[From the diaries by susanhu. I also recommend this startling Nov. 14 article published in The Seattle Times: “Rent snafu thwarts Katrina evacuees.”]
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Originally posted to Kos, story developing
I just received word from Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire that FEMA is trying to end funding nationwide for interim housing for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
I am working on getting more details. Besides the post at Kos, I will also be tracking this story from our blog. More information:
Gov. Chris Gregoire today protested the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) directive to end funding nationwide for interim housing for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. There are about 5,000 evacuees living in counties throughout Washington State.
“This is devastating news to people who have already been through too much,” said Gov. Gregoire. “As governor I must protest in the strongest terms.”
The policy ends FEMA’s hotel funding on Dec. 1. In addition, no new interim housing leases will be signed after that date. All interim housing leases for evacuees will end in March, according to the FEMA directive.
State and local authorities were not given any warning of this directive or consulted in advance about how to transition hotel residents to other public housing.
Update [2005-11-16 15:48:42 by susanhu]: Keith Olbermann is covering this story tonight, via a report from NBC reporter Lisa Myers. It’s his “#4 story” on MSNBC’s Countdown, which airs at 5pm and 9pm PT.
More after the flip….
It’s unbelievable:
The federal government proposes to notify hotel residents by slipping flyers under their doors at night. About 200 families are in King County hotels alone. Washington authorities now have nine business days to get people into interim housing, or these evacuees could be homeless again, the governor said.
Adding more information as it comes in. There must be a howl of protest across the country at this attempt to abandon the victims of Katrina and Rita! FEMA needs to hear about this!
UPDATE: More from the press release:
“This policy is a cruel injustice to evacuees of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” Gov. Gregoire said. “We started Operation Evergreen to welcome displaced Gulf Coast residents to our state to help them begin to rebuild their lives. Washington residents have stepped forward to assist their fellow Americans. We will continue towards that goal.”
The governor said: “Washington State will not let the federal government make these people homeless again. I ask local jurisdictions and the non-profit and faith-based community to join me in demanding the federal government reverse this policy.”
Only contact info I have for FEMA is this e-mail address: FEMAOPA@dhs.gov. Better bet is to ask your state and local officials to join the protest.
This cannot be allowed to happen. Please tell us what we can do to help. I am so overwhelmed by what this administration is being allowed to do. Call Olberman or email him…I will too. Much appreciated information here.
Did you know that some of the Levees have not been touched. They are completely collapsed and have not been repaired at all. This was in the New York times with a picture of a levee completely flattened. Other levees have only a temporary fix.
One heavy rain and it all gets flooded again but no one cares because it’s already destroyed.
New Orleans is finished. They spend more on Iraq in a month blowing things up than it would take to rebuild the levee to withstand a 5 hurricane.
Nobody cares about these people and they are scattered all over. If they were ever organized they would make a great revolutionary army.
Well, there’s a merry Republican Christmas for you. Let’s put the victims of government malfeasance out on the streets in December after shipping them to northern latitudes.
I wonder why I haven’t hear Goodhair whining about this — at least in THIS CASE, I could stand the sound of his ingorant voice for a few minutes — we have at least ten times as many evacuees in Texas — I will have start calling the families that I was helping, how fucking nice for them, they just got settled, acquired a few things and now we are going to throw them all out on the street.
And surely having them all freeze to death on the street corners and under bridges will be cheaper for us.
I want Chertoff’s head on a fucking platter (and the rest of BushCo’s soulless criminals’ heads as well — I guess it’ll have to be one big ass platter). Damn them anyway.
Please let us know what you find out, Brinnainne … you’re one of the American citizens who really helped the victims directly, and you put in enormous amounts of time doing so.
with, I’ll call her E., the 19 year old mom I helped with furniture and getting she and the daddy of her child into their apratment and other various stuff. She called me last week to “testify” to a police officer who was at their place because some crazy ass fucker in their apt. complex accused them of stealing HIS furniture (that furniture is theirs, I was there when they picked it out, I used $100 of shycat’s $$ to put it on hold for them), I took E., to the bank to cash her FEMA check (and it was on $2000) and went with her to pay for it and arrange for delivery.
Thankfully, this was one of the sane Austin cops and told the looney guy, he would have to take them to court if he thought that their furniture was actually his (after they showed the officer receipts and talked with me) — they should have thrown looney-ass in jail for filing a false report….I told her if they get any court papers, they should call me immediately and I will advocate my ass off for them. What BS.
ANYWAY, she’s fine. She and the baby are in San Antonio, visiting with her mom — she needs a ride back up to Austin to take care of some things, so I may go and get her tomorrow…I can’t wait to see that baby again, E. says he’s crawling and babbling and all sorts of cool stuff — I haven’t seen him in about 5 weeks, so I’ll bet he will look HUGE to me — they grow so fast at that age!
Oh, about the rent thing — she says that their apartment is paid for for a year, including electricity, so I guess Austin did the same thing? I dunno, but if Goodhair took all of that out of our severely depleted state deficit, we WILL be well and truly fucked — but that’s ok, I would rather that than people freezing to death, or should I say, more people than USUAL freezing to death this winter.
Fuck me, I do not like having violent thoughts but these guys and (some gals) in power make me want to brandish a 2×4 and to hell with speaking, period!
I’ll make some more calls tomorrow, just to check on everyone.
City of Houston gives evacuees 1 year free rent
… What’s the lure? In addition to a $2,358 stipend from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the city is offering evacuees a voucher good for 12 months of rent in clean, safe apartments, with free electricity and gas heating.
The housing program, the most expansive of its kind in the U.S., is expected to cost Houston about $220 million, though it expects reimbursement from FEMA. The city already has issued about 35,000 vouchers, ranging from one-bedroom apartments for two people to four-bedroom apartments for larger families. More than 12,000 vouchers have been cashed in, each signifying an evacuee family has signed a lease. The city then pays the landlord directly.
Yes, I wonder what your dear governor will have to say about that. It was not FEMA’s offer, but his.
Mississippi and Louisiana have been given a FEMA reprieve until January 1 due to lack of affordable housing, but I note, that we in Louisiana have not been given a reprieve on the $3.7 billion dollar bill that FEMA has given us 30 days to pay.
Can you say “broke-ass state with no tax base”? I knew you could.
FEMA presented LA with a bill???
What in the hell is up with that? And what are they going to do to you if you DON’T pay it in 30 days? Unleash a hurricane on your or something?
Godamnit — the USofA: we may be falling behind in everything else but we are still NUMBER ONE in producing the most ignorant bullshit ever seen.
It was in the paper this morning and alluded to before Blanco called her special session of the legislature to address our already looming $1B budget deficit.
“You can expect there’s going to be an adjustment in Louisiana’s (bond) rating, not because of a result of anything the Legislature has done or the administration has done,” LeBlanc said. “The markets are antsy about Louisiana, particularly local governments, because they’re afraid of the default rate. They’re afraid that’s going to increase. That default rate for local government is what has the potential to tank the state’s rating.”
Theriot said Louisiana officials asked whether the match could be waived, but FEMA officials insisted the match amounts were required.
The biggest portion of the tab falls into the category that requires the 25 percent match. The debt would be calculated with a variable interest rate, and there would be a 6-percent penalty for non-payment.
Our tax base is not going to come back over night. Sure, parts of New Orleans are trying to come back, but there is a chicken and egg crisis involving jobs and housing…plus it is going on all over the state. Where you have housing, you have no jobs…and where you have jobs, you have no housing.
people while they’re down ’round these parts, but now it’s whole STATES?!
I’m right next door (in Austin), let me know if there’s anything I can do — I’ve got a lot of friends who want to go home here, but they’re very realistic about it….they know the jobs/housing catch-22 is there waiting for them.
Thanks for the info.!
He is, after all, continuing to get paid by FEMA.
Actaully, I heard on CNN a couple days ago that he’s finally off the government dole….. I’m for welfare reform when it comes to the Brownies in the government.
Isn’t that pathetic, all the same?
He “resigns” in September and gets to be paid until, what? Almost November?
But people who were ill-served by his “leadership” at FEMA may be homeless again in a place that is not home. Are there really people who believe you can instantly “get it together” after losing everything?
Hell, Shrub didn’t find Jesus and a job until he was 40.
Of course, given his parents, I’d say that it all worked out pretty well for him.
I want to see it in writing — that bastard could easily still be getting paid, the ins and out of government contracting allow for all sorts of fucked up shit.
That was my thought also brinn…fema was getting some flack for still paying the bastard(to investigate himself)so it was reported his consulting fee over..when I see him homeless with a pink slip then I might believe that he was really terminated. Until then I’d guess he’s collecting a gov. check somewhere along the line.
Link
Michael Brown is no longer on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s payroll.
is what worries me though — don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that the fucking cosultancy to clear his own name is not longer being paid for, but I would be a hell of a lot happier if I saw something that said Mike Brown no longer receives one red cent of taxpayer money for ANYTHING….
Call me cynical.
A couple of weeks ago, the number of adults still “missing” was between 7 and 9 thousand, I haven’t seen any updates on that.
I live in Alexandria, LA which is in the central part of the state about 4 normal driving hours north of New Orleans.
We are on the state’s hurricane evacuation route north and had many prestorm and post-Katrina guests in our community. They filled the available hotel rooms, the coliseum, a dozen or so “authorized” Red Cross shelters, numerous churches and countless family homes. These are our people, this was our role.
As the scope of Katrina began to be fully known, Gov. Blanco issued an executive order that prevented hotels from evicting hurricane evacuees for non-payment. This was before the Red Cross began issuing housing vouchers and long before FEMA took up the bill. It was the right thing for Blanco to do, but very hard on area businesses that depend on hotel availability for routine and convention business. It has hurt the local economy at a time when the state needs support from the surviving tax base. All Red Cross and FEMA reimbursements to hotels are by federal law exempt from state, local and hotel occupancy taxes.
Alexandria never had a chance to catch our breath before Rita struck. But a strange thing happened during the Rita pre-storm evacuation.
Our emergency 911 center was called to alert the city to the arrival of three busloads of nursing home patients from the Lake Charles area. The old convention center, really just a large open meeting room in our City Hall was prepared to accommodate these evacuees and their care-givers.
Rita did a “bow curve” which sent her just far enough West of Alexandria that we did not get wide-spread structural damage…just a drowning rain and 70 mph winds. Tree damage, light construction and poor construction damage, wide spread electrical outages and the like. But, six out of seven of the city water well pumps went out and were not restored for days.
Meanwhile, at the convention center there are just over 120 nursing home patients on cots, most wheelchair bound that are being rolled down a single handicap ramp to non-handicap equipped Port-a-potties in the 95 degree heat of the four days that followed landfall. Not pretty.
You might think that we were doing the best that we could under the circumstances. And if by that you meant the City of Alexandria, you would be correct.
But the owner of the nursing homes in Lake Charles is a Baton Rouge businessman by the name of Bob Dean. Who, coincidently owns the now vacant Hotel Bentley right next door to Alexandria City Hall. Sure, it might have been difficult for him to have staffed his vacant hotel to accommodate his very own nursing home patients, but he allowed them to languish on cots, in an open housing space for over three weeks at the City’s expense. Then, he transferred them further north to Bossier City, as I recall. It was not until just a couple of weeks ago that they were moved back to Lake Charles.
All of that is fairly distasteful to my delicate sensibilities, but not nearly as distasteful as the latest in the Bob Dean saga. He is trying to enter into a contract with FEMA to open the Hotel Bentley for semi-permanent housing for hurricane evacuees. The City has objected on the basis of there being no transportation, health, nutrition or retail infrastructure to accommodate such a large population boom in what is a completely non-residential business environment downtown.
Dean is threatening to sue the city for restraint of trade, but FEMA will not sign the contract over the city’s objections. Dean is crying racism on the part of the city.
But, Dean, who closed the Bentley, a historic hotel built in 1908 and on the National Register of Historic places has spent the last year gutting it of it’s stained glass, wrought iron, marble statues and artwork. He is raping a historic landmark and trying to turn a profit while the profiteering is good. The Bentley used to be a beautiful place.
There will be a public meeting to air grievances next Tuesday. I am hoping that FEMA’s withdrawal from the hotel reimbursement funding will make all of this a moot point.
I have previously posted a diary here at Booman Tribune chronicling the return of my small business to New Orleans. You can find it here and at the end are some additional links to commentary that I have posted at The New International Times during this summer’s hurricane season.
The link at the end of my comment is actually to a more generalized diary, “Gulf Coast Recovery…Are We Committed?”, but the story of the move back to New Orleans is included in the links at the end of the diary.
</doh-slaps head>
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La. toll rises as evacuees find dead in return to homes
NEW ORLEANS Nov. 15 — More than a month after the official search for victims of Hurricane Katrina ended, the death toll in Louisiana has jumped by 104 as returning families in the New Orleans area continue to find bodies.
Many of the newly discovered victims are elderly people who sought refuge in attics and upper floors from the rising waters throughout New Orleans’ devastated 9th Ward, said Frank Minyard, the coroner in greater New Orleans.
See my diary ::
AMERICAN SHAME —
The Edgar Hollingsworth Story :: May he R.I.P.
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City government is eager to increase the flow of people returning
By various estimates, including a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll of evacuees, 30% to 50% of New Orleans residents might never return. Nagin previously said half might be the best to hope for. But he also has said the city’s infrastructure should be able to support up to 300,000 people within a year.
NOLA News – The Times-Picayune
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
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WASHINGTON Oct 27, 2005 — The Senate moved to restore $125 million of Sept. 11 aid to help injured workers money New York lawmakers had fought furiously to save from a federal budget-cutting ax.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the deal on the Senate floor, offering an amendment with Sen. Charles Schumer to restore the $125 million in unspent workers compensation money.
White House budget officials and House leaders had sought to take back the unspent money under a budget proposed earlier this year, arguing that New York had not spent it in years and apparently had no plans to spend it.
That prompted immediate complaints from New York officials that thousands of ground zero workers are still suffering lingering physical and mental health problems from their time working on the toxic debris pile, and more health problems may develop over time.
The unspent $125 million was part of a $20 billion aid package Congress gave to New York following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Can’t help but wonder if it could be possible that a similar scenario would be possible for the holders of Section 8 vouchers….
This is really nuts. Remember a discussion I had w/a housing agent: some people who hold Section 8 vouchers had offerred to take Hurricane Katrina refugees/evacuees into their homes…
Was told that it wasn’t necessary, things were being taken care of…
hmmm….