Although victims of Katrina and Rita are scattered all over the United States, this news is likely to be received with a fair amount of hostility in Houston:
A judge ordered the federal government to resume paying rent and make three months of retroactive payments for about 2,600 hurricane evacuee households in Houston and thousands more across the country.
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had not sufficiently explained why it cut off the payments this year.
FEMA must not only resume the payments, it must “pay to each of these evacuees the short-term assistance benefits they would have otherwise received from September 1, 2006, through November 30, 2006,” Leon wrote.
It’s common knowledge that the welcome wore off the mat in this part of Texas long ago. However, while much has been made of the increased violent crime in certain areas, the FEMA ruling strikes the heart of what’s really got folks upset.
Many simply cannot understand how it’s possible to still need assistance so many months later.
Of course, an unfortunate number of people were angry even as the first buses arrived from New Orleans, and everything since has merely confirmed what they already “knew”:
“They’re just lazy, waiting around for a hand-out“, or “They should just go home. There’s plenty of work there.”
Polimom gave up rational discussion on the subject with these knowledgable folks long ago; you can’t argue with prejudice. However, the vast majority of Houstonians (and Americans everywhere) were concerned about the evacuees, and understanding of their difficulties.
Unfortunately, while many have found jobs and started rebuilding their lives, problems still remain for others:
About 11,000 evacuee households are covered by the ruling, said Ginny Goldman, ACORN’s head organizer in Texas. “This is a substantial amount of money,” she said. “We are talking many millions of dollars.”
[snip]
In the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, FEMA began paying rent and utilities for evacuees through programs administered by local governments. At its height, Houston’s Joint Hurricane Housing Task Force housed about 34,000 households.
In February, FEMA began shifting evacuees into a separate housing program that pays rent but not utilities and has tighter eligibility rules. Ultimately, the agency decided about 2,600 Houston households were ineligible for that program. Those families received their last rent payments in August.
Well over a year later, it’s obvious that there are barriers, of one form or another, that these folks simply cannot overcome alone.
If a person held a job before Katrina or Rita blew through, but hasn’t been able to find one in a new location, the problem is unlikely to be laziness. Is it a transportation issue? Child care problems? Training needs? Confusion? Depression?
It’s time to stop assuming that these riddles are solveable for everyone. It’s clear that they’re not.
Moreover, if someone suffered from a disability or poor health before the storms hit, then a hurricane is unlikely to have effected a miracle cure. The sick and elderly are just as vulnerable in Texas or Georgia as they were in Louisiana; more so, in fact.
How many are never going to support themselves, and how can we help them find a permanent solution? Is that a financial burden that belongs only to the host cities and states? If so, why? Because that problem is not hurricane related.
That there are people who still haven’t found their feet since last year’s hurricanes wiped them out is a real challenge — not just for the evacuees, but for all of us.
The 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes fit FEMA’s emergency charter. Furthermore, the government recognized that it can take a long time to regroup from a disaster; that’s why there are provisions for up to 18 months. If some still cannot support themselves after 15 months, though, then there are reasons.
It’s time to figure out what those are, so we can close the gaps. Time’s running out.
Never having lost everything you owned, and being unable for an extended period to return home, and even if you can return the area is so devastated that any degree of ‘normalcy’ is unlikely to return for years, I can understand why you (an dI use “you” here generically, not as a specific reference to Polimom) would be able to comprehend why “those people” were still having problems. After all, this type of situation is unheard of in today’s USofA.
I think it would be worthwhile to look back at what happened in Europe after the end of WWII, and see what was done as far as helping the refugees resettle. And make no mistake, those who fled from Katrina (and later Rita) and could not return home became refugees, and refugees have a whole different set of needs then “evacuees” or whatever politically-correct term is used to refer to them these days.
~EdT.
FWIW (re: refugees) — when it became obvious that parts of the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans in particular, were going to be perhaps a decade recovering (if at all in some places), I think the term “evacuee” became both misleading and counterproductive.
Agreed – and this is probably a lesson we need to learn before the next disaster (be it hurricane, earthquake, volcano, tsunami, whatever) hits.
Also, I think we need to remember that our “civilization” rests on a foundation that is easily disrupted – and in wrapping ourselves up in this coccoon of technology, we have made ourselves less adapable – and thus less likely to survive sudden, dramatic change.
I guess I’ll have to write a post on an article I read today that kind of goes with this topic. I sometimes feel like we’re going in circles.
Next week is the runoff between Jefferson and Carter. Please god, don’t let Jefferson win. After Nagin’s win, it won’t bode well for our future in terms of perception. But that aside, Jefferson was at a HANO meeting yesterday or today (can’t remember it’s been a long day) talking to the public housing residents who are upset that they can’t get back into their homes. HANO has decided to knock a lot of them down (like St. Thomas) and put in mixed income housing. Sounds good in theory except that of something like 5100 units, only about a fifth of that will be replaced, and the “replacement housing” won’t be ready til April 2008.
You’re right. There are some people who, for whatever reason, cannot get it together and need housing help (unless they just start colonies under Houston’s overpasses), and indeed depression may very well have something to do with it for some (apparently there have been several suicides and suicide attempts by former housing project residents.)
While living in Iberville might not seem tenable to some of us, for others it’s all they had and if they can’t manage to get jobs or homes, then we must do something as we can’t just leave them in the street. HANO’s project end date seems so disingenuous to me. What do THEY think will happen to all those families. Are they talking to FEMA? Are they talking to the powers that be in Houston or Atlanta?
Nah. A coordinated effort is too much to hope for.
Where perception problems come in is that so many people left New Orleans…as in, they are not living there now having to deal with issues in that city…but they still need so much assistance. In theory, what the public wants FEMA money to go towards is helping people in the area of the disaster. It is very understandable that when a city is badly damaged that the area economy will need lots of help getting up and running on its own again at a local level. But if you are not living in that economy, then you don’t have the problems of that area to use at some point as the reason for needing more assistance.
If you can’t find a job in New Orleans or coastal surrounding areas for miles and miles, that is understandable by everyone because so much of that world has not even begun to be rebuilt. People get that, and understand these areas still need help. But if you moved to Iowa and can’t find a job, then you are more apart of a separate issue of unemployment sooner than if you were still in a more directly altered landscape. If some random person moves from Houston to Des Moines and is unemployed for months after moving there, they qualify for a different form of assistance than if you moved there from New Orleans…that is what the perception by the public is becoming. At what point is the Hurricane no longer a factor and it becomes a matter to be handled by other government programs already in place.
In reality, for these people it is ALWAYS likely to be a factor. It might have been a different matter had Katrina nailed Houston, or Miami, or Mobile, or some other area with a relatively vibrant economy. However, it hit New Orleans, which is in some ways unique among American cities. The city simply cannot support many of the people anymore (at least not at the present time), and too many of those folks were dependent on the government (who had, after all, been supporting them for years in New Orleans.) These folks have effectively been out of the job market for an extended period of time, and to expect them to be able to simply ‘find a job’ is completely ludicrous.
So, who is to blame? I don’t know, and further more I don’t care. The simple fact is that what happened as a result of Katrina hitting New Orleans is different, fundamentally, than what ‘normally’ happens when a storm such as this makes landfall. And therefore, so must our response be different. This is one case in which Federal involvement makes perfect sense, even to a fiscal conservative such as myself. To force New Orleans to pay for these folks, when they are hard-pressed to find the funds to rebuild their city, doesn’t make sense — and to force the host cities to shoulder the burden by themselves makes even less.
~EdT.
Houston should never have opened their doors to all these people. How can we get them back to New Orleans as fast as possible? The majority of people still using FEMA are long term welfare people who did not bother to work when they did live in New Orleans. I loved my neighborhood until FEMA started paying Katrina survivors to live here. Since then, the place has gone downhill. My house value is sinking fast. I want these welfare suckers out of here. My house is on the market, but no one wants to buy after they come through and see what these dead beats are doing to the neighborhood. I will breathe a huge sigh of relief when FEMA finally pulls the plug on these people. The problem is, according to my relatives in NO..they don’t want them back either. They consider Katrina the most effective street cleaning they ever experienced.