Katrina Victims Face Eviction From Federal Housing
Dionysus
HEAD: Katrina Victims Face Eviction From Federal Housing
By Molly Henneberg
LEAD: A FEMA official told a House panel Friday that the government will
send Katrina survivors still living in temporary housing eviction notices
starting June 1 and try to connect them to agencies that can help them.
Nearly four years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita left a million Americans
homeless, the government is threatening to throw thousands of storm
survivors out of temporary federal housing.
A FEMA official told a House panel Friday that the government will send
Katrina survivors still living in temporary housing eviction notices
starting June 1 and try to connect them to agencies that can help them. But
he also said it would be "some period of time," meaning months, before the
evictions actually would begin.
The $5.6 billion housing assistance program that provided temporary trailers
and hotel rooms to victims was supposed to end in 2007. But the deadline was
extended by two years to May 1 of this year to help the more than 5,000
individuals and families still struggling to rebuild their lives. (At its
peak, 143,000 households along the Gulf Coast were located in temporary
housing units.)
But the Obama administration says they have to go by the end of the month or
face eviction.
Republicans and Democrats say they don't want to throw people out on the
street, especially if their real homes are just months from completion. But
they're also irked that some people just won't take the steps to move on.
"We're currently facing an ugly decision -- either extending the extended
program indefinitely, I guess, or discontinuing the program for 5,000
people," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said.
The main barrier is affordability. Following Katrina, rent more than doubled
along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Much of the affordable housing stock was
destroyed, and insurance rates increased.
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., who heads the House Transportation
and Infrastructure Subcommittee, which is conducting the hearing Friday,
said she's trying to figure out if there's a way to extend the deadline for
families who would be able to move into their repaired homes within several
months.
"The subcommittee does not want to be understood, however, to mean to say
that FEMA should provide housing assistance indefinitely," she said. "The
statue does not allow HUD to do that."
"It is also unacceptable, however, to turn people out of their disaster
housing with nowhere to go," she added. "Ultimately, it is also required ...
that residents accept available housing, even if it is not in locations they
desire."
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Boy, it's tough when you're from the chocolate city Big Easy, and your sugar
teat dries up....after four years of non-stop suckling at it.
"Rights began as protections against what the state could not do to a
citizen; now they have become what the government must do for an individual.
Ultimately, [however], people [only] have rights to life, to liberty, and to
property" --Rachel Patterson, Adam Smith Institute
"What does "economic justice" mean, except that you want something that
someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in
return?"--Thomas Sowell
Dionysus