Panama City Mayor Greg Brudnicki concedes there’s a problem but says rental prices in the area should stabilize when “the inventory comes back online.” For now, city officials are looking at a run-up in housing prices similar to the bubble seen before the Great Recession in 2008, he said.“You can morally think about it, but from a legal standpoint, it all boils down to you’ve got 10 people trying to buy the same thing,” Brudnicki said. “It’s supply and demand.”Mark McQueen, Panama City’s manager, said affordable housing is the No. 1 issue the area’s focusing on, noting “here we are six months post-storm, and we have a number of citizens that are suffering.”But he and Michael Johnson, the city’s director for community development, said the tent cities that have cropped up around Bay County are partly due to an influx of contractors looking for recovery-related labor.For now, tens of thousands of Panhandle residents are facing another hurricane season either homeless or in severely damaged housing, with no obvious end in sight.“That’s why people are still living in tents, because they can’t afford the rent”
A collapsed trailer property in Springfield, Fla. on May 2, 2019. The property is now home to nine people after Hurricane Michael swept the Panhandle in October. People live between tents, a motor home, and a half-damaged trailer, still crushed by trees and now rat-infested. (Photo: Emma Ockerman/VICE News)
Shelly Summers, 50, talks in the dining room of her home in Bayou George, Florida, on May 1. Since Hurricane Michael, she’s invited displaced people to pitch tents in her backyard. (Photo: Roberto Ferdman/VICE News)
Chelsey Ecko, 29, and boyfriend Adam Currington, 31, stand outside the tent they've been sleeping in for three weeks in Bayou George, Fla. on May 1. Currington said their landlord kicked them out of their mobile home after Hurricane Michael devastated Bay County in October 2018. (Photo: Roberto Ferdman/VICE News)
Children staying on Shelly Summers’ property after Hurricane Michael destroyed their homes in October play on her five-acre property before dinner on May 1. (Photo: Roberto Ferdman/VICE News)