If You Like FEMA, You'll Love HUD

Not content to spearhead the bulldozing of thousands of habitable public-housing apartments in New Orleans while the erstwhile residents remain in exile, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to Thursday's Times-Picayune, is slow-walking renters on assistance in the wake of the 2005 flooding out of tens of thousands of affordable units. The Kafkaesque mobius strip of bureaucratic delays and excuses contrasts interestingly with the long-ago Jackson Square promise by the President to cut through red tape. And, like most folks spotlighted in such stories, the people reported on in this story are not sitting idle waiting for your money, they're out working, trying hard to rebuild their lives.

Not that either presidential candidate appears to notice.

Comments

[newshawk14]

You have to go back to Reagan's Secretary of HUD, Sam Pierce, who was handing out lucrative
consulting contracts to loyal republicans (James Watt for example), to see the rot that was setting in.

[RightWingMarine]

this problem needs more government intervention! We need to just throw bureaucrats at the problem until it goes away.

[AnOddGirl]

Oh come on Harry, let's not act like we are surprised that housing is way low priority for the nation!!

Low cost housing in NOLA is now a thing of the past, which really sucks as we are a tourist dependent town and thus require HUGE amounts of minimum wage workers. Thus requiring huge amounts of low cost housing.... yeah vicious circle, eh? Specially with all the army of "help wanted" signs in windows and that our minimum wage runs close to 10 bucks an hour.

Easy answer ? Anyone holding their breaths? Dead yet?

Do we follow Japan's model? Fast trains from the burbs into the city and hive hotels for workers?
Do we use the pre-existing huge ass buildings in NOLA (or poor Detroit for that matter) that linger in decay and turn them into apartments, condos, flats? (Actually let me answer that: no. It costs too much.)
Do we let the slum lords rent out unlivable habitats as they have done for the last 20 years? (Hard to say no to the FEMA rent check of 1200 bucks.)
Do we just suck up to the fact that like S.F., Hilo, or NYC, that if you can't afford to live in New Orleans, you don't?

Anyone got an answer?

Disclaimer: All posts are just MHO.

[Yat1954]

All those people aren't supposed to return, ever. They were deliberately scattered to the four winds, the government knowing all the while most of them would never be able to get back.

[RightWingMarine]

those tricky republicans they must have been planning this for centuries! To have the river drain into the gulf at just such a point and for the geography to be just so and then for us to cleverly make the Lousiana purchase and to populate the city with all the people we would later want to split up during the crucial year 2005. Then starting in the early 80's to be aware that the levees weren't up to snuff and to somehow convince even a Democratic president to still go along with it and finally in the coup de grace have a hurricane the Republicans somehow manufactured and direct it to NOLA and complete the insidious plan of scattering the citizens and putting them in FEMA trailers and hotels at taxpayer expense.

[Yat1954]

Under a Democratic administration, the long needed levee improvement and modernization program got underway, then was stripped of its funding by the Republican administration, despite the pleas of the entire Louisiana Congressional delegation. A Republican strategist wrote up a scenario that stated that Louisiana could be turned reliably Republican in the event of a natural disaster such as a hurricane-accompanied levee failure that flooded major portions of the New Orleans area. The poor black (and largely Democratic) population would be evacuated to areas for their safety, places so far away that they would begin new lives because they had nothing left. Funny little coincidence, ain't it?

[jerrypl]

Well, let us add another one, how about Joe the Plumber as Mr. Secret Agent Man. Was Joe the plumber a plant by the McCain campaign? Is he part a new White House Plumbers team? FEMA needs a good plumber, don't they? HUD can always use a plumber.

I can see it now, the new film, HUD or Hud Bannon aka. Paul Newman, will be remade with Joe the Plumber. Instead of a gun and holster, he carries a big old orange pipe wrench and tool belt from which it hangs. "I'm hear to clean up this town, maam." "Look out you clogged up drains, Hud is back in town."

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

[Rhetticent]

I am in awe of Mr. Shearer's talents, and I'm loathe to offer even a mild critique of his post.

All I can observe is that having battled bureaucracies and government agencies for clients for the past 20 years, I have become a dedicated libertarian, and I find it unsurprising that there are logjams in New Orleans. Presidents and elected officials are woefully unable to effect the massive, bloated government when it comes to effectuating meaningful activity: the very nature of bureaucracy prevents it. This is exactly the reason why nationalized health care is such a frightening prospect: all the efficiency of HUD, all the compassion of the IRS.

And look at what people like Brad Pitt have been able to do in New Orleans when not shackled by government....

[breakingpoint]

Let's hope it's all so overwhelming right now rather than a preview of more of what's not to come.
we'll soon see what this broom looks like in January.

There are more empty houses now than homeless - actually, there are more empty houses than american families in the US - what's wrong with this picture?

[fogbreath]

why should they?
the people in the rest of the nation think they have bad problems of their own.
don't expect things to get any better after noon 20 january 2009,
the president can use his "bully pulpit" all he wants.
unless congress and the bureaucracy go along that's all he can do.