TT Gah a ES SC SU ON OS ES EL EE yy Sha (continued from PAGE ONE) ‘deep to cateh a school bus. The hot water heater ‘exploded, flooding her few remaining belongings. Electrical wiring in her trajler had to be repaired by a teai@lrom the Air Force. Her kitchén'stove would not turn off. Mrs. McGrath began ‘to notice emotional problems with her children. Meanwhile; “her ‘for- mer spouse lost his job and child support payments ceased. Joining the welfare rolls ap- peared to be her only solution. Under a County Board of Assistance © program, Mrs. McGrath began receiving $200 a month. From that she paid about $80 for heat, and $38 for electricity.” When the winter became severe in December, she says, HUD picked up the tab for half her heating bill. Though she was ‘living rent-free, Mrs. McGrath “laments about "the difficult time she had “just getting by.’ Foster Homes After some “gentle advice” from her ‘ psychiatrist,” Mrs. welfare agency~for help. The : agency took her children and now well cared for, she says thankfully, under the guidance children’s agency, and a similar. agency for the blind. It helps, she sayge to know that her former Woo is now sending $50 a week to the agency for their support. But Mrs. there. . “Under the goberniont .programs,”’: she says, “I have no alternative but to keep the house. I could sell it for less money than the mortgage. But then T would have to keep paying $160'a month ona house I wouldn’t even have. It looks like my only out is bankruptcy.” She had hoped that" the federally supported Wilkes- “Barre Redevelopment Auth- © ority would buy her home at - pre-fleod value and tear it down as in hundreds of other cases. 3) only hope. hy : ; This would permit her to pay off _ ~children i fl] ry wthe mortgage and have a Tittle §} ZorhbLEhp WM ‘the ‘hole 1 left over gut she has little hope. quid get by. But the flood killed “Building N Derts: tell her they that hope. Now I/can’t even doubt redevelopment will: pur- chase thé oroperty. because it is structur®y sound. . Her government’ problems are not unlike those of hundreds of ~ other flood victims here. More Loans To Kéep ‘the: house, - McGrath says, she would have to borrow a. minimum of $14,000 to. make it liveable. Back pay- ments. would cost another continue paying on the original mortgage. This would mean she “would be $27,000 in debt for a $15,000 home, with no assurance that next week or next month property ‘gain. “I had preblems before the i flood,” “Mrs. McGrath says solemnly. “Then the home was keep my Kids. The house, I guess, is my last chance.” Mrs. McGrath says the child welfare agency is pressing to return the children to her care. “What I guess I need most now is a good job. But there is still the problem. of the house, and I don’t know what to do about it.” “At first the only answer I could think of,” she recalls, “was to leave the area, get a job, and try to get my kids back one at a time as I could afford them. But people don’t under- stand how really low I was; that it’s a long way to crawl back up just to where I was before the flood.” The government programs, she insists, ‘only act to tie people to their worthless homes’ through government loans. ‘Now what are we going £5 Is th her life. to do?’’ she asks. ‘‘I have to get out of my HUD trailer soon, and like everybody else, I dofi't know where I'm going to go.” Like most other Agnes vic- tims in this valley, Mrs. McGrath has rather indefinite plans for the future. “I would like to enroll in a nursing program,’ she dreams, so “I could make a decent wage to support my daughters. But I would have to work while atten- ding school; and then there’s the children.” Trailer Living Many of the 70,000 homeless flood victims this time last year are now housed in temporary shelters. Latest HUD: figures show that the agency still main- tains 7,661 temporary housing units * (trailers) in Wyoming mobile homes trailer parks. Some have their trailers tadjacent tito: their damaged’ homes) 'Many ‘other persons are living with relatives outside the flood area, with rental developments. The HUD program for tem- porary housing, though slow getting started, has seen thou- sands of homeless flood victims through the winter. As these mobile homes were moved into the area shortly after flood waters subsided, victims were permitted to move into them rent free for one year. But that is about to end. In late September and early October most of the flood vic- tims in HUD units will either have to vacate their trailers, or rent them. And the rental fees will differ upon individual circumstances, with no one paying more than 25 percent of their income for housing. Most of the units, officials say, will rent for $85 to $95 a month, plus utilities. That money, in turn, will not become an intregal part of the local economy, but will leave the valley bound for Uncle Sam’s coffers in Washington. Hundreds of flood victims have been living in apartment units rent-free ever since the Susquehanna fell back within its banks, with Uncle Sam picking up the tab. That will also stop soon because the rent-free year is about over. Meanwhile, most rental units were damaged by the flood, and there are hun- dreds yet to be renovated, often extensively. This has driven rent up drastically. It’s not unusual to find rental units now going for twice the preflood price. Forgiveness Loans As of mid-April, officials of the Small Business Adminis- tration reported receiving 33,416 applications for disaster loans through the Wilkes-Barre office. Most of these include provisions under the amended Disaster Relief Act of 1970, to allow low-interest loans to flood victims including a $5,000 for- giveness clause. Under this program, thousands of flood victims have received money which has acted to create a false economy. Local banks are flourishing right now. Construction is at an all-time high. But the waitress, who had a comfortable job pre- flood, now finds work scarce. The truck rental dealer is going broke. Many hard-hit flood victims have managed to live off the $5,000 received from Uncle Sam, and have yet to determine whether they are going to try to relocate in the old neighbor- hood. Experts wonder aloud, “what’s going to happen when the $5,000 runs out and the rent starts.” Reconstruction looks this way: The Valley suffered about $2 billion in flood damages. Flood relief projects have poured in about $1 billion under various federal and state programs. The other $1 billion is going to have to be paid by resi- dents of the valley, the flood victims, themselves, The, ques- tion is, considering that the valley was far from economi- cally prosperous before the flood, can it afford to pour a billion dollars of its own money into just getting back to where it was a year ago? Obvious Despair That’s what adds to the despair of valley citizens, which is easy for even the casual observer to detect. Most people withstood the initial crisis; they were all in it together. When they relocated into temporary housing, new neighborhoods were formed. Projects were set up for recreation and social functions. They had money. Churches, even though flooded, found contributions exceeded all-time highs. State unemploy- ment compensation paid off for those out of work. SBA and FHA loans were available, free rent, lots of jobs, reconstruction of their own property. Now- the climate is changing. SBA is out of business. Rent starts on HUD housing; the new neighbor hoods will die; a new day of reckoning. Hundred haven’t even started the clean-up of their property. They will face rats, rotten food, and the stench of the river mud which coats everything inside their homes. On the surface, things don’t look bad in terms of mental health. But there is an under- current which leads one quickly to the question, is the worse yet to come? Luzerne County coroner Dr. George Hudock doesn’t think so. He looks at statistics: in 1970 there were 22 suicides in his county, hardest hit of any during Hurricane Agnes; in 1971 there were 23; in 1972, year of the flood, there were 38. But Dr. Hudock quickly points out that there were 19 before the June 23 flood, and 19 following it. He tends to attribute the steep increase to the drug culture. So far this year there has only been five, destroying his drug theory, as well as flood depression as the prime cause. Dr. Hudock doesn’t think the flood increased the rate of suicide. “The European stock history of the valley is subject to diversity,” he maintains. ‘They can take crisis.” He admits that after free rent is over, their $5,000 is spent, and housing is still limited, then there may be problems. Dr. Stanley Rynkiewiez, a 91- year-old practicing physician in Kingston, is one who thinks there are plenty of mental health problems now. Dr. Rynkiewiez, a flood victim himself, who sees patients daily at his 46 Main Street mud-smeared home- office, is not one to quibble. During an interview worked in between patients about 9 p.m. on a recent night, he said that he was writing more prescriptions for tranquilizers for his flood- victim patients than ever before. ‘‘I see the despair in their eyes,’ he says. Water to Ceiling “I was a victim of the ’36 flood, too,” he confides, referring to the last major flood along the Susquehanna. ‘‘After that flood they thought the new dikes would hold the river back. Now they know better; during that flood I got 14 inches of water in my home without dikes,” he continues.‘ ‘This ‘time I‘got 8's feet with dikes!” Dr. Rynkiewiez began his practice in this river valley in 1912. He’s been here ever since, during which he claims to have delivered more than 1200 babies. But he confides the problems of his patients on the west bank of this valley com- munity are now much more complicated than before. ‘““The flood washed away about half my practice,” Dr. Rynkiewiez says. ‘But I plan to stay right here and practice medicine as long as I am not disabled.” It took Dr. Rynkie- wiez 40 days, he says, to get things back in shape to where he could see patients after the flood. And he did a minimal of cleaning. The walls in his office remain mud-smeared;the boards are laying loose under some new throw rugs on his floors. ‘‘I'm not going to spend a nickel here,” he says, ‘‘because redevelopment may come along and bulldoze my house out of here.’ Neighbors Fight Some of his neighbors, such as John Solovey and Martha Dancheck, who live across the street, say they are going to fight for Dr. Rynkiewiez’ privilege to remain at his current address almost in the heart of Kingston, a community which were flood damaged. Dr. Rynkiewiez’ two-story home is structurally sound, his neighbors say, and they think it is his right to remain there if he chooses. The entire block, however, mostly now uninhabited, is slated to become a parking lot to support the planned United Penn Bank and office building near the area known as Kingston Corners. Though redevelopment may take five years to decide what it’s going to do in the area, it appears it’s the system, the end product of a mammoth bureau- cracy, which keeps Dr. Rynkie- wiez practicing medicine in a squalor. He would like to panel the entire first floor of his home and office, he says, ‘‘so it would be nice for my patients. But why spend the money if the govern- ment is going to come along and bulldoze me out?” he asks. Living in Yard Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Harold Crop, 103 S. Thomas St., Ed- wardsville, are more typical of Wyoming Valley flood wvietims. After their home floated off its foundation last June, and Mr. Crop’s- job at a local bakery washed down the Susquehanna, they moved in with a daughter. But that was 20 miles away and they were told that to receive a HUD trailer they must remain at the site of their property. That meant living in their front yard from July 1 until Aug. 15. Undaunted, Mr. and Mrs. Crop kept.a steady vigil, ap- pealing to a host of agency people for help. With Frank Carlucci, the President’s personal representative in town, they sought the help of one of his aides, only to come away ‘‘in tears’ after what they complain was ‘‘rude treat- ment.” Dozens of other agency people in as many offices heard their story. But still they lived in the front yard of their devas- tated home for six weeks, with the aid of a styrofoam ice-box and an outdoor charcoal cooker. The last on their block to receive a HUD trailer, the Crops found that utility hookups were a monumental chore that took another six weeks. Mean- while, Mr. and Mrs. Crop, in their 60s, obtained jobs and settled into a daily routine of getting ready for work with a flashlight substituting for electric lights. With winter now over, their storm windows just arrived. \ Last September the Crops signed a year’s lease for the trailer, rent free, only to be told recently that their trailer cannot remain at its present location by the side of their . demolished home. They will have to vacate it and perhaps move into another one in a mobile home park, where the rent will be $95 a month. The Crops say they have received only $7,500 from the SBA (they applied for $15,000) though they have been paying $68 a month since last Sep- tember to repay the debt. For collateral they gave the govern- ment title to their property. The Crops had a small mort- gage, ‘about $3,000,” on their home before the flood. This was paid off with the SBA loan. Meanwhile, they’re paying $68 a month on the loan and have no place to live. Once in a mobile home park, the rent will be $95 a month, or a total of $163 a month they will spend for shelter. ‘I could end up spending the whole loan on rent and.not have anything to show for it but a handful of receipts,” Mr. Crop has decided.” I will still be in debt and won’t have a home, either.” The demolition of their flood- damaged home remains a problem. The Army Corps of Engineers tell them it’s a fire hazard. ‘‘We’ve signed six letters so far to get the house bulldozed out of here under a redevelopment project,” Mr. Crop confides. ‘But it still stands.” Mr. and Mrs. Crop are quick to say that their most depressing problem since the river washed away their home and its contents, has been fighting the bureaucracy. ‘Lots of people are bitching,” Mr. Crop says, ‘‘and they are organizing. It disturbs me when we can throw away money in Indochina, but we can’t do any- thing for our own people right here at home.” When asked, Mr. Crop lays it on the line: ‘‘Yes, we feel we were exploited before last year’s election. After the election we were forgotten. Carlucci was a joke; he only saw two or three people a day and when he left, you had to put up with his aides. I wonder what he got paid for?” (Editor’s Note: Next week, the experts have begun to worry that the worse is yet to come.) os Valley.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers