HOUSTON (AP) — For Houston resident Scenacia Jones, the experience of getting her new home through an innovative way of building post-disaster housing was like an experiment.
Jones and her two children had been living in a shelter for single parents when Hurricane Harvey’s devasting flooding hit the Houston area in August 2017. All the family’s possessions were lost after the storage facility they were in flooded.
Desperately looking for a permanent place to live, Jones was approached by organizations behind the housing program known as Rapido, Spanish for fast. Under the program, a temporary modular core unit made up of interlocking wall, roof and floor panels would be built. Jones, her 10-year-old son Nyjel, who is disabled, and 12-yearold daughter Nnaji would live there while the rest of the house was built around them. The core is about the size of a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer. The process took about eight months, and Jones and her children now have a new, three-bedroom home, which looks like any other house.
