SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) – When the floodwaters rushed in last month in San Jose, a firefighter hauled Hien Nguyen to safety. She left behind the two-bedroom apartment she shared with a roommate for $1,000 a month, managing only to take her identification and her phone.
“Everything is destroyed,” the 70-year-old said, surveying her home last week, where she returned to clean and pick up clothing.
Now, Nguyen is living at a city shelter and like many others in San Jose’s Vietnamese community – the largest population of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam – she is trying to figure out how to rebuild and find a home in high-cost Silicon Valley.
City officials say about 80 percent of the 400 families who are still displaced are Vietnamese and have little more than the clothes on their backs. “They are working families,” said city councilman Tam Nguyen, who represents a district that is about a third Vietnamese.
The flooding also displaced low-income Latino families, said Councilman Sergio Jimenez, who is trying to help them find new homes and replace possessions.