Finally Solutions for Returning Home: Rep. Waters and Katrina Housing

The video above is testimony by Stephen Bradberry, 2005 winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, as part of a U.S. House of Representatives Housing Subcommittee field hearing in New Orleans chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) at New Orleans' Dillard University on February 22nd.

Affordable housing in New Orleans is in a crisis. Federal efforts to date have failed to help move people out of temporary housing to permanent housing after Katrina. Without proper housing people cannot return to take on the many other challenges facing the city.

As the community group ACORN and their head organizer for Louisiana, Stephen Bradberry, layout in this written and video testimony, Katrina damaged 79% of the city's affordable housing stock. Affordable rental housing is nearly non-existent as rents have shot up 45% in the area and home prices have gone up 26%. Market based policies like federal tax cuts were supposed to spur building projects to develop housing where working class folks could afford to live but most of these projects have been put on hold indefinitely thanks to sky rocketing insurance premiums.

While homeowners struggle to put enough money together to rebuild their homes, billions in federal assistance for home repairs have been choked up by red tape by the state of Louisiana in their "Road Home Program" and the underperformance of an unqualified contractor that somehow won the job to dole out these federal funds.

Still in the middle of this housing crisis the Bush Administration's Department of Housing (HUD) is set to carryout the demolition of thousands of useable housing units, destroying the homes of over 5,000 public housing recipients, blocking and even criminalizing their hopes of returning to their homes.

But today is a good day for working class folks in New Orleans.

Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) who came down to New Orleans to do more than pose for a photo-op got the real story from actual people and did something about it.

Today the bill she drafted in response, H.R. 1227, "The Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007", passed on a bipartisan vote of 50-16 in the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. Soon it will go to the floor for a vote, giving Congress's Democratic majority an opportunity to show their commitment to helping Katrina's struggling survivors in the road to recovery.

This bill addresses the experiences of Stephen, the working class members of ACORN New Orleans (after a year and a half 7,500 of 9,000 of ACORN's member families still have not been able to return to the city) and other average citizens, still displaced or already returned, of New Orleans who have been met with un-inclusive policies that fail to acknowledge the problems they face in returning home and finding housing. Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) of the House Financial Services Committee has often called this phenomenon "ethnic cleansing by inaction."

As Stephen lays out in the video, the people calling the shots, folks like Bush Administration HUD SecretaryAlphonse Jackson and James Reiss, chairman of Mayor Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission, who has contributed large sums to both Mayor Nagin and President Bush, laid out their agenda early on to exclude certain folks from coming home, despite international human rights standards to the contrary which assure everyone has a right to return and assures against discrimination.

Working class residents are struggling for justice in the courts, in protests and lobbying to Congress just to try and return to their homes and neighborhoods and get a little help from their government.

Thankfully they found a compassionate advocate in Rep. Waters willing to take on those who want to keep working class people from returning.

"The residents of the Gulf Coast, who have been displaced for over a year, have spoken loud and clear and they intend to return home," Waters said in a recent statement. "While the President goes on another 'look-see' tour today in the Gulf Region, his Administration continues to disregard the residents of the Gulf Coast. This bill will provide immediate assistance to the displaced families of the Gulf by freeing up rebuilding funds for homeowners; providing tough oversight of state housing assistance plans; and requiring HUD to reopen public housing and provide voucher assistance for added affordable housing."

The bill boldly takes many of the major housing problems in the region head-on.

It frees up $1.2 billion in funds for Louisiana's Road Home Program, for which FEMA is currently withholding use and requires that the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the entity that administers the Road Home program, report on their progress every thirty days.

The bill puts limits on HUD so it cannot shrink the level of housing assistance available to residents impacted by Hurricane Katrina. By requiring HUD to offer replacement affordable housing units for every public housing unit in New Orleans that HUD wants to demolish the bill assures the Federal Government can not play a hand in shrinking the amount of available housing and denying Katrina's survivors their right to return home. The bill also requires that HUD open 3,000 public housing units in New Orleans.

It also funds 4,500 housing assistance vouchers so the elderly, disable and the homeless can find affordable places to live thanks to an amendment by Al Green (D-TX).

Now is the time for the Democratic Party and moderate Republicans to come together and pass a bi-partisan bill to help residents overcome the obstacles to the long-term recovery of New Orleans' affordable housing stock, to help folks move back to assisted housing or get the funds they need to rebuild their own homes. New Orleans' recovery is certainly not over but this is one important step on the way back home.