More than a dozen Hurricane Katrina victims from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing the federal government of wrongfully denying them temporary housing assistance.
Attorneys said this is probably the first of a string of suits to be filed against the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies.
“FEMA has fallen so far from the mark of what they were supposed to do. There’s no excuse,” said Howard Godnick, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit, which asks for class-action status, seeks to make FEMA immediately provide trailers or other housing alternatives, especially to those still in shelters, and asks that victims with larger families receive more money.
Lisa Myers’ report for MS-NBC said:
Part of the problem is, so far, FEMA has cleared only 6,423 trailers for survivors to live in — in all of Louisiana — tens of thousands fewer than needed.
Paul Gonzalez was inspecting trailers for FEMA until last month. Finally, he quit in disgust after hundreds of trailers stayed vacant for weeks because FEMA didn’t complete the paperwork.
“I felt like I was being paid an exorbitant amount of money,” says Gonzalez, “and I saw nothing being done.”
An unidentified FEMA official seemed upset how far behind the recovery seemed to be.
For the residents of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, those trailers could prove vital to their staying and rebuilding the community once more.
