One Year After The Texas Floods, Survivors Are Still Living In RVs While Trump's FEMA Leaves Most Applicants Behind

New reporting from Texas Public Radio, Grist, and the San Antonio Current documents a federal recovery that never arrived for hundreds of families

TEXAS — One year ago this week, catastrophic floods swept through ten Central Texas counties. Last week, new reporting from Texas Public Radio, Grist, and the San Antonio Current paints the same picture: families who survived the water are still waiting on the federal government that was supposed to help them recover. A new SOS analysis of federal disaster data found that fewer than half of the families who applied for FEMA aid were deemed eligible, and a majority of applications were never evaluated at all.

The failure is no accident. President Trump's administration gutted FEMA's workforce, illegally canceled billions in resilience funding that a federal court had to force it to restore, and is still pushing to shift disaster recovery onto states that cannot absorb the cost. A year later, Texas survivors are living with the results.

Take a look at the coverage below:

San Antonio Current: Texas Hill Country flood victims still paying the price for FEMA's failures a year later, report says

“‘If you are waiting two months after a disaster to even get help with basic needs or enough repair money to make your house safe to live in again, that’s a real burden,’Maddie Sloan, director of disaster recovery and fair housing for public interest group Texas Appleseed, told the Current of SOS’s findings. 

‘It’s particularly hard not just on families and individual survivors but also local jurisdictions, who are spending money to do emergency response … and don’t know whether or not they will ever be reimbursed.’”

Grist: One year after the Texas floods, home feels further away than ever

“The Gerstner-Willis family is among hundreds of survivors struggling to recover from the July 2025 floods that killed 139 people in central Texas and caused $1.1 billion in property damage. For many, the months since the disaster have revealed the complexities of recovery, a long, hard process that goes beyond repairing what the water destroyed. 

Residents of Sandy Creek face permitting requirements, limited aid, insurance gaps, and construction costs they did not anticipate. Travis County is requiring them to meet standards locals say it rarely enforced before the flood, but the poverty that put many of the community’s 600 or so people in or near the floodplain leaves some of them unable to comply. Dozens of families remain in RVs, damaged homes, or temporary housing, caught between the need to rebuild and the cost of doing so.

For many homeowners, the problems started with a federal standard known as “substantial damage.” Anyone with damage equivalent to at least 50 percent of the home’s pre-flood market value must bring the entire structure up to code. In Travis County, houses that sit in a floodplain must be elevated at least 2 feet above the expected height of a 100-year flood. For the Gerstner-Willis family, that means building 12 feet in the air and installing a lift to reach the door. Meeting these requirements can increase costs by more than $100,000, on top of the thousands needed for engineering and surveys. For some, the burden is simply too great.

‘I would say 98 percent of the people out here are not going to be able to afford their houses to be raised,’ Brandy Gerstner said.”

Texas Public Radio: A year after the Hill Country floods, two communities face different recoveries

“Four weeks after the disaster, Willis testified before the Texas House Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding. She told lawmakers that human remains had been discovered on her family’s property and questioned whether authorities were doing enough to recover all parts of those who died.

‘I found a leg and a hip on my property,’ she said.

Willis said her family has not received FEMA disaster assistance. Although they carried federal flood insurance, they remain in a dispute over the amount of the insurance payout.

NPR contacted FEMA seeking information about the assistance provided to Sandy Creek survivors and the broader rebuilding effort but did not receive a response.

With the insurance dispute unresolved, the family’s reconstruction remains on hold. Much of the support along Sandy Creek has instead come from volunteers.

Willis said she does not resent the attention and assistance directed toward communities along the Guadalupe River. She is glad those survivors are receiving help.

But, she said, the families who lost homes and loved ones along Sandy Creek also want their disaster — and their continuing recovery — to be remembered.”

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