process, Harris said, is still under way, and there’s no clear answer as to when those grants — one valued at $9,578,533 and the other at $2,517,712 — will actually hit Whatcom County. 

For Snudden and Chunkapura, that financial support can’t come soon enough. 

“I don’t have money to buy into a new home because it’s stuck in this home that’s flooded out,” Chunkapura said. “And then I’m dealing with where am I going to live next?”

Chunkapura is ready to restart, though won’t be able to do so in Whatcom County. At the end of May, Chunkapura is packing up what’s left of his belongings in his rented apartment in Bellingham, and moving to stay with family, splitting time between Montana and Florida. 


photo

Snudden got a tattoo of a phoenix after the floods to remind herself that after hardship, she is strong enough to handle it. “Every time I start to feel hopeless, I can look down at it and remind myself to just keep pushing forward,” she said in May.

(Julia Lerner/Cascadia Daily News)


Snudden, though, has nowhere else to go. 

Currently, FEMA is helping with payments on Snudden’s RV rental site and her $225 per month storage locker, where she’s sorting through everything that once had a place in her home, but even those payments are about to come to an end. 

FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program “provides financial assistance and direct services” for individuals impacted by a disaster, but those funds are only available in the 18 months following the Presidential disaster declaration, issued Jan. 5, 2022

When those funds run out in late June, Snudden said she has no idea where she’ll stay, and with no clear light at the end of the tunnel on selling her home, she’s facing homelessness. 

“I built a bed in my truck, got the necessary camping stuff,” she said, anticipating losing her RV when FEMA funds run dry. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stay here. I don’t have an income, so how can I afford a parking spot for my trailer?” 

If the buyout comes through in the next month or so, Snudden said she’ll be OK and won’t lose her living space, but for now, she’s preparing for the worst. 

“I was a first-time homeowner,” she said. “So much for the American dream of buying a house, of feeling safe. I did everything right and this is where I ended up.”


photo

Tony Chunkapura’s home, with a bright pink cherry tree, is off of Main Street in Everson, just down the road from the shops. The November 2021 floods brought feet of water into his home, making it uninhabitable.

(Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)


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