DELRAY BEACH, Fla. -- The red tag taped to Ann Passon's window means that she can't return home.

The roof of the condominium above hers blew off during the battering winds of Hurricane Wilma, leaving Mrs. Passon's home with water damage that worsens with each rain. After a county inspector tagged her condo as uninhabitable, Mrs. Passon moved in with her sister for two weeks, and then began a vacation with her daughter last Wednesday. "After that, I really don't know," says Mrs. Passon, who won't give her age but who neighbors say is among the oldest residents of the sprawling retirement complex.

Mrs. Passon is one of the tens of thousands of people, many of them elderly, who remain homeless three weeks after Wilma zipped across southern Florida on Oct. 24. The American Red Cross determined that 27,700 dwellings were destroyed or rendered temporarily unlivable.

Overshadowed by the devastation of Katrina, Florida's struggles with Wilma have been largely unnoticed outside the state. But the combination of soaring home prices and scarce rental properties in southern Florida makes it unlikely that many people displaced by the storm will find affordable places to live anytime soon.

"We pretty much recommend they find family or friends to stay with right now," says Lorrie Cardoza, a crisis counselor with Project HOPE, a public-education program formed after hurricanes Frances and Jeanne hit last year.

The housing boom is partly to blame for the crisis. In Kings Point, a minicity of one- and two-story buildings in Delray Beach where Mrs. Passon and 14,000 other retirees live, condos could be bought for as little as $40,000 four years ago, says Chip Sollins, whose Prime Management Group maintains 6,000 of the 7,200 units. This summer, a renovated one-bedroom sold for $120,000.

Mr. Sollins notes that people who paid off their mortgages long ago may not have increased their insurance coverage as the valuation of their homes increased -- and even if they did, the reimbursement may not be enough to get them into a new home in such an expensive market.

As of September, the average sale price for a single-family home in the West Palm Beach-Boca Raton metropolitan area was $400,000, compared with $133,700 just six years ago, according to data from the Florida Association of Realtors. Average monthly rents rose from $893 to $1,024 since 1999, according to Boston-based Property & Portfolio Research.

Incomes haven't kept pace. The median household income for Palm Beach County was $43,540, down about $4,000 from 2000, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. "There's plenty of wealth," says Jim Murley, director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions at Florida Atlantic University. "But it's extreme wealth within miles of some of the poorest areas of the country."

Previous disasters have worsened the situation. In nearby Lake Worth, developers snapped up the region's cheap rentals that were damaged by last year's back-to-back hurricanes and replaced them with expensive homes. On top of that, Renita Hosler, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, says some rental properties and hotel space that might have been used by Wilma's victims were taken by evacuees from Hurricane Katrina.

Assistance workers and contractors who have arrived in south Florida to rebuild the infrastructure are also grasping for temporary housing -- driving up demand and therefore prices. For the third quarter of this year, the vacancy rate for Palm Beach County apartments was 5.9 percent, below the 6.7 percent for the nation's biggest metro areas.

Poor residents suffer disproportionately in any disaster. But the hardship on the very old has been a hallmark of this storm. Palm Beach County had more than 34,000 residents over age 84 in the 2000 census.

Two weeks without power left many elderly with no elevator service or air-conditioning. Some were forced to move to shelters. Others, who should have left their homes because of unsafe conditions, have been reluctant, not knowing how to function outside their normal surroundings. Workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency say they have interviewed elderly women who say they are sleeping in their cars.

Not surprisingly, the area's affordable housing -- trailers, older apartment and retirement complexes -- sustained the most damage. The Red Cross tallied 3,652 mobile homes destroyed. Also hard hit were several retirement complexes that were built in the 1970s, long before today's more stringent hurricane-protection codes. Many of these were relatively inexpensive units, purchased by retirees.

Typical of these residents is Frances Rosenberg, 94, who moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., to the sprawling Kings Point retirement community 31 years ago and has never seen reason to leave -- not even when Hurricane Wilma was bearing down. Mrs. Rosenberg says she stood in her bedroom and watched as the wind peeled away her second-floor porch, taking her washer and dryer with it. "It's the worst storm we've ever had," says Mrs. Rosenberg, who has been able to stay in her home despite the damage.

Kings Point is now littered with overturned banyan trees. Workers can be seen on dozens of buildings putting on temporary roofs. Still more buildings are patched with bright blue tarps, awaiting help. Rooftop air-conditioning units lie askew on the lush golf course. As many as 400 units at Kings Point could eventually be deemed uninhabitable, due to roof, water damage and mold, Mr. Sollins says.

Because so many homes were damaged, administrators in Palm Beach County asked FEMA for 6,400 mobile trailers. As of last Thursday, 81 were approved, says Verdenia Baker, a deputy county administrator. "The units have been slow in coming," she adds, "but they are working with us." FEMA has also purchased 3,000 trailers from local vendors to be distributed to residents who qualify in the 13 counties that suffered damage, Ricardo Zuniga, an agency spokesman in Broward County, said last Friday.

FEMA has also been forced to make allowances for south Florida's tight housing market. In Broward County, FEMA acquiesced to local officials' request to double the rental allowance, which is normally equal to one month's rent at the market rate for each county, Mr. Zuniga said.

The bidding war for housing shows no sign of subsiding. Two days before Wilma hit, Jean Lombard, 78, shared a vodka cocktail with her Kings Point neighbor to celebrate the completed renovation of the condo she had inherited from her sister. Forty-eight hours later, Mrs. Lombard watched as the roof of her "doll's house" landed on the couch in a wringing-wet mess of splinters and pink insulation.

Mrs. Lombard says that within hours of the storm, a contractor offered her $70,000 for the condo as is. Unhurt but rattled, Mrs. Lombard gave him no immediate answer. "I was in no condition to make any decision," she says.

First Published: November 15, 2005, 5:00 a.m.