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The federal government is getting ready to give Puerto Rico nearly $20 billion to help rebuild from Hurricane Maria. Local officials say it's enough money to transform the island and boost the economy there for years - if the money is well spent. Here's NPR's Adrian Florido.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: Puerto Rico's governor, Ricardo Rossello, got up in front of hundreds of people at the convention center in San Juan last month.
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RICARDO ROSSELLO: (Speaking Spanish).
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ROSSELLO: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: It was an event for people interested in getting jobs in construction because as federal money starts flowing to fund the next phase of the island's recovery from Maria, the government expects it will need 100,000 people to do all the work.
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ROSSELLO: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "We know we've been through difficult times," the governor said. "But now we're standing at the doorstep of Puerto Rico's reconstruction." The government expects to repair tens of thousands of homes and build many new ones, new bridges and roads, projects to promote tourism and the economy - all funded by $20 billion in disaster recovery grants from the federal housing department over the next several years.
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ROSSELLO: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: We have an opportunity we haven't had in generations, the governor said. We have to make the most of it. Puerto Rico is mired in a 13-year-long recession. Its debt burden and budget cuts mean the island could never fund many of these projects on its own. But as they prepare to spend the money, officials also know they're facing a lot of scrutiny, especially from President Trump, who said he expects the island's, quote, "inept politicians" to mismanage the funds and has also tried to block some funding for Puerto Rico.
Many Puerto Ricans dismissed those attacks as unfair stereotypes. That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't people on the island with their own concerns about how the money is going to be spent. Ariadna Godreau-Aubert directs Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, a nonprofit pressuring the government to more deeply engage with local communities as it develops its plans for the HUD grants.
ARIADNA GODREAU-AUBERT: This money could be the answer for many communities that, within an austerity crisis, will never see any kind of money coming in.
FLORIDO: But she says that in its rush to get the money flowing, the government has cut corners, not gotten enough public input.
GODREAU-AUBERT: When people is not part of the process, people are displaced by the process.
FLORIDO: The government plans to spend much of this money to relocate many thousands of people from flood-prone and risky areas to new homes elsewhere. To advocates like Godreau-Aubert, that sounds like tearing communities apart.
GODREAU-AUBERT: What we have seen so far is that this is a plan for developers and not a plan for the people.
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ROSSELLO: I'm telling you this from the bottom of my heart. We want this plan of reconstruction not to be the governor's plan or not to be, you know, the mayor's plan. It needs to be the plan of all Puerto Ricans.
FLORIDO: That was Governor Rossello when I asked him about Godreau-Aubert's concerns at a recent press conference.
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ROSSELLO: Make no mistake about it. We're moving fast, but we're moving transparently and collaboratively so that we can have the best long-term reconstruction of Puerto Rico.
FLORIDO: Cesar Diaz says if that long-term reconstruction looks like what happened at his house, he's worried.
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FLORIDO: Diaz lives in the town of Loiza, on the island's north coast. He got his roof patched up under a program paid for by FEMA and run by Puerto Rico's housing department. But when the work crew showed up, they weren't very professional, he remembers. He says the first day it rained after they made the repairs, his roof leaked in places it hadn't before. He points to brown splotches on the ceiling.
CESAR DIAZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "Here, there, over there," he says, "all those leaks are new." Diaz says that many of his neighbors who still have blue tarps over the roofs are hopeful that once the billions start to flow, the government will finally help repair their roofs. But Diaz worries that if the work's not done well, the next hurricane will blow the roofs off again.
DIAZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "Puerto Rico has always been in the path of hurricanes, and it always will be," Diaz said. "So having a strong roof is a matter of life or death," Diaz says.
Adrian Florido, NPR News, Loiza, Puerto Rico.
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