Balch Springs families struggle to find a home — more than a month after floods hit North Texas

But Flores needs to be somewhere she can recover for months after the surgery. Doctors say that’s not the hotel room where Flores has been the past month after her apartment flooded. She shares a room with her teenage daughter at the Comfort Inn and Suites.

Flores said she and her daughter are tired of sharing a room.

“Not because I don’t want to be around her, but it’s just that we have no privacy,” she said.

Monday is their last day at the hotel. Flores found an apartment at another complex that won’t be ready until the end of the month. She doesn’t know where she and her daughter will go in the meantime.

Getting assistance has been challenging. Flores said she spent three days calling everyone she could think of for help. Gager tried to help her nephew get food stamps, but the documents he needs to qualify got destroyed in the flood.

There isn’t any aid available from FEMA. President Biden would have to declare a federal disaster for that to happen. Rocky Vaz, the director of the Dallas office of emergency management, said at a city council meeting that Dallas didn’t meet the requirements for that.

“Dallas County has to meet a threshold of $10.7 million of uninsured damages to households before we can see that presidential declaration,” he said.

The Small Business Administration is offering low-interest federal loans to homeowners and renters whose property was destroyed during the flood. A minimum of 25 homes have to be damaged to meet the threshold for an SBA loan, according to the Dallas office of emergency management. Dallas County and the state of Texas had 75 homes that were majorly damaged or destroyed. The governor requested a disaster declaration from the SBA Sep. 13.

Renters can apply for loans up to $40,000 with interest as low as 2.2% with terms up to 30 years. The deadline to apply for property damage is Nov. 14.

The water ruined a lot of Gager’s belongings. She had just bought new furniture a few months prior to the flood. Her son’s wooden bedroom set was destroyed. So was a juke box her four children bought her for Mother’s Day. But Gager doesn’t want to apply for a loan. She said it’s not fair to expect people to pay a loan with interest for help.

“Why should we have to pay a loan back?” Gager said.

The rest of Gager’s belongings are in a storage pod. Flores also has stuff in storage. She said she’s glad she packed more than she thought she would need for the time she didn’t have a place to call home.

“I did a little bit of everything just in case, you know, but never did I think it was going to be this long,” Flores said.