New Orleans: Where Did the Money Go?

That's a question that's often asked by commenters here critical of my repeated suggestions that the Federal government, under both Bush and Obama, has failed in its responsibility to remediate the damage caused by the failure of its so-called hurricane protection system in 2005. So, this report in Monday's Times-Picayune helps to clear some of the fog. The State of Louisiana has just replaced the previous private contractor, ICF, in charge of the program to renovate or rebuild affordable rental housing in the city:

The rental program was designed to restore up to 18,000 of the state's 81,000 rental units destroyed in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It has fallen well short of that goal.

In two years, $50 million of the $869 million has been distributed as forgivable loans to landlords who have restored a total of 1,073 units.

Under the terms of the program, about three-quarters of those units are for low-income families, at prescribed affordable rents.

While landlords have received about $50 million to fix the units, ICF has collected more than $40 million to run the program.

So the contractor collected almost as much money for administration as it disbursed for actual repair of housing units. But the program's goal, "fallen well short of", was to restore less then a quarter of the housing units lost in the flooding. Blame, should one care to assign it, can fall almost equally on the state, on the private contractor, and on the Feds, for not realizing that the affordable housing crisis in New Orleans called for perhaps a more ambitious goal.

And, while the Jindal administration bounces the former prime contractor of the torpid program, the White House and Congress, both under Democratic control, do exactly what?

Comments

[maxfax]

Harry, CNN's Anderson Cooper is set to report from New Orleans this week, will you be participating?

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

Nope. He was there last night, his only night reporting from New Orleans. Was there a mention that NO gets no stimulus money for levee repair? NO.
Keepin em honest.

[maxfax]

I must have misunderstood, I thought New Orleans was last on his list of cities to visit, either tomorrow or Friday. I'm researching now if he was already here.

[maxfax]

I obviously missed it.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/17/morning-buzz-anderson-in-nola/

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/17/is-the-economy-hurting-volunteerism/

[NoelGreco]

When are big-government proponents going to see that government basically doesn't do anything well - other than passing out checks.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

Air traffic control? Building an interstate highway system? Landing a man on the moon?

[twogunmojo]

the space program has been around long enough to figure the odds on dieing in space..about 1 in 50 since its inception..not a great record...interstate highways...in my state the epa has held up every major contstruction over the last ten years...as failures go the big dig and the altanta loop come to mind...air traffic control is a joke..as someone familiar with the airline industry you would never fly again if you knew how many close calls happened every day...how is the mail system doing these days...how are they doing at enforcing those immigration laws and keeping the border secure...whats that drug interdiction rate nowadays....

[idest]

Are you trying to say America's military is a failure? Very suspect....comrade!

[twogunmojo]

in terms of health care and benefits yes it is....no one willing to join our armed forces should have to depend on food stamps of food banks to care for their family while they are away...and injured or not....anyone who serves should never want for anything as far as medical care goes...why does congress receive better medical care than our soldiers...

[M1nkyb0y]

New Orleans since Katrina has been a national disgrace that has been gone from the national consciousness since the news corporations no longer deem it relevant. The Obama administration needs to move in and rectify this.Too bad they have so much on their plate.
This is a very sad situation that needs to be thrown in the faces of this nation frequently in order to get any worthwhile action going at all. ICF needs as much exposure as AIG to get what they deserve. Why has there been no insurrection down there? The people are just used to this sort of treatment is my guess.
This crap has really gone on too long. Doesn't Jindal realize how his star would rise if he fixed NO?

[Athirson]

Fixing NO is harder than it sounds. The culture of the place is, essentially, Let The Good Times Roll. Getting anything done there requires a monumental effort. Service in both the private and public sectors is notoriously slow and incompetent. They don't call it The City That Care Forgot for nothing.

[NOLA59]

emmacop,
Should the same be done with those that live in the tornado alley, or those that live on the San Andrea's fault? What about the people who lost their homes to wildfires? Should they not rebuild there too? Had the Corps of Engineers done what they were suppose to in the first place, this may have never happened. REMEMBER THIS: It was the failure of the levees in New Orleans that caused the flooding. Katrina was NOT a direct hit on the city of New Orleans. I am staying! Laissez les bon temps rouler!!

[countfloyd]

New Orleans and the surrounding areas is an example of government trying to take on too many things at one time with no real priority. After Katrina the gulf region should have been the number two priority after the war but instead it just got lumped in with a lot of other projects many of which are/were pork coming from both sides of the aisle. I'm afraid Obama is falling into the same pattern as the administration takes on the wars, the economy (please take over the banks and AIG so we can get moving), health care, social security, and slew of infrastructure projects that are most likely underfunded. The most likely result will be that we will see improvement in several areas but nothing will be completely fixed.

[emmacop]

A check of all politician's freezers in Lousiana might not bad place to start looking for the "lost money".

Way too much money has already been spent on a corrupt city that lives underwater. Should we be spending bailout money on the lost city of Atlantis too at this point?

The intelligent thing would have been to move people to an above ground area and give them all a nice $250,000 house. I bet it would have been cheaper!

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

And if they liked the homes that they and their families had lived in for generations, what then? The essential difference between New Orleans and most other American cities is that New Orleans people are deeply connected to their place, and it's not easily replaceable by someplace else up the bend.

[maxfax]

"The intelligent thing would have been to move people to an above ground area "

Dahlin emmacop, New Orleans is above ground, even our cemeteries are above ground.

[douc66]

It seems that the Dutch have been trying to offer New Orleans on numerous occasions on how to do this:

http://www.soros.org/resources/multimedia/katrina/projects/CantDoNation/story_DutchCanTeach.php

And after all of this time, it seems that no one has taken their advice. I had also seen somewhere that the Dutch have designed a system similar to theirs for New Orleans and they said it would run about $3 billion dollars to build (I could be wrong on this). Needless to say, the Corps of Engineers said 'thanks, but no thanks'. What hubris!

[RepugsOut08]

Please see Harry's recent "I'll Concider It Criminal!" post concerning the 3 billion vs 800 million dollar project the Army Corps of Engineers are weighing in on.
It sounds like they're toying with building an inferior system akin to the pre-Katrina one, just to save $. Hence the "criminal" in the title.
I'm writing president Obama today to let him know that folks from other parts of this country care about NO, and consider it as much a part of our cultural heritage as Mt Rushmore, or the Redwoods, or any other unique symbol of this nation.
Since NO is considered to be the birthplace of jazz, and jazz is our country's only truly American offering to world culture, it holds a particularly important place in our history.
Who wants to be the president who allowed a place as culturally and historically important as NO, to go the way of Atlantis? Let's hope it won't be Barack Hussain Obama.

[maxfax]

Douc66 please write the President about the outrageous inaction of the Corps.

[Eclectic Radical]

Once again, I have to strongly agree with Mr. Shearer's writing. He's still writing and talking about things that matter, and that the media and our politicians are allowing to become lost in the hype and drama of The Hurricane and The Refugees.

Once again, conservatives are making snide cracks about state and local issues.

The system of locks on the Mississippi River and Lake Ponchartrain, designed to protect the city from storm-related flooding, was built by the Army Corps of Engineers to secure the Port of New Orleans. The system is still, to the best of my knowledge, Army property and the Army is responsible for its maintenance. The Army is part of the federal government, to the best of my knowledge. That makes it a federal government issue.

I also saw a snide crack about people moving someplace else. Those willing to do so have. However, there are those who do not wish to move away from their home. How many conservatives generally support the idea of leaving their home behind because the government tells them to do so?

[Bienville]

This comment should be a "HuffPost Pick." It's well-written and dead on-target.

[Eclectic Radical]

Thank you very kindly.

[harveyr2]

The Katrina problem is one of local and state politics. The federal government should never have gotten involved. Same holds true for the "big one" that will happen in San Fransisco/LA and other natural disasters that could be avoided if folks lived outside of areas that will be victims of mother nature.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

State and local politics had literally nothing to do with the construction and design flaws in so-called "hurricane protection system" that failed catastrophically after the hurricane passed by. That system, by law, was the sole responsibility of your Federal government. And, aside from the bubble in which you apparently reside, please inform the rest of us where on planet earth exists a place that is immune to the whims of nature.

[piquet]

Harry I have never disagreed with your very real angst over the handling of this disaster. And have supported every argument.
But here is my dilemma...The absolute schizophrenic nature of the people of that state and especially the city of New Orleans. I have never seen a place that is both dogmatically christian in one breath and secretly devious in another without the natural self-loathing that accompanies such hypocrisy. Personally it's what draws me to the sinister vibe because of the dripping symbolism that becomes so revered.

I see New Orleans like Africa. You(NOLA) know what you need to do to "clean your house" but you(ed.) seem to always find yourselves electing and living under leadership that is less than embarrassing...see Jindal, Nagey(sp?). Not to mention it has always been a welfare state with horrible education which speaks to the lack of forward momentum.

Unfortunately people are stressed out in their own world right now. Which is why the fatigue of places like Africa and yes your beloved NOLA brings me to quote myself and I hate to be harsh...but, ' I'm tired of trying to save stupid'. If that state doesn't have the pride in itself to organize and at least clean up the mess from a storm that happened years ago. Then please, please stop asking your neighbors that have their own problems to do it for you.

[ThoughtCrimeWave]

Did everyone forget that KARL ROVE was put in charge of the reconstruction effort?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/15/BL2005091501098.html?nav=hcmodule

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/karl-roves-big-easy_b_7419.html

[RepugsOut08]

You know, I did forget Rove was put in charge of the post Katrina cleanup. It must have seemed like a bad dream at the time.
Now he has two major disasters left in ruins under his stewardship. New Orleans and the Bush presidency.

[paixa3]

Harry, look at it this way. 90 MILLION dollars to repair less than 2000 homes, about 1/20 th of the goal of the program. Someone needs to go to prison.

[kozy]

NO! It doesn't work that way anymore. The more corruption, screw ups, and incompetence, the bigger the bonuses and bailouts. The Federal government should now give ICF a big bailout and lots of money to give their executives bonuses. While they are small potatoes compared to AIG, they have probably screwd up more on a relative scale, so they deserve more.

[bismarck27]

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had a chance to emerge as a model city in terms of recovery and resilience. Due to continued inundated corruption, the local government has destroyed the possibility
of a city with civil citizens

[poliguy70130]

As a New Orleans resident, I think our problem is three fold: 1) we have a Mayor and City Council who can't even agree on what day it is, let alone devise a comprehensive recovery plan, 2) We have, as recently pointed out by Cokie Roberts, a local media more invested in egging on political tension as opposed to reporting on the facts, and 3) we have a governor who is more interested in using his position as a platform to higher office instead of fixing problems at home.

[justsaynosarahp]

Amen. Although I do think the majority of the city council try to represent the public good -- they just can't get past an obstructionist mayor with a Napoleonic complex

[justsaynosarahp]

A m e n, although the city council comes off as a bit more caring than a Napoleonic - complex ma yor

[spinns17]

we need a special investigaion into all the years while clinton and bush were in office.realy we can go back ,all the way to johnson.

[Ergon]

Let's not blame poor people if FEMA relocated them to other states and deposited them into concentration camps, er shelters, and most of the disaster money went to insiders who want to build casinos instead of housing.

[JimRinX]

What do I, a person who reads everything from Science to the RealClimate Blog, think of all of this, you may (or may not) ask?
I think that, no matter how much Brad Pitt or a thousand Jazz Musicians may hate me for saying this, New Orleans is a Lost Cause. It's going under. Period.
We've waited, while playing our proverbial fiddles, far too long to do anything about the Problem of Global Warming caused Sea Level Increases, which were first postulated to be a Problem in the first place in the early 1970's (Dr. Hansen is MY HERO); mostly because we are an Ignorant, Avaristic, Greedy People who are under the thrall of equally Ignorant (actually, Blinded - by the next quarters Projected Profits), Avaristic, and Greedy Corporations, because of the seductive prostletyzing of their wholly owned MSM Mouthpiece­s/Blowhard­s (I'm thinking of you, Rush).
The fact is: Sea Levels will probably rise SEVERAL METERS - not fractions on a Meter - by 2100; based on the most realistic Climate Models, which take into account the West Antarctic Ice Sheets Collapse - unlike the IPCC.
The fact is: this is going to cost us QUADRILLIONS of Dollars - not Trillions; and that doesn't take into account the cultural losses represented by our drowned monuments and museums.
Therefore; all this money should be spent relocating Bourbon Streets Treasures to Higher Ground.
We need a New New Orleans.

[tcagle]

Sadly, I agree with you. I'll miss it, but the old New Orleans will drown.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

Let';s make this clear: New Orleanians provide Bourbon Street for tourists' enjoyment. You want to move it--pay up. As for the rest of the city, it's rooted and defined by three hundred years of tradition where it is. And a comprehensive coastal restoration program, combined with the rebuilding of barrier islands and the building of a robust inner levee system, are the best way of saving that city and showing other American coastal cities how to save themselves.

[RepugsOut08]

Thank you, Harry! Perfectly and succinctly stated.
If we can spend billions rebuilding financial institutions, in spite of finding corruption along the way, we can, and must , preserve our culture. And preserve it just as you said, "where it is."
I'm frankly amazed at how easily some people throw up thier hands and give up. Everything you mentioned is completely doable, and, as you pointed out, critical for showing future areas in peril how it's done.
As I listen to some of the critics and doomsayers on this issue, I wonder how'd we ever settle the west? How'd we win WWll? These folks could get me wondering if we really did land on the Moon. (Just kidding Buzz, don't come after me!)
Although I don't live in New Orleans, I want to know it's THERE! That it will be there for our children's children's children.
That our heirs won't have to just be told stories about the birthplace of our only true American offering to culture. That they will be able to go there and experience for themselves the heartbeat of this nation.
We can start by demanding the feds to live up to their responsibilties and rebuild those flood control systems, not in a half-a$$ed way but correctly.
I'm writing president Obama tomorrow, and letting him know that our culture has to be at least as important as some banking institution.

[torrrep]

The last time I checked when I was taking physics, if you put an ice cube in a cup and then fill it up with water and then wait for the ice to melt, guess what happens? Nothing. The cup does NOT overflow from the melting ice. This idea that melting ice caps are going to cause the oceans to rise several meters is absolutely ridiculous. The percentage of ice that happens to be on dry land is not a significant portion to cause any relative change in sea levels. But hey, I guess global warming nuts don't need to know anything about physics.

[warren57]

The pressence of the ice cube in the cup has already displaced an area for the melting water to fill nothing extra is being added.

[ThoughtCrimeWave]

You are assuming that the ice is already displacing water. The icecaps on Greenland and Antarctica are mostly on top of land masses. But hey, skeptics don't need to know anything about geography.

[forurby]

Ah Physics, So, torrep put water in the glass and now put the ice cube in it. It's called overflow. But wait now the ice will melt and guess what you get (OVERFLOW AGAIN)
Ah, Physics

[GrahamInCanada]

Jim makes a valid point, in a way.

Let's assume that global warming is real, and that, New Orleans, while facing several unique problems at the moment regarding ocean level, is about to be joined by much of America's wealth and infrastructure as having problems with encroaching water.

If that is true, it could also be true that what the US does in New Orleans may set a precedent, to be followed by cities on all US coasts.

So, should the precedent be to abandon the wealth and infrastructure, as Jim suggests, move in and up, or to protect it, like the UK with London, or Holland...

But the story here is the incredible molasses like quality of government contracts in New Orleans, from the description of ICF here, is just shocking. Perhaps what this situation needs, if the United States federal government really cannot organize itself to figure out NO, maybe you should just spend that money hiring a more organized country, to do it for you.