Many of Pine Island’s homeless residents are still in need of assistance
Since Hurricane Ian hit, Jody Franke, owner of Pine Island Wellness at Home, has a mission with one goal — helping each displaced islander re-establish a home in the community.
Until now, Franke had set her sights on building a company that helped seniors successfully age at home; an important objective, especially for those who cannot afford to move to an assisted living facility. Now, she said, those who have lost their homes, or whose homes have become uninhabitable are simply shell-shocked.
“They’ve lost everything — so when people ask, ‘Well, why didn’t you leave?’ — to hell with that. This is their home — their community,” Franke said.
It is not helpful, she said, for people to wonder aloud why those hit the hardest weren’t better prepared for a disaster ahead of time. Because people don’t want to leave their home and community doesn’t mean they don’t need help, she added.
Fully aware that some folks have had it worse than others on the island, she explained that there is a difference between shelter and housing. Shelter, which is an intermediate solution, along the lines of a structured yurt, is very temporary, and even so, very costly. Operation Tiny Home, which Franke is currently partnering with, she said, can offer temporary, transitional or long-term housing, depending on the particular situation.
“You might have a family who just needs to rebuild their house. They (Operation Tiny Home) have a transitional solution, built to code — not like an RV sitting in your driveway, though it is on wheels and can be moved, once and if the original home has been inspected and found livable again,” Franke said.
The amount of funding required for this project surpasses traditional fundraising by a great deal, she said, causing Franke to scramble to find help and solutions for, not just her clients, but all displaced islanders. Certain the state has funds, Franke said they need to be sent to Pine Island, likening what’s happening to displaced island seniors as elder abuse.
“They have to do something, so we’re trying to get our hands on funds that already exist,” Franke said.
Pine Island Wellness at Home has shifted to an organization bent on outreach to a mostly senior population, although Franke said the young working families should not be overlooked — many of whom have jobs on the island and children who attend Pine Island Elementary. According to Franke, the best course of action is an “all hands on deck” attitude from every island institution to help the displaced find homes again.
“It’s very important to understand that all organizations and local leaders must come together in order to make a change in our community in the best way. If we don’t do that, we fail,” Franke said.
Some of the people Franke is trying to get qualified for a tiny home have certainly felt the blow impaled upon Pine Island by Hurricane Ian, such as St. James City seniors Leita May and Robert McCall, who were lucky enough to be loaned an RV in which to live beside what’s left of their home on Blueberry Street.
“After the hurricane we didn’t have a place to live, so we went and parked our car in the carport across the street and we lived in the car for 36 days,” Leita May McCall said.
Still waiting on a response from their flood insurance company, they are hoping for more than the paltry $50,000 they’ve received from their home insurance to repair or rebuild their home. Robert, who is a veteran, feels the lack of response they’ve received is uncalled for.
“I’m waiting on my flood insurance and then we might demolish our home, because of the financial impact. At my stage in life, I’ll never recover. I’m sure we won’t rebuild. This is the end of people’s lives — in other words, you work your whole life, you retire, hopefully you’re where you want to be, and this is where we wanted to be, but between Charley and this other one, the financial end of it is just too much to handle,” McCall said.
Likewise, 80-year-old non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor Sharon Kershaw, who also lives in St. James City, is currently waiting for FEMA to help her. Her husband Bruce died just one week before Hurricane Ian hit and his son died the week before that, so she finds herself trying to grieve as she sits, by day, in her home with mold from all the floodwater, which, she said, was thigh high during the storm.
“I have finally succumbed to sleeping at my niece’s house in Cape Coral, with my 5 cats,” Kershaw said.
Kershaw, who withstood the hurricane alone in her home, said scared is not a word she would use to describe her state during the storm.
“I would say, I was more amazed than anything as I watched the roof blow off, and then I went to the back of the house and watched the water come up from the canal. I watched my jacuzzi floating around in the water and then I went and laid down on our bed and fell instantly asleep. In the meantime the ceiling falls in on the bed and I never even heard it, because I was on the edge of the bed and the ceiling fell more in the middle of the bed,” Kershaw said.
Currently, almost everything Kershaw owns is on her front lawn, as she tries to decide what can be salvaged. She admits this has been a grieving tool for her as she goes through all of her things and remembers it all.
In every neighborhood in St. James City there is damage to be surveyed and endless numbers of homes clearly dilapidated by the storm.
Andre Bilodeau is an 85-year-old retired Marine veteran who was sleeping in his car until he was able to get a small shed in his front yard and furnish it with a recliner where he can rest. He said his back hurts too much to sleep in a bed, and he was very happy to sleep in his car.
“Sleeping in a bed makes my back burn with pain, but sleeping in a recliner works just fine,” Bilodeau said.
Bilodeau is currently waiting for the $37,000 he said he was promised from FEMA. He’s not counting on the money arriving anytime soon, he said, as the red tape seems unreal to him. In the meantime, the tools he keeps in his garage provide a wonderful outlet for him, as he tries to organize them with true Marine pride.
“I’m a boat-builder. All my tools are getting rusty — there’s $20,000 worth of damage on my boat, and nobody covers that,” Bilodeau said.
Tropic Star boat captain Joe Lanktree and his wife, Amber, live in Bokeelia with their three young boys. They initially tried to withstand Hurricane Ian at home, but quickly changed their minds as the winds picked up and they realized their home could be destroyed with the family inside.
“The only words I can use to describe going through the hurricane in our house, is that the house was literally buffeting. The floor was shaking, as the wind was shooting underneath the house, the house was vibrating and we tried to play board games with the kids to try to keep their minds off of it,” Lanktree said.
When the eye of the storm went over them, Lanktree got a phone call from one of the other boat captains who was in Miami, which he found strange since there had been no service previously during the storm. His friend, who could see the storm on radar, told him they were only halfway through and should likely leave for a safer place. Lanktree was able to call a neighbor who told him to bring the family immediately to his house, which was not far away.
“I left while the surge was still receding and went to check on our house. We lost the entire front railing on our porch, we lost about a third of our main roof. I went into the house and my oldest’s bedroom had about 30 to 40 percent of his ceiling gone along with his roof. He lost 95 percent of the stuff in his room, which was hard for me to see, because he’s 13,” Lanktree said.
Because the Lanktree family was in the midst of purchasing their rental home weeks before Hurricane Ian hit, they are unsure of exactly where this leaves them in the buying process. What is, in reality, a disaster, ended up one of the biggest blessings Lanktree said he’s ever received, in that his neighbors are now like his family as a result of having gone through this together.
“The coming of the people, the camaraderie — I love my neighborhood 10 times more than I loved it two months ago,” Lanktree said.
Bokeelia resident Samantha Thomas rode out the hurricane with her husband and 6-year-old daughter and a few other family members. When all the tar shingles and concrete paneling on the roof of her apartment building began to come down, Thomas said, they realized half of the roof was gone.
“Then the second half of the storm came and it took off what was left of the roof — the garage doors below our apartment caved in, so my daughter and I were hiding in the bathroom and we could hear everything hitting the floor beneath us,” Thomas said.
Eventually water began pouring into the apartment through the ceiling, which was dropping tiles one after another, said Thomas, leaving them ankle deep in water.
“Water started falling out of the electric sockets and out of the wall itself — water was coming in from every spot you can think of,” Thomas said.
It wasn’t until the second half of the storm that Thomas said her daughter became afraid. In an attempt to comfort her, a tent was set up in her room where she had all their pets around her as well as a tablet to keep her occupied. Having lived in the same apartment for almost nine years, Thomas said they wanted to do what they could to help and tarped all four of the apartment roofs in the building. Thomas said her boss became her hero when he told her the family could stay at a place he has in LaBelle, however, having a job on North Captiva makes it quite a trek to work, or come to Pine Island to check on the apartment.
“We’re hoping we can get a tiny home and come back to the island, because that’s the only place I’ve ever lived. We’re hoping that works and we can come home that way, because we looked into rentals and the only thing there is for rent are all these vacation homes that none of the locals can afford — that and homes for sale and if anything is in our price range it’s all hurricane damaged homes and they want cash offers. Nobody I know has that much cash on hand,” Thomas said.
If you have been displaced and need help from Pine Island Wellness at Home call 941-202-4005 (please leave your contact information), or visit www.wellnessathomeconcierge.com.