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As Connecticut’s coastal cities struggle to rebuild after Superstorm Sandy, it’s not clear how much money they’ll have to fortify themselves against future storms. For properties in flood plains that’s a particular concern. Residents of a public housing complex on Norwalk’s waterfront have been waiting for action for decades.
Washington Village lies just a few hundred feet from the mouth of Norwalk Harbor. During Superstorm Sandy, pretty much every first-floor apartment in the entire complex of 136 units flooded. But Sandy wasn’t the first time residents of this public housing complex were dealing with water. Actually, it happens pretty often.
“I have floods all the time. I had one recently, a few days ago," says Paula Sanchez. You can see my plants outside, they’re gone.”
Sanchez lives on a first-floor corner apartment of Washington Village, at the intersections of Water Street and Raymond Street. Sanchez lost so much during Sandy that FEMA gave her $8000, which paid for new beds and appliances, but a new living room couch. But she also deals with routine street flooding. During high tide and big rainstorms, water gushes into Sanchez’s front yard. Sometimes, it’s hard to even leave the house.
“Last week I couldn’t go to a doctor’s appointment because I couldn’t get inside my car," Sanchez recalls.
As Canday Mayer puts it, “Water Street is a bonafide name. It’s closed so often that the town doesn’t even maintain records on when they close the street.”
Mayer is deputy director of Norwalk’s Housing Authority. She says Sandy was a wake-up call: Washington Village, the oldest public housing complex in the state at more than 70 years old, needs to be rebuilt. Very differently.
“It’s not just the fact that it’s old, small housing. It’s vulnerable, and it’s not a safe place to have housing. For anyone," she says.
Mayer’s been working on this since long before Sandy hit. The housing authority wants to tear down Washington Village and start over with a mixed-income housing development. The plans – which residents helped create – show colorful, townhouse-style buildings raised up above the floodplain, with bigger apartments and more services.
It’s an exciting proposition. There’s one little problem though: Money. The housing authority’s depending on a $30 million federal grant that only gets awarded to five communities nationwide each year … and with all the uncertainty in Congress, it’s not even clear anyone will get grants anytime soon.
Tim Sheehan directs Norwalk’s redevelopment agency. He and Mayer say too much has been put into the planning process to give up if the feds don’t come through. They don’t want to leave Washington Village residents empty-handed.
“It’s the most deflating thing for anybody," he says of that scenario.
Where money would come from for an ultimately $100 million project isn’t clear. Even in the short-term, the housing authority is strapped for cash just to try and be a little more prepared for the next storm. The agency just acquired five generators from the fire department to use in places like Washington Village – but it’ll cost another $20,000 to do the power hook-ups. Candace Mayer says she’s not sure that money will be available in time for next hurricane season.
“Hopefully we get the funding in July. But we can’t spend anything before we get it," Mayer says.
And even those generators are just for the community rooms in these complexes – which are also subject to flooding. I asked Tim Sheehan if there’s anything that can really be done to make Washington Village just a little more resilient before totally rebuilding it. It was not an easy question.
“Mmm…I think some of the drainage issues could be looked at," he says, after some hesitation.
He’s talking about the clogged drains on Water Street, which residents of Washington Village repeatedly pointed out to me while I was there. Other than that?
“There shouldn’t be any expectation that if a street or a development is in a 100-year floodplain, and it’s at grade with the floodplain, that it’s not going to flood," he says.
Washington Village is not unique. Bridgeport has a lot of public housing on the water as well – some of which flooded during Sandy and Irene, and is simply being rebuilt as-is in the same place, because there’s no money to do anything different. I asked the state Department of Economic and Community Development if they could give me a list of public housing developments in floodplains. Turns out they don’t keep track.
Commissioner Catherine Smith says after all the calls she got from housing authorities during Sandy, that’s going to change.
“It triggered in us an idea that we needed to go out and just check on everybody," she says.
That conversation happened about two months ago. I’m now told that inventory might be done by this June.
That's just in time for another hurricane season.
Read more in the Connecticut Mirror at ctmirror.org.
