Slow-Walking Disaster Response Four Years Later

New Orleans has an affordable-rental-housing crisis, in the wake of the failure of the federal levees in 2005. Best estimates are that some 80,000 rental units were whacked by the floodwaters. A multi-billion-dollar federal program, creaking slowly into high gear, gave so-called Road Home money to homeowners to rebuild flooded properties (some of the folks being evicted by FEMA from their trailers are elderly people living in trailers on their lawns as they painstakingly restore their homes).

But rental housing -- where working folks in New Orleans lived? A few hundred million were sent to the state for a program which is even now just getting past the starting line. Now, Monday's Times-Picayune reports another example of the frustrating, Kafka-esque series of absurdities that confront working people trying to come home. HUD, which runs the local housing agency, has been paying money to maintain empty units, while ignoring the people on its waiting lists, and refusing even to update those lists. The reason, supposedly: the agency sees its mission as housing its pre-Katrina residents. That's ironic when you recall that HUD last year spearheaded the destruction of most of the "Big Four" public housing projects, taking thousands of largely habitable units offline, units that had stood empty since the flood.

In the larger picture, the 800 vacant units are a drop in the bucket. But, as a reflection of HUD's approach (and the federal government's approach generally) to a housing crisis created by the failure of the Corps of Engineers to engineer and build a dependable "hurricane protection system", it's typical.

Comments

[LHFAPubInfo]

New Orleans rental housing crisis may get even deeper. The Gulf Coast states decimated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita were awarded Federal GO Zone Tax Credits to help finance the rebuilding of much needed affordable housing. Unfortunately, the U.S. Treasury Department is refusing to make these credits eligible for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Tax Credit Exchange Program. This puts thousands of housing units and millions of dollars of investments in great jeopardy.

Despite the petitioning of more than two dozen U.S. congressmen, dozens of local, state and national housing and/or governmental groups, and an opinion offered by the American Bar Association, Treasury has yet to amend its program.

Not only will this prevent planned construction and rebuilding from being completed, it will actually halt current construction as well, leaving unfinished, uninhabitable eyesores all over the Gulf Coast.

Check out www.gozoneexchange.blogspot.com to see what the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency is doing to address this issue.

[Marnie1]

It's small comfort but the same problems existed in Wichita Falls, Texas after the 1979 tornado destroyed 20% of the city. That included large portions of two for the largest home owned housing areas and the two largest newest apartment complexes. Totaling about 20% of the housing available.

Most of the money that followed the distruction was insurance money.

FEMA trailers had all the same problems that you continue to mention. Especially, those who put the trailers on their own lots as their homes were repaired and rebuild. All moving and hook up expenses were the property owners responsibility. Including putting in a sewer line, telephone pole, moving the trailer itself etc.

When I moved out of Wichita Falls in 1984 there were still many blank concret slab froundations remaing in the two residential neighborhoods.

What ever the effecient ways of handling these problems is, this Country has not even come close to finding them, and that is a sign truely bad governance at all levels.

[neoprimordial]

Katrina, the nightmare that keeps on horrifying. Thank you, Mr. Shearer, for shining another light on the neverending troubles of New Orleans.

[professor]

You explain and explain, and, EVERY TIME, another "anyone who builds below sea-level" bonehead pops up. Why not , instead of citing this little argument one time and that little argument the next, write up a full explanation, a comprehensive list of arguments, containing EVERY SINGLE ONE of the well-founded, fact-based pro-NO arguments propounded at one time or another on this site--uniform, utterly complete, consistent, and unified--and then just copy and paste it when the next bonehead pops up? Yes, copy and paste is not "creative." But creative don't teach. People only learn through relentless repetition. "Here, smart guy, refute ALL 35 of these irrefutable arguments, each one supported with authoritative scientific, historical, and political-­philosophi­cal documentation. Or desist."

[ZIPCODE]

Wow!
President Obama must not know about this otherwise he would do something about it, right?
President Obama must not know about this!
He can't be like that GWB guy, can he?
That's not possible!
No! Not possible!
Not possible!
No!

[Jeffrey Buchanan - Huffpost Blogger]

Amidst Congressional and Administration inaction on Gulf Coast recovery on the first day of the 2009 Hurricane Season and the threat of 4,000 families facing evictions from FEMA trailers, becoming the latest of the region's homeless, survivors of Hurricane Katrina and their national allies held a press conference in front of FEMA headquarters in DC in front of a traveling FEMA Trailer emblazoned with messages for Washington, including urging Congressional leadership and the Obama administration to address the domestic human rights crisis remaining in the Gulf Coast by passing HR 2269, the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act, to rebuild community infrastructure and restore natural flood protection and overhauling the Stafford Act. If only Washington would listen to Harry and others and remember the needs of those families still looking for a hand-up four years later. See press on the FEMA Trailer press conference and Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=06&year=2009&base_name=femas_gulf_coast_eviction_noti
http://www.nola.com/news/?/base/news-1/1243833645183980.xml&coll=1
http://www.kansascity.com/444/story/1227999.html
or take action at http://gccwc.wordpress.com

[poliguy70130]

Mr. Shearer,

Your article is totally on point as to the current situation. I would simply like to add that the local government could also make it easier for residents to access the first time homebuyer and soft-second mortgage funds which have already been allocated. This would allow lower income residents to begin buying property and restoring it in areas of the city that have been slow to recover. The problem is that the amount of red tape faced by those applying for these funds is monumental.

[TJCole]

Harry America has a housing crisis, and Obama doesn't care....get it if he did he'd have done something about it already...6-7,000 foreclosures per week evictions and maybe as many as 10 million in the next four years...

It's his Katrina by a magnitude of 1,000

[We-Are-The-Ones]

Obama does care. He has done something about it. Take a gander at Helping Families Save Their Homes Act and the American Recovery Act . . . both signed within the last 4 months.

[vendetta]

LOL. Do the levees know they're federal levees, or do they still just think they're levees?

[ZIPCODE]

Harry keeps calling them that!
And
Army Corps of Engineers Levees!
If that helps!
But, I don't think it helps!
Well, hasn't so far, anyway!

[Bienville]

rotflmao. maybe they think they're french!

[luziannagirl]

Just as most Americans had no idea of the vast number of pedestrians and pervasive pedestrian lifestyles in New Orleans, most Americans had no idea of the extensive rental culture of New Orleans. Many residents' families had rented the same house, part of a house, or apartment, for generations, sometimes from a landlord whose family had owned the property for generations.

Up until the 1990's, my middle- and upper- middle- class family included some longtime New Orleans renters. It's really a blessing they were deceased before Katrina, because the aftermath would have broken their hearts.

[Yat1954]

First of all, to all the people sick of hearing about N.O., below sea level, etc., etc.: please just go stick it.

Beginning in 1815, New Orleans has been saving this country's bacon, and you can take that right up to World War II, when the Higgins Boat so radically changed amphibious warfare.

Harry, I think the real reason it's been so difficult for the working poor to return to New Orleans is the simplest one. They were never meant to return. It was a ruthless and efficient episode of ethnic cleansing, although almost no one dares call it by its real name.

[csavage]

Yes, they are safely enscounced in Houston and Atlanta. Bussed back to NOLA to help re-elect Nagin and then bussed back. The people employed to help rebuilt NOLA, on the other hand, were housed on the benches of Audubon Park, when they weren't working, that is. Who needs low cost housing?
I really feel sorry for the displaced Louisianians at this point. Some still have the LA license plates. Most have resigned themselves to LSU bumper stickers and a car from Kenner or Metairie and a TX plate on it. In many cases, the move was the best thing that happened to them. Their kids got placed in good schools with good instructions and a lot of them had a chance to get affordable housing and fairly good paying jobs. There are 60K-120K of former Louisianians living in Houston at this point

[Stuart]

Wow, 1500 comments for Michael Moore on GM, and six for Harry Shearer on New Orleans.

I imagine those numbers would have been reversed four years ago, had an article on the coming demise of GM been posted in the midst of "heckuva job" and Spike Jones' documentary.

I'll post this in the hope that I can do my part to incrementally tweak this article's ranking. For while GM is an industrial tragedy on a huge scale, the communities that got soaked by Corp--and yes, New Orleans suffered not a natural disaster but a dousing by incompetence--those communities are arguably in worse shape.

For starters, there are no Honda or Toyota brand apartments just down the street.

[ZIPCODE]

Yeah! Even Loser Steven Weber got 19 comments!

[hoosier96]

No matter who is in charge, you cannot count on the government to be efficient or decisive. That's just the way it is.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

Tell that to the guys who stepped on the moon.

[FortressOrange]

Mastery of physics + technology =/= efficiency and decisiveness

[DLSteinhardt]

Thank you.

[denlong]

Harry; didn't you know: Govt is always bad, unless it is bailing out bankers!

[Ponderus]

Yes, how badly they screwed up Word War II and Social Security, for example.

How ever do you find hats to fit on top of that tiny little point?

[KIVPossum]

I'm fed up with hearing about N.O. and Katrina.

First, if you build a city below sea level in a hurricaine zone, you must assume something will happen, someday, and take some responsibility for your property.
Second, if the place hasn't rebuilt in 4 years, it's the residents' fault. You can take a pile of mud and logs and turn it into a brick and frame house in 4 years!!!

[Stuart]

Hey cap,

If I was a vindictive person, I could say that you'll be on your own, buddy, if your home was destroyed by incompetence and you were left to your own devices to fix it.

Wherever it is that you currently live, your continued comfort and prosperity depends on some kind of civil works, be it fuel or power distribution, snow and ice management in the north, water supply in the desert. The list goes on.

But I'm not a vindictive person. Instead I'll remind you that regardless of our political stances, we both pay taxes that some point are entrusted to public officials to keep the lights and heat on, keep the drinking water flowing in and the flood water out. If your home was ruined by incompetent engineering from the Federal government, I would hope--nay, expect--that some of my tax dollars would end up in your pocket.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

More than 50% of populated New Orleans is at or above sea level. Almost all river ports are built at or below sea level. As for "the residents' fault", how would you like to be paying the mortgage on a home that's been rendered unliveable by massive flooding, while trying to pay for its rebuilding, while your taxes, insurance, and utilities have all risen dramatically?

[ZIPCODE]

", while your taxes, insurance, and utilities have all risen dramatically?"

Change you can count on!

[LMPE]

Given all that has befallen NOLA, and the government's non-response, I hate to have to say this: they should have never built a city there.

[Bienville]

Never should have built a port at the mouth of the largest navigable river system in the world? Without that port, Jefferson might never have bought Louisiana, and might never have doubled the size of the country, and might never have expanded across the continent, because Jefferson originally sent his envoys to Napoleon to buy only that port, not the entire Louisiana Territory.

[ZIPCODE]

And all those Indians and Mexicans wouldn't have been slaughtered by the evil, slave owning Jefferson!

[philistine]

New Orleans was founded in 1718 by the French, at the first place a land route met the Mississippi River. Since then, it has survived hurricanes, floods, disease and war. Sadly, the Army Corps of Engineers botched the design, construction and maintenance of the levee system surrounding New Orleans, and, further assisted by Bush's cutting money for levee maintenance so he could give rich people a tax cut, a category two storm well below the design strength of the levee system breached the levees in multiple locations, aided by increased velocity due to YET ANOTHER botched Corps of Engineers project, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, now belatedly in the process of being closed off. Additional pressure from Katrina came from loss of wetlands surrounding the city - loss due to salt-water intrusion through canals dug by oil companies under the supervision of - the Corps of Engineers.

New Orleans is exactly where it has to be. Let's fix New Orleans, rather than write off nearly three hundred years of history, and restore the wetlands rather than forcibly migrate five hundred thousand people.

[Stuart]

Who were "they"?

I'll venture it's the same folks who brought us Houston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago. All served and continue to serve essential role as a gateway to international ship traffic. And in each case, there is an argument against living there. In each case, the citizens depend on public works to protect them from the occasional natural event.

Take Chicago. Here's a city that should be grateful that the Corps of Engineers isn't responsible for its winter fuel supply or snowplows.

If the Corps had done its job, the idea of closing down New Orleans would be as absurd as shuttering the Windy City because it gets cold there.

"We" need to make sure "they" live up to their promises and not spend time second-guessing those who put our historic cities in eminently logical locations, New Orleans included.

[antispin]

I'd like to add to the list of should never haves:
1. Never shudda made war with the native peoples of America.
2. Never shudda enslaved africans to pick cotton.
3. Never shudda deforested the continents.
4. Never shudda nuked Japan.
5. Never shudda established the CIA.
6. Never shudda become a global empire.
7. Never shudda poisoned the waters and ruined the rivers.
8. Never shudda built MR.GO.
9. Never shudda elected Reagan Governor and then President.
10. Well, I have a long list of these - if you like you can pick up the glossy brochure by the door for a more complete list.

Let me just add that, if you've been compelled to do all these terrible things, then the least you could do is create New Orleans: the greatest city in the U.S.!

[Ponderus]

Fabulous! Faved and fanned.

[luziannagirl]

Bravo, antispin! You rock!