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Article snippet: HOUSTON — Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters have left this sprawling metropolis partially ruined and eager to return to something like normalcy. But the storm has also forced many thousands of people out of their homes. As a result, the city is engaged in one giant collective improvisation. Its defining creative endeavor is where to find a place to sleep. Greater Houston is big enough, with enough dry and intact neighborhoods, to absorb many of the people whose own homes are now moldy and wrecked. But absorption is not always easy. The cleanup will take years, and many Houston residents are heading into autumn under unfamiliar roofs. They will be packing school lunches over hotel minibars, and packing themselves into the guest rooms of neighbors and relatives and friends. Some remain stranded in shelters, and others have returned, in desperation, to the stench of unrepaired homes. Here are the stories of five of those people, unmoored from the homes they knew, adrift in a city they know well. Ricky Gentle burns incense at night, vanilla or lavender, to hide the smell of his moldy apartment. He knows this is no place to stay, that it cannot be healthy to breathe in here, but he and his brother and his brother’s wife have no other place to go. The one night they spent in a shelter — “people half-crazy going around” — seemed even more dangerous. The night the flood came, Mr. Gentle, 54, lay in bed and heard the pots and pans clanging in the kitchen cabinets, a signal t... Link to the full article to read more