It seems like every morning, another arm of the federal government is being reformed, eliminated, or downsized. That might wind up including an agency that a lot of Americans rely on when disaster strikes: FEMA.

President Trump has called FEMA a “disaster.” His new head of homeland security, Kristi Noem, has signaled it’s time to “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today.” FEMA is a big agency, and understanding its role can be difficult in the abstract. So this week, we’re playing an episode from one of our favorite public radio podcasts: Sea Change.

It’s all about something called the “50% Rule.” Host Carlyle Calhoun travels to two towns to discover how this obscure federal policy designed to stop the cycle of flood damage is leading to opposite destinies.

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CREDITS

This episode was reported and produced by Carlyle Calhoun of Sea Change.

Editing by Jack Rodolico with help from Eve Abrams.

Additional help from Halle Parker, Eva Tesfaye, Ryan Vasquez, and Rosemary Westwood.

Fact-checking by Garrett Hazelwood.

Sound design by Emily Jankowski.

The Sea Change theme music is by Jon Batiste.

Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi

Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Marina Henke, and Kate Dario.

Executive producer: Taylor Quimby

Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Audio Transcript

Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.

TRANSCRIPT

Drive south from New Orleans follow the Mississippi River, and about an hour later you’ll arrive in Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana. It’s a tiny town on a rural, skinny stretch of land sandwiched between the river and wetlands just before it all disappears into the Gulf of Mexico.

Pointe a la Hache is where I meet Vergie Encalade.

Vergie Encalade: I've been here all my life. Born and reared down here, I'll be 85 years old. And, uh,

CARLYLE: you don't look like you could even be near the age of 80.

Vergie Encalade: Well, I'll be, I'll be 85. Okay?

Vergie and I are talking outside her small home. Right across the street from the tall, grass-banked levy hiding the Mississippi River behind it. Vergie waves at every car that drives by.

And I ask her how long her family has owned this land.

Vergie Encalade: Oh lordy goes way back, oh my gracious over 100 years on the war. So we have a lot of history here.

In Pointe a la Hache, a lot of Black families like Vergie’s go way back. Some have owned the same land since the end of slavery. People who trace their ancestors back to the sugar and rice plantations that once lined the river.

It’s a beautiful, peaceful place … and a vulnerable one.

CARLYLE: Did you lose your home in Katrina?

Vergie Encalade: Oh, most definitely. Yes, sure. And I mean, you know, I mean, storms after storms. But I mean, we were able to come back because I mean, we weren't dealing with what we're dealing with now.

MUSIC

What Pointe a la Hache is dealing with now is all that comes with being on the doorstep of climate change.

Surrounded by water, at the tip of Louisiana.

But…

Vergie’s worrying about more than the storms themselves. She’s worried about the federal government. How the federal government is responding to these storms.

In fact, Vergie can point to one single, obscure federal policy… This policy is designed to protect vulnerable towns in flood zones. Like hers. But… Vergie says it may be the thing that actually destroys it.

Vergie Encalade: I want to live right here. ~Right here. This is where I want to be. Right here. I won't go nowhere else.

CARLYLE: You love it here?

Vergie Encalade: I love it here.

I'm Carlyle Calhoun... and this is Sea Change.

And That obscure federal policy… it’s called the 50 Percent Rule. And it’s creating two opposite destinies for two Louisiana towns. Coming up, I’m going to take you to both of them.

MIDROLL

Flooding is the most common natural disaster. By far.

So First, I’ve got to tell you some basics about how we as a country deal with floods.

Number 1. FEMA is the federal agency in charge of floods

Number 2. FEMA helps communities prepare for floods. And recover after them.

Number 3: FEMA makes maps that show where floods are probably going to happen.

And Number 4: FEMA sells about 90 percent of the nation’s flood insurance policies through the National Flood Insurance Program.

That last part in particular — selling flood insurance to people in flood zones. Well… It’s a money pit for the federal government. And with climate change? Every year, the government loses more and more.

Congress wants FEMA to lose less. But FEMA also has a mandate to protect people.

Enter: the 50 Percent Rule.

People hate the 50 Percent Rule.

WATERFALL TAPE: our coastal communities will look a lot different especially with what some people call the dreaded Fema, 50% rule.

TAPE: homeowners are on the brink of homelessness tonight as county leaders enforce a dreaded FEMA rule.

TAPE: They are worried because these letters give homeowners three options demolish their homes. Elevate them or relocate them for so many homeowners. It's an impossible choice.

TAPE: rebuilding will be slow after the storm if people can rebuild at all.

Here’s how the 50 Percent Rule works. If you live in a flood zone and your house is damaged – from a storm, a fire, a flood, any kind of damage, and that damage is more than half of your home’s value –fifty percent– you’ve just triggered FEMA’s 50 Percent Rule.

Now, you can’t simply repair your house to how it was before. You have to raise your house up into the air. Permanently, on stilts, pilings, whatever. Your house now has to go up above where FEMA says is a safe height to keep dry in the next flood.

Why? Because FEMA WANTS to discourage people from rebuilding in the same way only to get flooded again.

And if you don’t raise your house or relocate your house, most likely it will be bulldozed.

That’s the 50% rule.

MUSIC

Here’s what got me interested in the 50 Percent Rule: It’s designed to stop the cycle of flood damage, but in action, it’s driving inequality and changing towns dramatically.

Data confirms this: how much the rule helps or hurts your town comes down to race, money, and access to power. I reached out to FEMA. and they acknowledge there’s inequity in the program. They say they’re trying to do something about it.

Which makes sense because the disparity I found on the ground was stark.

Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana, a majority Black town with a high poverty rate, could drown under the weight of the 50 Percent Rule. We’ll go back there in a bit.

But first, I want to take you to a different kind of town–a whiter, more wealthy one–one that has been lifted up by the rule. In fact, FEMA celebrates this town as the case study for how the 50 Percent Rule can save a community from floods.

ROD SCOTT: Mandeville is the most flood-adapted retrofitted community on the planet right now.

Mandeville, Louisiana is about 80 miles north of Pointe a la Hache– directly across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.

Mandeville is affluent, mostly white. It’s a pretty little historic town. People are jogging, walking their dogs.

CARLYLE: We’re driving along the lake here

ROD SCOTT: Lakeshore Drive.

CARLYLE: And everything on our right side, every house that we see is up 12 feet in the air.

ROD SCOTT: This is a new one. It’s enormous.

My tour guide is Rod Scott. Rod’s a contractor who specializes in elevating buildings above FEMA flood levels. And the 50 Percent Rule has kept him busy. He’s raised 1,500 buildings all over the country, including a few here in Mandeville.

Rod is like an evangelist for elevation. His wife even calls him the mitigation minister.

ROD SCOTT: We get in. 90 days later, we hand the keys back to the property owners. Boom, we're on to the next one.

Rod owns a company called Flood Mitigation Solutions, he’s the board chairman of a flood mitigation nonprofit, and he also just happens to be a Mandeville resident. So he’s the perfect guy to tell me about how the 50 Percent Rule is changing this town for the better.

ROD SCOTT: Nothing's permanent, nothing's forever. The earth changes, the earth is changing dramatically. What we have to do is we have to retrofit our buildings in order to stay and to be able to afford to stay.

Carlyle: How much of Mandeville is in the flood zone?

ROD SCOTT: 90 percent of the community is in a FEMA flood zone.

And flood it does. Rod tells me Mandeville has had 17 floods in the last 18 years.

Where we’re driving on the lakefront, FEMA’s 50% Rule says houses have to go up 10 feet.

ROD SCOTT: Plus, Mandeville puts two feet on top of the FEMA flood maps for, well, the ocean's not going down. So build higher. Build stronger.

Rod and I are standing on a sidewalk looking up at a historic 1840s plantation house.

ROD SCOTT: So this is state of the art construction. So we build these, uh, incredibly intense foundations with. Pilings under the footings that go down 30, 40 feet. So these are like battleship foundations. You could run a car into these. And probably not break it.

And also, they’re beautiful. This whole neighborhood that’s 12 feet in the air doesn't look weird. All of these houses were elevated with historic preservation in mind, what Rod calls “battleship foundations” match the historic architecture of the houses, and are surrounded by professional landscaping. Grand staircases lead up to elegant front porches.

And importantly… they’re SAFE. The 1840s plantation house Rod and I are looking at?

ROD SCOTT: This was actually put in before, the year before Katrina, and it weathered Katrina.

Katrina was soo destructive in Mandeville. It is remarkable that a house right on the lakefront made it through unscathed.

So what does this all cost?

To elevate just a small house, it costs around $150,000. And most of the houses in Mandeville are not small. Many are huge. The 50 Percent Rule is requiring homeowners here to shell out up to a million dollars to raise their houses.

ROD: You cannot rebuild and get a permit unless you go up or become compliant with the FEMA regulations. So, in this community, there was enough wealth to write a check and do that.

Homeowners in Mandeville weren’t thrilled to write those big checks. Or to live through a giant construction project.

But now… their home values are through the roof. There are bidding wars on these elevated houses.

At this point… 86% of all the buildings in historic Mandeville have been elevated. Houses, restaurants, stores, all up with the birds.

I spoke with Cara Bartholomew. She runs Mandeville’s planning division.

CARA BARTHOLOMEW: I always want to pat ourselves in the back, but at the same time, I mean, it's just. The financial status that we have makes everything a whole lot easier. It's such a struggle for a lot of places, but that's why it's easier for us.

It’s easier to comply if you can simply write a big check to lift your house in the air.

But it’s not just that. FEMA’s whole system favors wealthy towns. Here’s how: when choosing which houses to elevate, FEMA uses a cost-benefit analysis.That means FEMA chooses projects that give the greatest savings. It’s more cost effective to protect the highest value communities and properties. Then FEMA doesn’t have to pay out all that money when they flood.

So FEMA has this pot of money–hundreds of millions of dollars in grants–for raising houses. But there’s a cost-benefit catch: it can’t cost more to elevate a house than the house is worth. So for example, spending over a hundred thousand dollars to raise a trailer…is a no go.

Also these FEMA elevation grants often only cover part of the elevation costs, leaving the homeowner with a bill that is sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. Too much for many to afford.

And there’s one more way FEMA favors wealthy communities. Their elevation grants are super-competitive. And wealthy towns like Mandeville have resources to go after those grants. Mandeville’s planning office has eight staff members. Plus a consultant who knows just what FEMA’s looking for in those applications.

Recently, Mandeville applied for grants to raise 35 buildings, and FEMA awarded 34 of them. Cara– who heads Mandeville’s planning division – explained that this was exceptional for them, and there were a lot of factors that went into their success, but she acknowledges Mandeville is in a better position to win these grants than poorer communities.

CARA BARTHOLOMEW: It breaks my heart that people have to, you know, they get flooded and their house is over the 50 percent and I mean, it's like, what do you do, you tell them they are homeless, it the cards are stacked against people who don't have the funds and that are, are strapped for. It's horrible, it's a horrible situation for them.

Mandeville’s doing what flood-prone communities need to do to survive. To me, this place is really a hopeful, climate success story.

But what’s troubling is that America’s Mandeville’s aren’t the ones who really need all this extra money. Poorer towns need FEMA grants to raise buildings. But they get far fewer of them.

With the help of these FEMA grants, Mandeville is on track to raise every last building in a flood zone.

Rod Scott took me to see two houses that had just received FEMA elevation grants. They are small, shotgun style homes side by side. And at the moment, they are barely off the ground.

ROD: so these two structures are actually on a grant that the city just got from FEMA, basically us taxpayers, helping the property owners get these mitigated so that we don't have to keep paying claims. The building's not a bad building. The people aren't bad people. They're just vulnerable, and we just need to correct the elevation. One time, get them up. They don't ever flood again.

An entire town elevated. This is what Rod Scott dreams of.

ROD SCOTT: The community's not handicapped after the disaster. We don't have all this recovery trauma that goes along with it with families. And, um, it just, we're going to break that cycle.

Mandeville did break that cycle. While flooding definitely hasn’t decreased… damages certainly have.

Take two hurricanes that brought Mandeville a wall of nearly nine feet of water. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005 more than 750 buildings in Mandeville flooded. Some 15 years later, following Hurricane Ida when most of Madeville was elevated, only 59 buildings flooded…

ROD SCOTT: And back in business in a week and a half because everything's elevated, you clean out underneath, you put the alligators back in the lake.

CARLYLE: do you tell people about Mandeville?

ROD SCOTT: Yeah. I give them hope.

CARLYLE: What do you say?

ROD SCOTT: I said, you gotta be like Mandeville. You can do it. We did it. You can do it.

But most towns can’t do it. Next up, we go back to one of those towns. Pointe a la Hache

MIDROLL

If Mandeville, Louisiana, is the argument for how FEMA’s 50 Percent Rule can save a community, then Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana is the counterpoint… a town that argues FEMA is driving a final nail in their coffin.

I’m in Pointe a la Hache with Reverend Tyrone Edwards.

REV EDWARDS: This community here is one you can stop, right and start. So this was like the second oldest church on East bank of the river. It was built by enslaved people that came off the day the plantation created this church.

On a map, Louisiana looks like a boot. And Rev Edwards directs me down a two-lane highway leading to the bottom of it.

REV EDWARDS: This is as far as you can go in the state of Louisiana is where you're about to go at right now. We call ourselves the big toe to slip out the boot, you know, so you go in at the tip of the toenail where we're at right now.

We are literally at the end of the road. We can't see any of it, but water’s all around us.

FEMA says Pointe a la Hache is at severe risk of flooding.

REV EDWARDS: I'm afraid, because I know if a hurricane comes today, This community can't rebuild because of the law that FEMA has created, you know, slow down because there's a stop sign, you're going over this levee. Because the law that FEMA created with forced elevation, people can't afford it.

“Forced elevation.” That’s how a lot of people refer to the 50 Percent Rule.

Back in Mandeville, FEMA says a house has to be elevated ten feet or so to be above projected flood waters

Here in Pointe a la Hache, it's way higher: FEMA requires a minimum of 18 feet. That means your ground floor starts about 2 stories in the air..

REV EDWARDS: /// Even though they're pushing us on us, they're not giving people the grants to elevate their houses.

Rev Edwards says without grants, FEMA’s 50% rule is an impossible ultimatum for a poor town.

REV EDWARDS: People have been trying ever since Hurricane Katrina to get grant money to elevate their houses and haven't received it yet, in this area. We don’t get no grants.

Hurricane Katrina, made landfall just across the river from here back in 2005.

Rev. Edwards: It totally destroyed the area we are in. We have people right now because of Hurricane Katrina three and four families living in a three bedroom trailer.

Rev Edwards says some people whose houses were demolished in the storm and wanted to return, bought new trailers – not knowing that then they would have to pay over a hundred grand to elevate them. Because of that elevation cost, EVEN WITH THOSE NEW TRAILERS, They couldn’t AFFORD TO come home.

CARLYLE: So, I mean, is the population going down here?

REV EDWARDS: The population has went down. Because folks cannot, folks cannot afford to pay, they can get a trailer, but to ask them to elevate a trailer. Now you talking about a thin structure. 18 feet in the air, you know, and so there's some insanity in all of this stuff.

If Pointe a la Hache disappears, it would be a tragedy.

Pointe a la Hache was a thriving Black town out on the last limb of the continent. Black-owned businesses. Families owning the same land for generations. Historic homes shaded by giant live oaks. Lives built around the rich environment surrounding it.

REV EDWARDS: I remember my grandfather and old men just have discussion, but they could look at the dew on the ground and could tell what type of season was gonna have. They would look at grasshoppers. A lot of grasshoppers can't tell what the weather was going to be, you know, and so because they were, they understood the environment real well.. /// It was like a village, you know, because everybody shared. If you grew tomatoes, I didn't grow tomatoes. You grew cucumbers then. There's certain people in the community that made blackberry wine,, another one good at coconut. So everybody had a specialty and everybody knew that that was those people's specialty. And it was a communal living. I really, I really, really enjoyed it.

Pointe a la Hache is in a long, slow decline. Reverend Edwards has lived through one hard turn after another. Hurricane Katrina. The BP oil spill. There was once a strong oyster industry here–it’s gone. More hurricanes.

…and now the federal government with the 50 Percent Rule. Reverend Edwards isn’t against elevating houses. He knows flooding is a risk. But he’s very against a rule forcing elevation that is threatening the future of his town and the people who can least afford to comply.

REV EDWARDS: I've come to understand in the 55 years I've been doing this work is that when you are poor in a rural community, you are forgotten.

A review of FEMA’s data shows only 2 grants for elevating houses have gone to Pointe a la Hache in the last 20 years.

And I visited one of the homeowners.

CHADWICK: Chadwick Encalade.

Chadwick’s mother is Vergie, who I introduced you to earlier.

VERGIE: I love everything about this place, you know?

Vergie and Chadwick live next door to each other, but almost in separate habitats.

Her house is barely off the ground. His is 23 FEET in the air.

23 feet!

CHADWICK: I see over the levee. I see the water at the rocks. I can see the ships. I see everything. It's a beautiful view.

CARLYLE: Yeah, what does it feel like to be that high up in the air?

CHADWICK: Um, I can tell you what, it's, uh, it's beautiful to look at. But, I'm a disabled veteran, so I have bad knees.

He has to climb Two flights of stairs to his front door with bad knees.

Chadwick also says his house sways when it’s windy. And that the contractor did shoddy work so the entire building feels like it’s shifting over time.

Chadwick knows even though elevating his house has brought new problems, he’s extremely lucky to have gotten a FEMA grant…it means he may make it through the next big storm without flooding. That grant may mean he can stay. But what about his neighbors? About his mom, Vergie?

VERGIE: Here we are, you know, what's going to happen if, if something happens to this, to my home, I don't have the funds to elevate, you know, some, I don't have the funds to elevate anything, you know, well, where's, where's the funds going to come from?

SFX: Dogs barking

CARLYLE: I couldn't sneak up on y'all. Could I?

A few houses away I meet Chadwick’s cousin, Orbon Tinson. Orbon welcomed me right in out of the rain to talk. Later, he didn’t let me leave without a plate of turkey necks which were so good I pulled over to the side of the road to eat them.

Orbon’s lived in Pointe a la Hache his whole life.

ORBON TINSON: I worked for the Plaquemine’s Parish Sheriff's office for over 34 years. I'm retired now.

CARLYLE: Okay. Every person that I've talked to feels so deeply about this place. And I wonder like, why do you think there's such a love of place here?

ORBON TINSON: Family. /// This whole community is nothing but family.

Orbon grew up here when a family could make a good living.

ORBON: We had all, we had seafood, we had industries.

I drove by Pointe a la Hache’s marina. A handful of old boats are left scattered between hundreds of empty boat slips. The population here is a fraction of what it once was.

ORBON TINSON: We have nothing. Now we have here on the East bank of the river, a prison. We have a convenience store. We have a marina that sells gas. That, that is it. We don't, we don't even have a gas station. We don't have a ferry. Everything has gone to hell.

Many people are going to have to move because of climate change, to abandon their homes.

in this big movement of people, one loss is the unique interconnectedness of communities like Pointe a la Hache. Multi-generational social fabric ripped to shreds.

ORBON TINSON: This is home. This is, this is our Emerald City. This is our Wizard of Oz. But, they're trying to take it away from us. And I'm, and I get angry. I get angry. I get angry. I get mad. I hurt.

I ask Orbon: What’ll you do when the next big storm hits?

ORBON TINSON: I'm going.

CARLYLE: You'll leave.

ORBON TINSON: I'll leave.

And he won’t come back. And he knows most of Pointe a la Hache won’t come back. Because of FEMA’s 50% Rule…They can’t afford to come back.

MUSIC

The brutal climate change conundrum: should people stay or should they go?

I’d add another question to that: Who gets to decide?

That answer depends on money and access. Mandeville has both.

So it’s staying.

Down the river in Pointe a la Hache… people feel like.. sooner or later.. they'll have to go. And that they’re not the ones making that decision.

OUTRO –

Thanks for listening to Sea Change. This episode was reported and hosted by me Carlyle Calhoun. This episode was edited by Jack Rodolico with editing help from Eve Abrams. Additional help from Halle Parker, Eva Tesfaye, Ryan Vasquez and Rosemary Westwood. This episode was fact checked by Garrett Hazelwood. I’m the managing producer. Our sound designer is Emily Jankowski. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste.

Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX.

Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and The Water Collaborative. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.