Earl Slaughter barely escaped death when floodwaters sent him to the roof of his mother's one-story house in the Ninth Ward. As night fell, the 49-year-old man squeezed his lanky frame into a large cooler, his hands gripping the roof's peak.

Weeks later, Earl considers his prospects from the placid grounds of his new apartment in Denton, TX.

With no job prospects and far from family and friends, he muses, "I don't know how I'm going to make it."

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