In many low-income neighborhoods around Houston, it feels like Harvey struck not last year but last month. Some of Houston’s most vulnerable and impoverished residents remain in the early stages of their rebuilding effort and live in the shadows of the widespread perception that Texas has successfully rebounded from the historic flooding.

In the poorest communities, some residents are still living with relatives or friends because their homes remain under repair. Others are living in their flood-damaged or half-repaired homes, struggling in squalid and mold-infested conditions. Still others have moved into trailers and other structures on their property.

One 84-year-old veteran, Henry Heileman, lived until recently in a shipping container while his home was being worked on. The container, which had been transformed into a mini-apartment with a bathroom, bed and lattice-lined foundation, was roughly 42 feet long and 6 feet wide.

The recovery has been problematic for the African-American and Hispanic families who live in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods for several reasons. The scale of Harvey’s devastation and the depths of the social ills that existed in the Houston area before the storm played a role. So did a scattershot recovery that saw some people get the government aid and charity assistance they needed, when they needed it, while others had more difficulty or became entangled in disputes and complications with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Everything always hits the poor harder than it does everybody else,” said John Sharp, the head of the Governor’s Commission to Rebuild Texas, which is helping to coordinate the state response to Harvey and to assist local officials and nonprofit groups.

These residents have not struggled in isolation. They have been assisted in the past year by officials and volunteers, but their repairs and recovery stalled for different reasons. Some of them no longer seek out help and suffer privately, ashamed of their living conditions but unable to move forward with their lives. Their housing issues are one of many problems they are confronting post-Harvey. Some are disabled, ill, unemployed or caring for older relatives. Some said they or their relatives are taking medication or undergoing counseling to cope with post-Harvey stress.