NORTH PORT ST. JOE — Earl Williams was lying in bed when the roof of his salmon-colored wood frame home fell in on him.

Four months after Hurricane Michael struck the Gulf Coast with 155-mph winds, the blue tarps that covers the holes in his tin roof have ragged holes themselves.

He stands at the edge of the yard and points as the wind lifts the blue material upward.

“See that! You can see right through to the other side,” Williams said.

His porch is full of boxes of canned goods and other non-perishables from the Red Cross, church groups and charities. He still is without water or electricity. He walks several blocks over to his landlord’s BBQ joint, where Williams works twice a week, to wash up.

“We haven’t had any help here,” Williams said. “I asked FEMA for a trailer and I never heard from them again.”

The scope of the problem and how to help:

While Port St. Joe itself is bouncing back from the one of the worst storms to ever hit the U.S. mainland, this little 2-square mile community of mostly black and low-income residents north of the now-defunct railroad tracks near the site of the old St. Joe Paper Co. mill is still suffering.

Many of the characteristic shotgun shacks are still covered in tarps, and several have been demolished, diminishing an already scarce inventory of low-income housing.

The streets are lined with debris.

“I’ve been waiting for them to pick it up for a couple of weeks now,” said James Fennell, who sat in a wheelchair as he looked over the six-foot-high pile of rubble on his sidewalk. Church volunteers helped drag out the ruined furniture, spray for mold and put a tarp over his roof.

“FEMA isn’t moving as fast over here,” Fennell said.

Back in its glory days, the town had grocery stores, hair salons, doctor’s offices and funeral parlors, even a hotel on Martin Luther King Boulevard. A gutted shopping center and an empty two-story building that once housed a convenience store and a beauty parlor are the remaining vestiges of commerce in this neighborhood.

“On the north side, it looked like a storm before the storm came,” said Amos Pittman, who owns several properties in North Port St. Joe.

Pittman sits in a chair outside his game room, a shed wrapped tightly in a blue tarp that sits on the two lots he owns where his hotel used to stand.

He opens a screen-door and shows the interior of his game room. It’s wired for sound and lighting. Two flat screen TVs sit on opposite sides of a room with a long table between them. The table has several Perrier bottles and two checkerboards where Pittman and Mayor Bo Patterson play from time to time, talking about the problems of the north side.

Pittman’s sympathies are clear. His white Jeep Cherokee has a green Bo for Mayor sign on the door. The elections are coming up in May and Patterson is facing off against former city commissioner Rex Buzzett, whose house on Constitution was gutted by Michael.

Two of Pittman’s houses over on Avenue G were also damaged by Michael. He put the tarps on the roofs himself. He also had to pull out ruined furniture, bedding and personal belongings. The inside of the pink house smells of mold and dampness.

He points to a pile of rubble behind his house that was once the home of his friend Isaac Thomas, who had to move in with his son.

“Why didn’t they pay this man?” Pittman asks.

The white clapboard house Pittman lives in had some water damage but was otherwise spared. His daughter lost her place so she’s storing all her stuff in one of the back rooms.

“I went over to FEMA they sent me to SHIP,” Pittman said. “They always sending you somewhere else. They don’t do the rich people on Reid Avenue like that. They have plenty of money.”

FEMA provides temporary rental assistance for those who need to move out of their damaged homes, and emergency repair assistance to make a damaged home habitable. While anyone can apply for assistance, not everyone is eligible, said Cheria Brown, media relations manager for FEMA.

"Ideally when a survivor registers for assistance, you're not getting a trailer necessarily," Brown said.

Patterson had an appointment to meet with a FEMA representative on Friday about the north side.

“It’s other organizations that have been helping people out over there, putting on roofs and getting their houses cleaned up,” Patterson said. “We still need a lot of help on that side of town. People don’t have the resources themselves and they need education, they need FEMA to reach out to them. It’s a slow process.”

Even people who have the means to replace their damaged homes are finding it difficult to make progress.

James and Renee Anthony bought a manufactured home for $80,000 to replace the 1,300-square foot home on Avenue A they paid $8,000 for in 1997. Before Michael, their home had a market value of about $55,000, according to Zillow, a real estate website.

But the home was destroyed when a giant tree root obliterated it.

Adding to their troubles, James Anthony lost his job at Bay Medical and his wife lost her job, too. They both have new jobs, but took a huge pay cut. They live with Renee Anthony’s mother.

Anthony was told their manufactured home wasn’t allowed, but they could buy a modular home. The cheapest one he could find cost $37,000 more than the home they purchased.

“This is the only thing holding me up,” Anthony told city commissioners at a hearing Tuesday, where he sought a variance to let him put his manufactured home on his lot. “People need some place to live, and they’re telling me I can’t put something on my own property.”

Their neighbor, Marcus Shackleford, whose own house suffered roof and other structural damage, said he signed the petition agreeing to let them bring the manufactured home onto their property.

“Why won’t they relax the codes,” Shackleford asked. “They do it for everyone else.”

Pointing down the street, he noted that the city let a neighbor put a modular home on their lot over on the corner. He didn’t see the difference between one or the other.

Commissioners were sympathetic to the Anthonys and their plight.

“These people are in a tough position,” Patterson said. “That man bought what he could afford. We’ll try to help them out as much as we can.”

Contact Schweers at jschweers@tallahassee.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeffschweers.