In the midst of this week’s inclement weather, board members from the national and international Episcopal Relief and Development traveled to Kerr County on Thursday, Oct. 1, to visit residents of RVs and mobile homes who are still reeling from the devastating impact of the July 4, 2025, flood. These residents participated in the ERD’s RV and manufactured home assistance program, facilitated by the Episcopal West Texas Diocese and funded by The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country.
“Episcopal Relief & Development works with a network of local partner organizations who have long-standing relationships with the disaster-affected communities we serve,” said Matt Silva, board chair, Episcopal Relief and Development. “In addition to a cash and voucher assistance program to help financially stabilize affected families in the aftermath of a life-changing disaster, survivors are being supported for mental-health and spiritual recovery and, with a major investment from the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, an RV & manufactured home assistance program.”
The board visit included a presentation at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, including a panel and Q&A with ERD leaders, the Rt. Rev. David G. Read of the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas, the Rev. Bert Baetz, rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Austin Dickson, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country and local and community representatives.
An example replacement RV was parked in the parking lot of the church and board members were invited inside after a lunch break.
The idea for the RV and manufactured home replacement program came initially from the Community Foundation after seeing a variety of needs assessments from members of the community following the July 4, 2025, flood.
“We have needs assessments that residents fill out at the website Rebuild Kerr,” Dickson said. “That sort of tells us what nonprofits we need to focus on funding or giving grants to when it comes to recovery. What we were seeing was, the number one need after 2025 was housing.”
While the Community Foundation had long relationships with home building partners including the Kerrville chapter of Habitat for Humanity, Dickson noticed there was a group within the housing need that needed more attention.
“Within that housing need,” Dickson said. “We were seeing people who primarily lived in RVs or mobile homes. So we actively looked for a nonprofit that we could support that would help those people.”
In this search, the Community Foundation discovered ERD, a group that already had experience working with replacement manufactured homes and RVs.
“That falls more broadly under our people on the move program,” said Katie Mears, senior disaster specialist with the U.S. disaster team at ERD. “Internationally, it usually looks like refugees and displacement due to war and things like that. In the U.S., we’ve translated that to work mainly with families in RVs, mobile and manufactured homes that have been affected by natural disasters.”
Mears said that they have assisted in replacing or repairing manufactured homes and RVs throughout the country, including Louisiana after Hurricane Harvey and North Carolina after Hurricane Ida.
The Community Foundation donated $5.8 million to the RV & manufactured home assistance program as well as over $400,000 to other relief efforts through St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Kerrville for the July 4, 2025, flood.
Dickson said nonprofit support was necessary for this effort after both the 2025 and 2026 flooding because government funding for this effort had been significantly cut.
“FEMA used to have what they called a buyout program,” Dickson said. “It was something where they would give families money to replace RVs and mobile homes if those families agreed to move to less flood-prone or otherwise safer areas. That program, for whatever reason, stopped in January 2025.”
The FEMA program was not in effect when the July 4, 2025, flooding hit the Texas Hill Country.
“It became clear that this was something the nonprofit sector was going to have to step up on,” Dickson said.
Mears said there is one thing that the nonprofit is better able to offer than federal funding: choice.
“A lot of those (public sector) programs will tell people living in RVs or mobile homes in high-risk flood-type areas, you know, ‘we can’t help you unless you agree to move to a safer area,'” Mears said. “So families are kind of stuck. ‘I don’t want to move. But I need the thing (RV or mobile home), and I can’t get that unless I move.'”
When the ERD began its program in Texas, they realized that was something that needed to be done differently.
“There’s a real need here for people and families to be in charge of their own recovery,” Mears said. “So we’ll talk with people about what sites are less likely to flood or what parks and areas might be safer. But moving is not a requirement for receiving help from us.”
While some individuals and families chose to remain in the lots and parks with high flood risk, the majority did not.
“84% of the residents the program assisted chose to move to safer areas,” Meeks said. “I think that speaks to the effectiveness of the program. We can give people the information and give them the choice. We can let people have agency in their own recovery. That’s very important when everything else feels so uncertain.”
According to ERD, over 50 RVs, mobile homes and manufactured homes have been replaced or repaired by the program.
The presentation at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church finished with a song, “God is in the Light,” performed by singer and songwriter Darden Smith and co-written by 13 survivors of the July 4, 2025, flood.
Following the presentation, Episcopal Relief & Development board members heard from recipients of RVs and mobile homes courtesy of the program. The group then toured other projects, including trauma relief and healing, that the Episcopal Relief & Development Fund assisted with in Hunt.
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