When Marguerite Oestreicher arrived in the town of Jean Lafitte just a few days after Hurricane Ida devastated the region, the damage was so severe she didn’t know where to begin.
For more than 12 hours on August 29, 2021, the small town was blasted by Category 4 winds and — unlike many other places the storm hit — high water surges. More than 90% of the homes were damaged or destroyed.
The massive storm pushed water over levees and into homes, businesses and schools. When it finally receded, a thick layer of black, tar-like mud covered nearly every road and yard.
“We first started doing mucking and gutting work, so I had staff members down here walking down the street knocking on doors, talking to people like construction teams, or people at the churches asking, ‘Who do you know that needs help?’”
Oestreicher is the executive director of the New Orleans Habitat for Humanity, which has a service area that includes Orleans, Jefferson, St. Charles, St. Bernard, St. John, and Plaquemines parishes. She said everywhere she went, people told her the same thing: “Go down to the marina.”
Like the infamous pirate the community is named after, residents of Jean Lafitte are self-sufficient and like to keep to themselves. As part of Louisiana’s working coast, the seafood industry is huge here, and many residents work on the water in one way or another.
So Oestreicher headed to the marina and followed the chain of connections that make up a small, resilient community. She spoke to some fisherman at the launch who told her to talk to the owner of the marina, who told her to talk to a man named Timmy.
“I was like, ‘Timmy who?’ and she said Timmy Kerner, the mayor,” Oestreicher said.
Kerner’s office had already started the preliminary case management work, identifying the neediest cases.
“That gave us a huge help,” said Oestreicher, who quickly formed a partnership between Habitat and the community. “He gave us a list of people, notes about their status, how many people in their household, if they were elderly or had special needs. We looked at that and then we just started talking to people.”
Getting to work
Founded in 1983, the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity has built more than 750 homes in the region, and the nonprofit pledged to spend $4.5 million over the next two years to help build more than 40-60 homes in Lafitte for residents who lost everything. Many don’t have the income to rebuild—this is their only option.
With Mayor Kerner’s help, Oestreicher was able to identify the neediest cases, and they started building as soon as they could. Habitat homebuyers are true partners in the process, not just volunteering 250 hours of “sweat equity” in lieu of a down payment but completing mandatory financial literacy and home maintenance classes as part of the program. In addition to financing the homes they build, Habitat helps people apply for first-time homebuyer programs through the city or state, which can provide up to $55,000 in down payment assistance.
New homes aren’t cheap to build, especially with rising material and labor costs. Depending on the floor plan, Habitat homes cost about $160,000 to $180,000 to build, which accounts for land, materials, and full-time Habitat construction staff, as well as licensed electricians, plumbers and HVAC.
The heavy price tag makes it important for Habitat to choose designs that call for affordable materials and focus on sustainability. As such, Habitat has partnered with the Front Porch Initiative from Auburn University’s Rural Studio, which aims to develop a scalable and sustainable process for delivering homes in under-resourced communities like Lafitte.
“We work to ensure that homes are designed for energy and water efficiency; are durable, maintainable, and resistant to storm damage; promote the health and well-being of the occupants, the builders, and the fence line communities around where building materials are produced; and that they positively influence the surrounding community,” said Mackenzie Stagg, assistant research professor at Auburn University Rural Studio.
Stagg said rural communities are frequently communities of extraction — in which natural resources have been removed with few resources put back in — but that they have consistently proven to also be extraordinarily resourceful and resilient.
“We have found this to be true in Lafitte, and we are honored to be able to contribute to the rebuilding and strengthening of this community,” she said.
According to Rural Studio’s blueprints, the new homes Habitat builds in Lafitte are energy-efficient, elevated and reinforced with hurricane straps and other features to make them less vulnerable to wind, flooding and other severe weather events. They use roughly twice as many straps, nails, pilings, flooring structures and special taping to seal roof decking in order to make it more impermeable to rain and water.
They’re also both ENERGY STAR 3.0 and FORTIFIED Gold certified — meaning not only will the homes be able to withstand high winds, but homeowners will also be able to insure them. Savings in energy use — and potentially in insurance premiums — should result in savings over the life of the home.
“The partnership with Rural Studio allows Habitat to offer a slightly smaller footprint that is incredibly energy efficient that will be affordable to own and maintain,” Oestreicher said.
Restoring hope
On Ash Wednesday 2023, Oestreicher stood in front of the project’s first completed home, shielding her eyes from the sun as a strong wind blew across the lawn.
“The family that lived here before had a double-wide trailer,” she said, sweeping her hand over the landscape. “So, it was completely flooded and destroyed. We’ve been working in partnership with them throughout this entire process.”
That process can be extensive and involve things like clearing land titles to figure out true ownership, negotiating with a bank for a mortgage, and navigating endless forms to apply for government assistance. It’s often confusing, at times labyrinthine.
“Family by family, it’s like, ‘OK, let’s piece together their finances. Let’s apply for a program.’ But wait, you can’t add the state or parish first-time homebuyer program on top of FEMA, you can get one or the other. But in order to apply for either one, you have to have plans and your building permits, and it’s like a 30-page application,” Oestreicher said, nearly out of breath. “We learned a lot through this.”
And while Habitat can’t complete applications for people, their family service staff can help make sure they’re completed and submitted properly. All of these steps can slow the process down, but standing in the kitchen of the first finished home, Oestreicher said it’s all worth it.
“That looks perfect for hollering out at someone on the porch,” she said with a laugh, pointing to a kitchen window that looks out onto a back deck. “This really is a great home, and this family deserves it. They’ve been through so much and have a little grandchild that lives with them.”
For Corrine and Darel Percle, the couple soon to move into the home, it almost seems too good to be true.
“I had to see it to believe it,” Corrine said with a laugh.
After her son checked on their property following the storm, he told Corrine the water came up to the windowsill. When she and her husband finally made it back home weeks later, they’d lost everything. “It was molded all the way to the ceiling,” she said. “And everything in the house was moved. The washers and dryers were laying down. It looked like a tornado hit it.”
After more than a year of navigating red tape, putting in their sweat equity, and waiting — “I’m patient,” Corinne said — the couple got a sneak preview of their new home a couple of weeks before Mardi Gras, when one of the contractors texted them saying he had a key and he’d let them take a peek. Walking through her future home, Corrine nearly broke down in tears.
She said she just kept thinking one word over and over: “Wonderful.”
DID YOU KNOW? The town of Jean Lafitte (named for a famous pirate) lies along Bayou Barrataria. The name Barrataria is French and means “dishonesty at sea.”
