Project Katrina

Under a court order, the Bush administration will restart a housing program for Hurricane Katrina victims early this week and begin explaining to thousands of evacuees why their aid was cut off this summer.

More than sixteen months after Katrina hit, New Orleans’ Ninth Ward "remains all but vacant," Only 3 percent of the ward’s homeowners have applied for electrical permits—"enough to power only 152 houses." The Times-Picayune reports, Before Katrina the Ninth Ward had 5,601 homes. Now, "demolition permits have been obtained on about a quarter of them, the highest percentage citywide."

The Bush administration’s handling of a Hurricane Katrina housing program was "a legal disaster," according to a ruling by a federal judge. US District Judge Richard J. Leon "ordered officials to explain a computer system that can neither precisely count evacuees nor provide reasons why they had been denied aid." Leon went on to rule that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had mishandled the transition from a short-term housing program to a longer-term program this spring and summer. Instead of explaining why funding was being cut-off, FEMA provided only computer-generated and sometimes conflicting program codes.

In a USA Today interview, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin accused the federal government of abandoning its legal obligation to help his city recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Nagin went on to say, “I’m planning and building for a city that’s as large, if not larger, than pre-Katrina levels,” he said. “There is (federal) money out in cyberspace, there is money in the mail […] but very little of that money has made it to our local governments and our citizens.”