TUNKHANNOCK — Pennsylvania residents who lost their homes to Tropical Storm Lee more than three weeks ago are having a tough time finding affordable housing, or any housing at all, because workers in the area’s natural gas drilling boom have filled nearly every room.

Flood victims say that available units are few, and federal disaster assistance doesn’t come close to paying the rent on the scattered vacancies that are left.

Kim Eastwood, whose home was severely damaged in the flood, has been staying with her son, daughter and elderly mother in a Red Cross shelter in a high school gymnasium while she tries to find a place for them to live.

It hasn’t been easy — not shelter life with its cold showers and hard cots, nor her quest for an apartment or house. “The couple we saw are way too expensive,” said Eastwood, 35, of Mehoopany.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says it will provide temporary trailers to residents who qualify — the first batch of about 250 trailers has been approved, and they are being rolled out in the coming days and weeks.

“They can’t find any place to go because there is no place to go,” said Brian Wrightson, emergency services director for 10 American Red Cross chapters in northeastern Pennsylvania.

As of Friday, FEMA had identified 2,721 disaster relief applicants statewide who qualify for trailers, or “temporary housing units” in FEMA parlance.