STORM AND CRISIS: THE REBUILDERS
Have Nail Gun, Will Travel: Contractors Arrive
23 September 2005
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final
HATTIESBURG, Miss., Sept. 18 -- The license plates spotted on Highway 49 here tell it all: South Carolina, Georgia and Florida mixed with Minnesota, Massachusetts and beyond.
The out-of-state tags are attached to a legion of trucks driven by roofers, drywallers, plumbers and other contractors who have flooded the area in search of work. The rag-tag caravan is united in its certain belief that it will take years and billions of dollars to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina -- and that they stand to benefit.
''We didn't used to be in the storm business, but the last two years, it's been one storm after another,'' said Bill Mason, co-owner of Hungry Roofers, who arrived from Melbourne, Fla. area, three days after Katrina hit the coast.
During a break at a Chick-Fil-A fast-food restaurant in Gulfport, Miss., which is about 60 miles south of Hattiesburg, Mr. Mason said he figured there was three times as much damage in the region as there was after four hurricanes in Florida last year. He has brought in 21 workers from Florida and expects to be based in Mississippi for two years; he has already traded a roofing job for access to a house, which he has turned into an office.
Mr. Mason is more organized than most. Many itinerant contractors are sleeping in their vans, trailers and pickup trucks, parked at big-box stores like Wal-Mart. Some are advertising their services with decals on their trucks while others have planted hand-painted signs along the main road with their names and phone numbers.
Mr. Mason and his business partner, Loma Evans Huff, have laptops and wireless Internet access. But many contractors looking for work have arrived with little more than their tools and a case of water.
''It looked like the boom days of the 1970's with all these people and their trucks,'' said Chip Barrett, a carpenter from Alma, Colo., speaking of the parking lot at a Wal-Mart in Hattiesburg, where he slept in his car last week alongside a couple of dozen other contractors in their trucks.
In recent days, the Wal-Mart has become an informal campground for traveling workmen, because the warehouselike store, located conveniently on Highway 49, is open 24 hours. The huge parking lot gives the truckers ample space to spread out, and the store management is friendly.
''We offer them a place to stay and we look out for them,'' said Dale McLemore, the store's co-manager. ''There's been a steady crew of trucks for the past week or two.''
The camping construction workers are part of a vast ad hoc work force that is filling a crucial role. More than 400,000 homes were destroyed and 200,000 damaged in the hurricane, according to the American Red Cross. Fixing them all is impossible for the local work force, so the thousands of out-of-state workmen heading south are needed to pick up the slack.
Even if these visitors do not stay around to rebuild the mansions that once lined the coast, they can help satisfy some of the most immediate needs, like tacking blue tarps and shingles on roofs before another storm hits, pulling out rotting drywall and insulation before mold creeps in and reinforcing damaged foundations.
As in previous storms, though, the arrival of contractors from other states has aroused suspicions about price gouging and shoddy work. Mississippi's attorney general, Jim Hood, has already put would-be profiteers on notice, threatening to arrest anyone who takes advantage of homeowners.
But even if labor costs are held at prestorm levels, prices for materials like lumber, plasterboard, insulation and construction equipment are starting to rise, chewing into the contractors' potential profits. Some of the region's factories and lumber yards have also been crippled by the hurricane and flooding, making it harder for suppliers and contractors to find things they need like plywood and nails.
Bo Cain, a salesman at 84 Lumber Company in Gulfport, where Mr. Mason stocks up, said prices for some materials, like drywall, were going up. The cost of framing lumber and plywood have also risen 10 percent to 20 percent on a national basis and perhaps more in Mississippi, according to industry analysts.
On top of that, with roads and ports clogged and fuel prices rising, transporting goods to construction sites is becoming slower and more costly. The increase in gas prices is particularly noticeable because more material is being trucked in from farther away.
''We have been trying to keep prices steady, but increases are inevitable,'' said Mr. Cain, who added that tractor trailers had recently raised their fuel surcharge to $400, from $250, to deliver materials from Mobile, Ala.
Labor costs for out-of-state crews can also be higher than in Mississippi, leaving local residents with the impression that they are being overcharged. And of course, some crews will take higher-paying jobs first.
''It's not price gouging; it's supply and demand,'' said Robert P. Hartwig, the chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute. ''There simply won't be enough contractors to deal with all this work. A lot of contractors from the north will spend the winter in the south.''
Complicating matters, some insurance companies have been slow to adjust their estimates for the cost of rebuilding and repairing damaged homes. This means that what insurers have offered homeowners in many cases will not cover the contractor's costs.
Mr. Mason said an adjustor with State Farm offered one of his customers nearly 40 percent less than what it would cost him to repair the roof. That would not even cover the cost of materials and labor, let alone allow for any profit on the deal, he said.
''It's not like we're making a killing,'' Mr. Mason said. ''We are away from home and we need to be compensated.''
Some contractors, however, see easy opportunities to make some money in a warm place. Two weeks ago, John Becker, a deck builder from Albertville, Minn., received an unsolicited call from a Mississippi construction company looking for subcontractors to install tarps provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. With the deck-building season over, Mr. Becker jumped at the chance to get some extra work. He recruited his brother and brother-in-law, bought some nails and nail guns and jumped in his pickup truck.
Mr. Becker and his team arrived Sunday and immediately went to their first job. Sitting behind the wheel of his truck parked at the Wal-Mart here, Mr. Becker said he was in no rush to get back to Minnesota, thanks to the warm weather and rush of new work in Mississippi.
''It was slow up there,'' he said of winter work in his home state.
To be sure, there are contractors trying to make a quick buck on other people's misfortunes. The consumer protection division of the Mississippi attorney general's office has already received thousands of calls from homeowners concerned about price gouging, and the numbers may swell in the coming months as insurance claims are paid and reconstruction begins in earnest, according to Grant Hedgepeth, the director of the division.
Mr. Hedgepeth said the out-of-state charlatans were moving targets, so his department had opened offices along the coast for teams of investigators and lawyers who will try to track down offenders.
Still, most contractors say there is no need to cheat customers who are hurricane victims. There are plenty of jobs to go around and builders can easily offset slimmer profits by picking up extra work, said Mr. Barrett, the builder from Colorado.
After he finishes repairing his cousin's roof in Pass Christian, Miss., a town west of Gulfport, Mr. Barrett plans to return to Colorado where he'll restock his truck with tools -- and turn around and head south again.
-----------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
