Julie Shiyou-Woodard, President and CEO of Smart Home America, shares how this non-profit partners with locally-based organizations to foster better building in disaster-prone communities.
Transcript:
00;00;01;03 - 00;00;18;12
Hal Needham
Hey Geo Trekkers, welcome to episode 62 of the Geo Trek podcast. We talk a lot about how to become more resilient from the impacts of extreme weather and natural disasters is on this podcast, and this episode is very relevant for those of us interested to build better, to reduce risk of damage on our homes and in our communities.
00;00;18;24 - 00;00;42;29
Hal Needham
Our guest this week is Julie Shai Woodard, president and CEO of Smart Home America. Julie oversees operations, provides organizational direction and develops partnerships for a national non profit whose mission is to build resilient and sustainable communities. Throughout her career, she has developed and manage environmental and hazard mitigation, funding and projects in collaboration with federal, state and local agencies.
00;00;43;08 - 00;01;03;27
Hal Needham
Check this out. Julie's from Pass Christian, Mississippi. Originally, that's the location of Hurricane Katrina's highest storm surge, which is the highest storm surge level on record in the Western Hemisphere. So a very hazard prone place is where she's from there in Pass Christian. Now, she lives in Mobile, Alabama, just east of there, along the I-10 corridor with her husband and two children.
00;01;04;16 - 00;01;27;02
Hal Needham
If you're new to the podcast, audio investigates the impact of extreme weather and natural disasters on individuals and communities. Our goal is to help you improve your decision making, risk assessment and communication related to extreme events so you can take action to make yourself, your family and your community more resilient. Hey, before we jump into this conversation with Julie, we have a quick favor to ask of you.
00;01;27;03 - 00;01;45;15
Hal Needham
We'd really appreciate it if you would share this content with one other person. That's right. Just one person who, you know, who's interested to build better and mitigate against storm damage. If we all do that, it'll really get the message out. And there'll be a lot of people that are built better and safer when they faced extreme weather in the future.
00;01;46;01 - 00;02;04;23
Hal Needham
Hey, if you want to post a link of this on your social media as well, you can share with more than one person if you so desire. Well, hey, let's jump into episode 62 now with Julie SHYU Whitford, president and CEO of Smart Home America. Welcome to the GEO Track podcast. This is going to be a great one, very applicable no matter where you live.
00;02;04;23 - 00;02;13;25
Hal Needham
We're going to be talking all about how to build better. Today we have a special guest. Julie, show you what our president and CEO of Smart Home America. Welcome to the podcast.
00;02;13;25 - 00;02;16;03
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Today.
00;02;16;06 - 00;02;22;01
Hal Needham
We're recording here live in our studios in Mobile. It's a nice setting and really appreciate you taking time to come and have a conversation with us.
00;02;22;07 - 00;02;23;00
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Absolutely.
00;02;23;10 - 00;02;32;24
Hal Needham
So Julie, you're president and CEO of Smart Home America. Could you walk us through your professional journey? I mean, how kind of what was the path that led you to this position and this awesome work that you're doing?
00;02;33;21 - 00;02;59;27
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So I started out in a regional planning commission and was and worked my way into principal planning position in an environmental planning department and in our department. We were very unique in that we took on we kind of took on all the projects that didn't fall into the traditional other departments. Sure. So we sort of coined ourselves as we took on social and environmental resiliency projects, basically.
00;03;00;20 - 00;03;29;27
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And we were project management in a sense where we served 26 municipalities, three counties, and we looked to figure out how to make those communities better, especially from a mitigation standpoint. So what were their hazards? How did they need to mitigate? And then where do they find that funding? Right. I spent quite a few years in wildfire risk, really in the wildland urban interface as a wildland interface specialist with a state forestry agency.
00;03;29;27 - 00;03;38;12
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And and then I worked I've just in a lot of different paths, you know, it's one of those, Jane, of all trades kind of thing.
00;03;38;12 - 00;03;39;00
Hal Needham
Yeah. There you go.
00;03;39;12 - 00;03;40;09
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so.
00;03;40;09 - 00;03;41;16
Hal Needham
Those are the most interesting people.
00;03;41;16 - 00;04;18;05
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right? So I hope so. I basically I just I've always been in a role where there was a problem. I had to figure out the solution, had to find the funding to get that solution done and to get the solution implemented to the end. Right? So it's always been sort of that kind of a path. And when it came to hazards, I was when I was working on my graduate work, I was looking at from a South Alabama perspective, why do the elderly sometimes not evacuate even when they're told they need to evacuate?
00;04;18;05 - 00;04;30;05
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Sure, why don't they evacuate? And my hypothesis was that it was faith based or religion just because I had so many that would say, you know, when my time comes, it's my time. It doesn't matter.
00;04;30;05 - 00;04;31;24
Hal Needham
Where I am. I have a bit fatalistic.
00;04;32;00 - 00;04;58;21
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
It is. But if you are from that generation and you're from the Deep South and you hold that faith very dear. So we did a very extensive open ended survey. We partnered with a home health agency that went into homes regularly and we had the nurses and the technicians help us get the survey done. And we ended up pretty solidly proving that it was a religion.
00;04;59;07 - 00;05;24;01
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
But it came to it was after a storm where also an elected official's neighbor was on oxygen and she didn't have family and she didn't evacuate. There was no power. So what does she do? Right. And so of all of that, the impetus started that we and this was so long ago, I actually wrote a grant to start the special needs shelters that we have in South Alabama.
00;05;24;01 - 00;05;48;14
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And that took on a life of its own. And I worked in a planning commission, so it was easy for the local communities to do that. And so that was kind of my path into, I guess, hazard mitigation in that sense. And then really I just got a phone call one day when I was in my last state position and they told me about Smart Home America, and they said that they were looking for somebody to take over the leadership role.
00;05;48;14 - 00;06;13;11
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And and the colleague who called me said, I really think this is a fit for you. And so I called one of the board members that was on the search committee and talked to them and interviewed for the job and ended up getting it. And this is that job that if you were lucky enough to get that job, you realize that every bit of everything you've experienced in your entire career prepared you for that.
00;06;13;15 - 00;06;14;06
Hal Needham
Sure. Sure.
00;06;14;07 - 00;06;33;05
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so that's this job for me. So everything I did in local and state government in in I was in a national nonprofit for a little while. And all of that all of that prepared me for the job I'm in now. So I've been in it for eight years now. I never wake up any given morning and hate that I'm getting up to go to work.
00;06;33;11 - 00;06;34;25
Hal Needham
It sounds like you love it. You're passionate.
00;06;35;06 - 00;07;01;27
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
I do very much love my job. And it's it's I think I love it so much because many times when you're working on big like hazard mitigation projects or you're working on big project management things, you really never see the total outcome. Sure. You definitely don't see where there was a need, there was a problem, and you absolutely solve that problem, especially in government, because there's so many layers of challenges there.
00;07;01;27 - 00;07;35;26
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so I think that's what's that's the coolest thing about this job is that when we are transforming the mentality, I would say, of how people think, well, we've done this the same way forever, everyone, why change? And we actually can get them to the other side. That's really satisfying. And it's also we are truly impacting lives. So it's more of a okay, this is one of the reasons I'm alive on this planet today, because I know how to fix that problem and we're fixing the problem.
00;07;36;03 - 00;07;42;11
Hal Needham
It's very purposeful, very, very visible. Julie, could you explain to our listeners an overview of what the mission statement is for Smart Home America?
00;07;42;26 - 00;08;08;18
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So our job and why we exist is to create sustainable and resilient communities and that simply just means making sure that people understand that there are solutions to all the challenges. We see a lot of what we do now, especially with the more open reality of climate risk, because there are way more people that are understanding that, that, yes, there is a such thing as climate risk.
00;08;08;18 - 00;08;28;07
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And yes, we are feeling the effects of it. And and so now that we have more people on board with understanding that there is a risk, they're more willing to identify with their community level risks are okay from that climate change, and they're willing to sit and listen to the possibilities. And our job are to bring those possibilities.
00;08;28;07 - 00;08;52;18
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And that could be science agencies, companies that work to, you know, maybe analyze their risk. Really, we connect dots. We do a lot of consensus building, we do a lot of bringing everybody to the table, having them all agree that they understand what their risks are and where their risks are. And then who do they need to bring to the table to help them solve all of those problems?
00;08;53;15 - 00;09;13;01
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And and we grab those things that are proven based in science based management practices. And then if there's a whole like if there's something that's missing, we don't do everything. So we look for the expert that does that and then bring them to the table as well.
00;09;13;02 - 00;09;26;09
Hal Needham
Julie It sounds like you do a lot of partnerships at the local level. Do you feel like that helps communities get more engaged when you're going out to them? You're working at that almost like local grassroots type of level, yes. How how is that interaction different with people?
00;09;26;13 - 00;09;45;27
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So a lot of times I'll say we work at the grass roots and grass tops, right? So local and state level and that is so we don't live in every state and we we are gaining ground in many states every day. I think we're probably in 15 or 16 states now and we go into that community because we're asked.
00;09;45;27 - 00;10;11;17
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So we don't just airdrop in unannounced. We're usually asked to come help to to figure out a problem, and it's usually a resilience problem. So it's usually a hurricane tornado, flood type issue. And we bring those key players to the table. We get to know them and understand what they see is important and what their risks are. And then really a lot of what we do is try and identify that entity that when we get in the car or on the plane and leave, that that's the local number they're going to call.
00;10;11;29 - 00;10;26;28
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So we're partnering with either a nonprofit or a state agency or even a national organization that's basically that understands the risk. And then we bring them up to speed on that resilience mitigation action, and then we let them carry that.
00;10;26;28 - 00;10;34;02
Hal Needham
So you kind of come alongside some of these local entities that are already established and just help kind of give them more resources.
00;10;34;02 - 00;10;53;03
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right? Exactly. So we we very much partner with local groups and just empower them to understand that there is a way to fix it. A lot of times will come in with the Habitat for Humanity affiliate because a lot of what we do is construction or not. We don't construct anything, right? But we influence the way things are constructed.
00;10;53;16 - 00;11;17;02
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so we are looking for that nonprofit that is building or reroofing in a community and they're looking for that next best thing for their clients. Or we come in with custom builders. So it's very interesting habitat and custom home builders are very similar in that they're always looking for the next best product for their family, the family that is their client, that they're doing something for that home or building that home new.
00;11;17;14 - 00;11;33;10
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so they are more open to building a different way because that's what they're doing. They're looking for for habitat. It's what is the best home for that family to have, for that to be there forever. Home and for custom builders, they're looking for the next best product that their customers will appreciate.
00;11;33;26 - 00;11;43;12
Hal Needham
Julie I know one of the entities you also partner with is the fortified program. Could you explain, like how does Smart Home work with Fortified and explain a little bit about what fortified it is, if you can?
00;11;43;24 - 00;12;08;00
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety creates the science that establishes the standard of the fortified home, commercial and multifamily programs. And it is a way to build and it's slightly beyond code. So they will say that the International Residential Code 2021 very much comes very, very close to the fortified standard, but there's still a few missing pieces there.
00;12;08;13 - 00;12;34;08
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so fortified is just a better way of building based on research in the lab and then ground troops on the ground. So IHS is a communication and research institute. They do the research and then they communicate those results and they're really cool organization. It's lots of architects and engineers and meteorologists, and they are figuring out how buildings work as a system and whether there's weak links.
00;12;34;08 - 00;13;00;06
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And then how do you mitigate that? In our job in what we see is that we take that science and we integrate it in a permanent way at the local level. So you can go in and after a disaster, be a nonprofit that builds a home back or reroutes hundreds of homes. But if you don't influence the way the policy is done at the local and state level, then that's a one time fix.
00;13;00;15 - 00;13;22;21
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And everybody that's around all of those structures that were mitigated didn't get mitigated. And so a lot of what we do outside of just educating everybody on how to build better is we educate on why they need to choose different policies and different regulations so that going forward they're ready for the next storm and the next storm in and next term.
00;13;22;23 - 00;13;31;06
Hal Needham
I see. So this is more than just helping people come in and rebuild after the storm. This is really influencing like policy and how building is done in a certain area.
00;13;31;06 - 00;13;51;28
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Yes, absolutely. Because that's your long term. That's your long term resilience. Six basically, is that you you're always going to have more building stock than new builds. Yeah. And that building cycle is aging from the day. The last nail is or screw is put in right and starts aging. And with every storm it takes the impacts of that storm and it takes and it gets a fatigue and rate.
00;13;51;29 - 00;14;12;21
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So every storm increases the fatigue of that building. And so and we always say every home with a 30 year mortgage is going to have to be regrouped at some point. So if you're going to reroof, why not put the best available roof on there in the best method possible so that you don't necessarily experience a loss in a convective storm?
00;14;12;21 - 00;14;14;12
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And we have a ton of those.
00;14;15;08 - 00;14;28;01
Hal Needham
I know there's a real geography to the fortified project. At one point I think there was a real bull's eye on South Alabama with maybe like 17,000 fortified homes. How did that come to be like? How did South Alabama take leadership on this?
00;14;28;16 - 00;14;50;18
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So part of that is that Smart home originates here in Mobile, Alabama. And we came to be as an as a group after Ivan and Katrina. So Ivan hit in 2004 and 11 months later, Katrina hit. And we didn't we we suffered in both storms, but we didn't have the catastrophic loss that Mississippi and Louisiana did in in Katrina.
00;14;50;26 - 00;15;09;11
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
However, we suffered the loss. We suffered the same loss that they did in their insurance pulled out. So we were put into a crisis literally, like in an overnight situation where homes that had no damage or had no claim in Katrina started receiving non-renewal letters from their insurance companies.
00;15;09;18 - 00;15;14;17
Hal Needham
So these people are saying, wait up, I had no damage. Why are you pulling out? And it was the bigger scope, the bigger picture.
00;15;14;17 - 00;15;35;07
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
It was the bigger picture. And so so you had mortgages in crisis because you can't have a mortgage without insurance. And if you can't get an answer to insure you, then your mortgage holder will do a forced place policy, which is always extremely expensive and not seriously a great policy. So it's not as comprehensive as maybe the policy you shot.
00;15;35;23 - 00;15;56;14
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so so we kind of were in a crisis pretty quickly and many thought leaders came to the table, many of them insurance agents themselves came to the table with elected officials and code officials and business leaders and said, okay, this is bad. You know, we can't move forward and we can't we can't prosper this way. What are we going to do?
00;15;57;10 - 00;16;17;24
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And they original what turns out to be the original founders of Smart Home and sat down and said, okay, there's got to be a better way because like we built 11 months ago when Ivan hit, okay, that didn't work for me because you still had loss. And so why do we keep this that cycle of insanity, right? So why do we keep building the same exact way that isn't necessarily resistant to hurricanes?
00;16;18;04 - 00;16;42;19
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Is there a better way? And so at that point, they did. They reached out and they just looked at everything across the United States and they came across fortified and they came across the Insurance Institute for Business and Safety at that time fortified with a different program. And it wasn't easily obtainable by everybody says really cost prohibitive and so only a few people could take that on.
00;16;43;00 - 00;17;04;17
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And that actually helped fortified go, okay, we have to do something so that everybody can access this way of building, which is how it went from fortified for a safer living, which some people still remember to fortified home. And it was instead of being in all peril way of building, which is cost prohibitive because you're building for every peril you could possibly.
00;17;04;17 - 00;17;12;01
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And, you know, so if you were building here to that standard, you're dealing with wildfire hurricane, tornado, hail, flood. Right. And so really.
00;17;12;01 - 00;17;14;09
Hal Needham
Hard to really care for all of these hazards.
00;17;14;15 - 00;17;41;22
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right? It's expensive, Right. And so what home does, fortified home looks at what is the main peril that you face and that's the house that you are you looking to build for that? Right. So for us in the Gulf of Mexico, it's hurricanes. That's our largest threat. Yes, Everybody has. In some areas we do have hail. Yes. In some areas we have in the Gulf, we have well, we have more tornadoes now than we've had in a long time.
00;17;41;22 - 00;17;42;16
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right. But in.
00;17;42;16 - 00;17;44;04
Hal Needham
General, it's those hurricane winds and.
00;17;44;05 - 00;18;07;03
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Things are it's the hurricane winds and in fortified doesn't address flood. And why? Right. Because flood is a significant risk, because the private insurance market doesn't you know, they don't write that risk. There are private flood companies. But as in the general. Right, flood industry doesn't write that risk. So they don't put the research money into figuring that out.
00;18;07;03 - 00;18;15;05
Hal Needham
Understand they're really writing wind. So they want to know how can these roofs especially, well, the whole home, but especially the roof, I think, deal with these really strong hurricanes.
00;18;15;18 - 00;18;31;05
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So their biggest perils are wind, wind driven rain, hail and wildfire. That's what they're writing and that's what they're looking to influence when they're trying to get a house or a business be built to where they know it's going to be a reduced risk of loss if that peril affects that property.
00;18;31;19 - 00;18;49;21
Hal Needham
Sure. Julie, 2020 was such a catastrophic hurricane season, and in the mix of all these storms was Hurricane Sally, a slow moving upper level Cat two hurricane that was almost Cat three that had a bull's eye right on South Alabama in this area where we had so many fortified homes. What have we learned from Sally?
00;18;50;07 - 00;19;11;11
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So Sally was our biggest test and it was our biggest test because we had the largest number of structures designated. And so of those 17,000, 95% of them had little to no damage. And the way I explain that is that they they many of them didn't have enough damage that they triggered insurance. If they did, it was at a tree like in fort.
00;19;11;11 - 00;19;34;09
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
If I can't stop a tree from falling on your house or it was an outbuilding that that caused an insurance claim and so that that was the biggest test we had. But what it proved was that you can absolutely certain that recovery period. So there was damage right. But there wasn't enough damage that those families were displaced. And so you didn't have the water intrusion to the house through the roof.
00;19;34;09 - 00;19;51;21
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
That puts everybody in a hotel room of families. That's right. You know, they have to move in with a family or they have to be in a camp or something. And so that was our largest test. And it was so important because, you know, it's one of those cry wolf things. Right? You've been talking about this for years.
00;19;51;21 - 00;20;26;08
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Like we know it works. We know it works. And they're like one off and we'd have a thousand, maybe like the Carolinas had a couple of tests where we had a thousand homes in the path, which was great. We had absolutely amazing results there. It was a 95% result level there, but nobody believes you until you really have that proof point and says, Sally, was that proof point for us where we could show that you can keep people in their house and even if it was a higher level and they had to evacuate, we knew that if they came back, they'd still be able to open that front door and they may not have had
00;20;26;08 - 00;20;46;22
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
power, but they would've been able to sleep in their beds and start recovering. What is that bigger picture? Right. That is, you're not the economy is not taking the hit that you see after a significant event in when people can't recover in an amount of time. That is what's considered normal, right? Then they have to move in. Once they move in, they establish their life somewhere else.
00;20;46;22 - 00;20;59;24
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
It's very hard for them to come back, especially if they have children and the children in or in the school system. And so, you know, that's a lot of why when we see these bigger events with upper level cat threes, fours and fives, you know, your community doesn't come back the way it was.
00;20;59;24 - 00;21;11;18
Hal Needham
That's right. It just it's just displaces so many people and really disrupts their lives. Sometimes I mean, we know when you get that water damage for a lot of people, it's months to, you know, maybe even more than a half of the year that they're out of their home.
00;21;11;19 - 00;21;34;22
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right. Exactly. And if it's a significant like a Harvey or a Laura or an IDA, I mean, the average recovery for a community after significant events like that, it's sometimes 6 to 8 years, Right. You're not getting some of your you're not getting some of those families that were there forever. They may not be coming back into. And then the next biggest test we had was it was Ida.
00;21;34;22 - 00;21;56;18
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
We had fortified structures in Louisiana. We had from from one end of the spectrum to the other from price points. So we had homes in the Lower Ninth Ward that had simply just been removed by our partner in nonprofit SVP, who've been there since Katrina and have done amazing work in getting people to more resilient level those homes.
00;21;56;24 - 00;22;06;03
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Nobody was displaced, which are fine. But if you look at some of the aerials of where those homes were, there's blue roofs everywhere except for those homes that were reroof to the 4 to 5 standard.
00;22;06;06 - 00;22;25;02
Hal Needham
That's right. And let's talk about this 20, 20, 2021 South Louisiana is hit by two upper level cat four hurricanes. I know you've been spending a lot of time now in Louisiana on the backside of those storms, just really helping promote smart home and everything. Can you explain a little bit about this work going on in Louisiana and was it what is your favorite type of gumbo?
00;22;25;02 - 00;22;28;25
Hal Needham
I'm curious. I'm sure you've had a lot of gumbo in the last couple of years here.
00;22;29;03 - 00;22;50;25
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Okay. So gumbo is sensitive, right? It's almost like you can they're there's almost fighting words. When you talk about recipes, it's very personal. I actually judge restaurants on their gumbo because I'm I am a my family's French old French. So I have I have family in the very, very tip of Venice, Louisiana, right way.
00;22;50;25 - 00;22;51;15
Hal Needham
Down there in the booth.
00;22;51;29 - 00;23;05;13
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Went down there. So it's I like okra in my gumbo. A lot of people do like okra and my gumbo. I will have tomatoes in my gumbo. A lot of people don't like tomatoes. And I got in their gumbo. So yeah.
00;23;05;23 - 00;23;10;23
Hal Needham
So so then going back to Louisiana for you, it's very familiar. Yes. It's kind of ties in with your family.
00;23;10;25 - 00;23;36;04
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
It is very familiar. And I think that the most interesting thing about Louisiana is that after Katrina, they put in place a unified code. And that was a that was huge for a southern state. And you can't hold Florida in a sense, because they Hurricane Andrew changed the way Florida worked. And that brought in the Miami Dade in the Florida code.
00;23;36;22 - 00;24;00;06
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
But the rest of the states didn't do anything right. It was code with sparsely put in place. It was jurisdictional. It wasn't state. Louisiana said, okay, Hurricane Katrina, we don't ever want to see this level of destruction. They lost so much of their population, so they put in a unified code. So they that was heralded as a very big decision.
00;24;00;17 - 00;24;20;15
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And they were told that they would see affordable insurance because they had this code in place, which was considered a good code. But if you don't enforce that code, then insurance doesn't really have faith that they're really writing a structure, that they are not going to lose everything every time they turn around and they're going to rebuild it and lose it again and again.
00;24;20;15 - 00;24;20;24
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right.
00;24;20;24 - 00;24;25;06
Hal Needham
So you can put this code out there. But if it's not enforced by a third party, does it mean anything?
00;24;25;08 - 00;24;46;17
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so we'd actually been on the ground in Louisiana before COVID because we what we call there were there were points bubbling up. Right. So we had points around the state that was starting to bubble up where there were more positive conversations about we really need to think about building better. We need to think about building differently. There was a concern that was growing, and this is before Laura.
00;24;46;17 - 00;25;12;28
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so and then COVID hit, and we've been working with the Office of Community Development in Louisiana before COVID because they actually said, we want to step into this resiliency and we want to take some of our basically community block grant disaster recovery funds that a state every state can get this. It's called a bucket, basically of money, and it is to rebuild.
00;25;12;28 - 00;25;35;04
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so they chose to jump into let's do this and we're going to do this from a multifamily standard. And so that was a two year process of them getting ready to put those packets out, which is a proposal. Right. And then bids come in and there were and we walked with them with that. And so think of it.
00;25;35;04 - 00;26;09;22
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
It's, you know, everybody knows what happened during that time and construction starts during that period of these multifamily. So these are going to be the very first ever in the United States. Multifamily structures built to the fortified commercial standard, utilizing basically disaster recovery money. And so the first one is 95% to completion in construction process. And when IDA passes over it and it and the I passes over it.
00;26;09;22 - 00;26;27;04
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So in Lockport, Louisiana, there is this multifamily and remind I'm reminding you that nobody really understands fortified technically, right? The developers that are doing this just know they had to win the bid, right. To get the points that they want to do. They had to say, all right, we're going to build this fortified thing.
00;26;27;05 - 00;26;27;22
Hal Needham
Okay. Yeah.
00;26;27;25 - 00;26;56;27
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So everybody's learning because this is where you just every juncture and it's baptism by fire and the the developer doesn't know how it's going to fare. It is approaching. They had got an insurance policy on that like 3 hours before I was named. And if anybody that's listening is not in the Gulf of Mexico, then you don't know that if you don't have the insurance the way you want it, the moment a storm enters the Gulf and is named, you can't do anything.
00;26;56;28 - 00;26;57;24
Hal Needham
Close it out and that.
00;26;57;26 - 00;26;59;13
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Nobody can do anything to your insurance.
00;26;59;13 - 00;27;00;02
Hal Needham
Policy. Yeah.
00;27;00;23 - 00;27;25;01
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Which is why many of us always say shop your insurance every 12 months. Be ready for hurricane season or storm season if you're in a tornado area. So we're all holding our breath because we know that we've got projects going on, but we don't know what they're going to look like. So the builder, the construction company that's building this, get it strategically, get in with the crews coming in to assess damage.
00;27;25;01 - 00;27;45;04
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So they they sort of meld in and get in, because also, if you're in this world, you know, you don't get in for days and they say, yes, you can come in and they pass a development that they've done years before an apartment complex, multifamily, and it is obliterated. So their heart sinks because they're like, oh, because if you.
00;27;45;04 - 00;27;45;18
Hal Needham
Powerful.
00;27;45;18 - 00;27;52;05
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Storm, if you're building a new if you're building a new complex and you get hit by Cat four, you're going to lose a lot of money.
00;27;52;06 - 00;27;52;21
Hal Needham
Yeah, sure.
00;27;52;22 - 00;28;19;01
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
There's a difference there and that it was operational. So they're driving it 2.5 difference and they come around the corner and this place looks like nothing happened. Wow. So there's the AC units were not completely strapped in place. They were just set on the platforms. They've like blown around like cotton balls in a way. And so there's some cosmetic damage, some siding damage from basically from the AC units.
00;28;19;14 - 00;28;36;18
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And but otherwise, I mean, they did day after picture of this multifamily was like, okay, that's it. We now know how to build. So single family, we now know how to build commercial multifamily. The conversation's over. We know what to do.
00;28;36;27 - 00;28;45;25
Hal Needham
Well, when you get that test of that storm right, everyone has ideas and theories, but when that big storm comes knocking on your door and you do well and it's like, okay, we know this works right?
00;28;45;25 - 00;28;48;16
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Because because everybody's been building the same way forever.
00;28;48;17 - 00;28;48;26
Hal Needham
Sure.
00;28;49;03 - 00;29;07;26
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And and by luck, right. Some of those structures have gone through storms, but they've been fine. And so we always remind everybody, but every storm your house goes through, there's been a fatigue on that. Yeah, that's right. And at some point that house is going to fail. There's going to be a failure point because that's just the way it is.
00;29;08;10 - 00;29;33;08
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And to for for all of us, we sort of call that our mike drop in a sense. Yeah, because it was sort of that last frontier. We knew how to do Single-family residential, we knew how to do commercial type properties, but multi-family was a little bit different. It's still commercial, but it was, it was different. And so and there were 11 other projects that had won those bids, right, that were in construction.
00;29;34;03 - 00;29;57;14
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And and all of the ones that were insignificant construction did fantastic. Yeah. You know, some of them had walls up, right? No windows in place. They still did fine. And Ida and then we had some homes on Grand Isle that had been built to the four five standard. And now these were not inexpensive homes, right? These were vacation homes, but these were homes that they after.
00;29;57;14 - 00;30;22;22
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right. And and Grand Isle is the furthest inhabitable island off Louisiana. Sure. And the island took so much damage. So much damage. But the homes that were built to the standard, again, you just couldn't tell that they'd been through, you know, a cat four. And once they put potable, potable water hooked up and generation power, they had line workers in some of these homes that were trying to get the power back.
00;30;22;22 - 00;30;31;00
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So it was Ida was we had a very small in number, Right. But it was a much greater test and it was such an intense.
00;30;31;07 - 00;30;38;10
Hal Needham
And really now post Ida, it sounds like South Louisiana is really embracing fortified and the numbers are growing tremendously, right?
00;30;38;14 - 00;30;55;06
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
It is. And so sadly Laura and Ida did to their market what Ivan and Katrina did to ours. So they are they are truly in the same space that we were as Alabamians, where the insurance market just went, okay, uncle, we give like we're out, we're.
00;30;55;06 - 00;30;55;23
Hal Needham
Going to pull out.
00;30;56;00 - 00;31;26;01
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
We just can't take this risk anymore. And and Louisiana is such a high risk state when it comes to Hurricane and to flooding. And so there is been a seismic shift in the attitude towards going a little bit beyond code, because getting that fortified designation is the confidence that the insurance industry needs for them to win a right, a property in a high risk zone.
00;31;26;01 - 00;31;42;06
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So they may. Right. But they won't take on so much risk that it's going to cause them financial distress because an insurance company is not a nonprofit and they have to balance their book and so they can only write so much high risk to balance the low risk.
00;31;42;06 - 00;31;48;07
Hal Needham
Do you think at some point the number of fortified roofs in Louisiana may equal and surpass what's happened in Alabama?
00;31;48;22 - 00;32;15;21
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
I think it will. I think it's going to make a huge leap. They they are upgrading their code. So January one, they move to the I.R.S. 2021 code, which is the closest code to fortified at this point because it has the seal roof deck or the secondary water barrier within the code as a requirement of the base code 2018 had it in there, but you had the option, you had to option it, right?
00;32;15;21 - 00;32;41;26
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
You had to say, yes, we want to do that. And so 2021, that base code is putting in that secondary water barrier, and that's the game changer because that's what keeps that water from getting into a home when the shingles are lost because shingles will come off in the right amount of wind. But if you can keep the water out from coming in between that decking on your roof, that is the difference between you having to find a hotel room or staying.
00;32;41;26 - 00;32;48;15
Hal Needham
Yeah, it's amazing to me that it took so long for building this a way. Shingles will come off. We need to seal that. Right? Right.
00;32;48;16 - 00;32;49;10
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Yeah, it did.
00;32;49;15 - 00;33;00;07
Hal Needham
Yeah, but I mean, great job for me all this. Like, okay, this is something we definitely want to promote. We want to have people with that sealed roof deck so that if they do lose shingles, they don't have water cascading down into their living space.
00;33;00;11 - 00;33;18;05
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And I will say that it's, you know, people I always sort of tell everybody, I'm like, I'm going to tell you this, but it's I'm not being cynical. It's just the truth is that people will not make a difference until it's affecting them financially. Right. Because everybody is just busy. Right? Life is busy and everything is chaotic all the time.
00;33;18;12 - 00;33;45;06
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And until you feel a pain, right, you don't make a difference. Right. In for some of us will feel that pain for a very, very long time before we make a choice to do something different and to it from the insurance industry's perspective. They were writing these really big checks on homes that weren't cosmetically really damaged. But there was all this loss because the water was pouring in once the the roof was lost.
00;33;45;16 - 00;34;03;29
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so like, okay, we're really kind of tired of this. This is like a replacement Every time we turn around, how do we fix this problem? And and that's where the Insurance Institute for Business and Safety put the research in and the years of of testing and said, okay, we know how to do this. And it's actually quite simple and totally affordable.
00;34;04;07 - 00;34;11;01
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
We just need to cover up where the water can get in when the shingles blow off. And so instead of the fortified standard and.
00;34;11;10 - 00;34;24;16
Hal Needham
That concept of building better when you actually need to because you're feeling financial pain or some pinch point, it kind of reminds me of human health, right? People I need I need to eat healthier. I know I'm getting around to it, but then all of a sudden you have a stroke or a heart attack and you're like, okay, right?
00;34;24;16 - 00;34;34;28
Hal Needham
Like it's changing today, right? Like, there it is. The consequences is evident. It's kind of seems like what's happened with the building, with the built environment in these hazard prone areas. Right.
00;34;35;02 - 00;35;07;14
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right. I think so. It's so much the medical world, Right. You'll limp on your knee for two and three years before you just go, okay. I really need to do something about my knee. So the reality is, is that even if you don't understand the science behind climate risk, there's no way to escape the fact that we have really intense storms happening and we have storms acting differently, doing things that all of our track records.
00;35;07;14 - 00;35;38;18
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right, are kind of pushing us and that you can't escape that. That's not like nobody's making that up, right? I mean, in was a little bit different for all of us, right? It works for its trajectory. It kind of shocked everybody. And look at the loss that we saw. Right. So you really just have to make a decision to build better from day one because you really have to be prepared for the unknown, because we have amazing science and we have amazing subject matter experts that can help us make plans.
00;35;39;05 - 00;35;48;25
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
But when you build something, I mean, that's pretty much it, right? You've just dumped a whole bunch of money into a structure that you can't tear down and rebuild just because you've decided.
00;35;49;02 - 00;35;50;07
Hal Needham
It's a long term commitment.
00;35;50;07 - 00;36;19;18
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
A very long term commitment. And for many families in the United States is their largest financial investment. So I think the the minds are sort of coming around to, okay, we really have to do this at the beginning. We have to make this better choice at the beginning. But that can't happen unless the political will of a jurisdiction is behind it because homeowners don't know what's being they don't know codes, don't understand if their house is being built to or not being built to account.
00;36;20;17 - 00;36;27;20
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so they just think it's being built to the best ability of that builder in the best code. And that is madness certainly the case.
00;36;27;20 - 00;36;48;01
Hal Needham
Julie, when you talk about the political will in a place and I want to wrap up with this because it's so important, this concept, all these different pieces fitting together like the state providing grant money or like there being a building code there being inspectors, how this how the real estate community fits into this. I've heard kind of these rumors through my years of traveling disaster prone areas.
00;36;48;01 - 00;37;06;12
Hal Needham
And I want to hear from you. I mean, it almost seems like in some areas where fortified has really taken root, even like homeowners that want to buy, they'll talk to a realtor and say, I want a fortified home. Could you kind of explain how all this has kind of, like fit together in a place like south Alabama and where Louisiana is moving towards as well?
00;37;06;12 - 00;37;26;26
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So if you if you go back to when the first pieces of legislation were passed. Right, there were lots of things passed, but nobody knew what it was and they didn't understand it. So once they got educated and understand and understood the difference there, we started having fortified homes, built and rivers. Once we had that happen, that house technically should sell for more, right?
00;37;27;13 - 00;37;46;10
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Especially if it's next to a house. It's not fortified. So it took a minute for the market to go, Oh yeah, that is probably true. So we partnered with the University of Alabama and Insurance Institute for Business and Safety and Auburn University and Ole Miss. And we had to have research done. We had to show that that house was worth more.
00;37;46;10 - 00;38;11;06
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Right? And so there was a value study done that's been replicated and held that a home that's built and designated or rereleased and designated to fortified should resell at an on average at about 7% more. Okay, right there. Realtors are very more interested in something that sells more, right. Because they're they're not nonprofit and they are looking for that house that they can sell for at a good price.
00;38;11;16 - 00;38;43;27
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
So you have insurance affects your mortgage. You can get a little bit more mortgage if you get really good insurance. If your insurance is really expensive, your mortgage gets a little bit smaller. Right. So that affects that family's choice and what they they buyer with, they build it. It all ties together financially. And if you are a homeowner that cannot afford to reroof and you don't have an incident that makes you trigger insurance, then you have to have an incentive to basically do something different to your house.
00;38;44;07 - 00;39;03;17
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And so a grant program to help you overcome that financial barrier to make a different decision on that aging roof helps you get that reroof. So we have a grant program, I mean, really over the last 13 years, Smart of America with all of the partners and that's all the state agencies and local agencies said, okay, why isn't this working?
00;39;03;17 - 00;39;19;21
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
And we identified the problem and it and it was either not understanding, so that's education or it was financial. There has to be a way to finance this and there has to be a result if you're going to make something better than it has to be valued differently. And so over the last 13 years, we've just sort of worked out all the bugs.
00;39;20;02 - 00;39;25;14
Hal Needham
Yeah, for sure. And it sounds like that grant program that was available in Alabama now has become available in Louisiana.
00;39;25;14 - 00;39;37;10
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Is it will it is it it is going live in January in the sense that the structure is going live and they're working to get the money into that program. But yes, they are going to move forward with the grant program.
00;39;37;13 - 00;39;56;10
Hal Needham
Yeah. Julie, thank you so much for taking time to come on the podcast. This is really cool. I feel up to date. I've always been really impressed by what smart Home America is doing and it's just cool to hear how you all are kind of expanding into other hazard prone states and just how the work is engaging more and more communities and hopefully keeping communities resilient and keeping people in their homes and just helping people endure these storms.
00;39;56;21 - 00;40;02;14
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Was absolutely fantastic to see you and to catch up and visit. Sara, I appreciate being asked to come today.
00;40;02;19 - 00;40;20;21
Hal Needham
We've been listening to a live interview here in our studios in Mobile, Alabama, with Julie SHYU Wooden, president and CEO of Smart Home America. Julie, best wishes. Hopefully Next storm season isn't a terrible one, but if it is, it seems like the work that you and your colleagues have been doing is really preparing folks for to become more resilient in the face of these storms.
00;40;20;27 - 00;40;21;19
Julie Shiyou-Woodward
Thank you, sir.
00;40;22;14 - 00;40;41;10
Hal Needham
This podcast provided insights on the great work that Smart Home America is doing to help people build better and mitigate storm losses on their homes. This conversation with julie shyu twittered covered a lot of ground and here are some take home points that I thought were really exceptional. Really three things that stood out to me from our conversation.
00;40;41;22 - 00;41;09;16
Hal Needham
Number one, Smart Home America was launched in south Alabama after Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Made insurance really skittish about writing policies in the region. Even if your home wasn't impacted, it was there was really a fear after Katrina in this region that insurance was going to completely pull out in light of this insurance uncertainty and scare, which could have led to really a financial crisis in the region.
00;41;09;22 - 00;41;39;00
Hal Needham
Smart Home America partnered with other organizations like the Fortified Project to help homeowners build better and ease the mind of the insurance industry. A similar set of circumstances is happening now in Louisiana following Cat four hurricane strikes from Laura in 2020 and IDA in 2021. Smart Home America and Fortified Home have partnered in that state and are making great inroads in Louisiana, as many homes are now being built to a higher standard.
00;41;39;26 - 00;42;06;23
Hal Needham
Number two, I love these stories that Julie shared about real world tests on building practices from actual hurricanes. Hurricane Sally in 2020. It's really impacted. South Alabama was really the biggest test to date as it impacted a region with 17,000 fortified roofs. Post-storm assessment showed that 95% of these homes held up with no major damage, enabling families to stay in their home after the storm.
00;42;07;16 - 00;42;33;23
Hal Needham
Fortified homes also held up very well in Cat four, Hurricane Ida in Louisiana in 2021, not only for single family residential homes, but also for multi multifamily structures as well. In fact, Ida's winds put to test the first fortified multifamily building funded with disaster recovery money, and the building performed exceptionally well. It's always great to hear these success stories on the Go Track podcast.
00;42;34;10 - 00;43;06;08
Hal Needham
Number three, Smart Home America Success can be attributed to their strategy to come alongside and equip Park partners who are locally based and already on the ground partner organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Custom Home Builders already on the ground in many disaster prone communities looking for methods to improve their building practices. This enables Smart Home America to come alongside them and introduce them to projects like Fortified Home, which connects key organizations, enabling them to work together and make the built environment more resilient.
00;43;07;01 - 00;43;29;27
Hal Needham
We also learn that Julie likes okra in her gumbo and even tomatoes. Surely she's been eating lots of it, lots of gumbo there in south Louisiana. She's been spending time to help Louisianans build better following these recent active hurricane seasons. Well, Julie, thanks. Thanks so much again for coming on the podcast. Your insights were amazing and really congratulations on the great work you're doing and we can't wait to follow you in the future.
00;43;29;27 - 00;43;47;08
Hal Needham
Thanks as well to our listeners for tuning in and sharing this content with your friends and family who live in disaster prone communities. And of course, a huge thank you, as always, to our friends on the geo track marketing team who help get the word out about applied science that we cover every week, like this episode with Julie SHYU Woodard.
00;43;48;03 - 00;44;08;29
Hal Needham
Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you next week when we talk about the arctic blast that inflicted shocking impacts on hundreds of millions of Americans in December 2022, just last month, we'll look at what caused it, what the impacts were, and how to prepare for such events in the future. Stay alert and resilient, everyone. I'm Dr. Help and I'll catch you on the next episode of the Geo Trek podcast.
