Here is his quote from Newshounds.

Newt Gingrich appeared on Hannity & Colmes last night (9/7/05) to rebut Howard Dean’s remark that poor people and blacks suffered worse from Hurricane Katrina. Gingrich’s response suggested that, in his view, the evacuees may be better off having been forced to flee their homes.

Gingrich answered: “We ought to be inventing a way so that those people who were driven out of public housing don’t return back to the totally inadequate public housing of the past but have a better future. Those children who are now scattered across America – we have to worry about their getting a real education and, candidly, in some cases they may get a better education, if we put our minds to it, than they would have gotten trapped in areas of poverty, with schools that were failing, with nobody in the community who was able to be a role model so I think the time right now is to look forward in a positive way… and how are we gonna fix the bureaucracies that so clearly failed?”

Newt Gingrich Suggests Hurricane Victims May Be Better Off As Evacuees
And of course we know Barbara Bush used almost the same words in discussing how lucky the refugees were:

President Bush battled criticism over the response to Hurricane Katrina, his mother declared it a success for evacuees who “were underprivileged anyway,” saying on Monday that many of the poor people she had seen while touring a Houston relocation site were faring better than before the storm hit.

“What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas,” Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program “Marketplace.” “Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.”

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway,” she said, “so this is working very well for them.

Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off

Sounds like talking points to me.  When you hear it from two of them, it is most likely talking points and part of a plan.  A plan, I guess to figure out some other way to handle low income housing.  I don’t pretend to know what they have in mind.  

I posted earlier that they were not rebuilding low-income housing in the Charlotte County area hit so hard by Hurricane Charley.   Last year 95% of housing like that, including trailer parks and housing centers was destroyed.  A local station there has a video remembering it a year later.  The person speaking says they won’t turn them out in the cold, or something to that effect.  Here is the video.

One Year Later: FEMA City

Here is my previous diary about the destruction of the housing there.  I believe, but can’t verify, that there are many still without homes in the Hardee County area of Florida where Charley wreaked such havoc.  It is hard to find news about it, but rebuilding is slow there.

95% of low income housing destroyed in Charlotte County, Florida by Charley

Here is the gist of my diary:

Now after rambling, here is my point.  I think the most tragic part of this will be the new homeless class from these hurricanes.   Bottom line is that when low income housing was destroyed,  nearly 95% in Charlotte County where Charlie veered ashore suddenly, they consciously decided not to rebuild it. Instead they are enriching the tax base by building nicer homes and new businesses.  

The people in FEMA village there, some 500 trailers, will have to get out in February.   This article shows their quandary, which basically is that they have nowhere to go.

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