Project Katrina

The House on Tuesday approved a two-year extension [through 2010] of a program offering tax credits for construction of low-income housing in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Hurricane Katrina drained nearly 300,000 people from coastal areas between Texas and the Florida Panhandle, according to new government population estimates that tally for the first time the storm’s devastating toll on the Gulf Coast.

"Katrina also doubled the rate of population growth in nearby counties, which absorbed tens of thousands of people the hurricane displaced, the Census Bureau’s estimates show [...] Together, 22 coastal counties in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida that were declared disaster areas by the federal government because of Katrina lost 10 percent of their pre-storm population, enough people to populate a city the size of Newark, N.J"

An effort to total and take down more than 9,000 rotting houses still standing after Hurricane Katrina has slowed almost to a total stop this year, prolonging the city’s attempts to rebuild. USA Today reports:

The homes—some almost untouched since Katrina struck a year and a half ago—are a lingering icon of the storm’s devastation and one of the biggest obstacles to New Orleans’ rebirth. More than half of the houses ruined during Katrina haven’t been razed, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that the debris from them would fill several times the volume of the Empire State Building.

New Orleans issued 330 permits to demolish houses in February, down from 458 in September, a USA TODAY analysis of permit records shows. The corps knocked down 118 last month, compared with 612 in December, according to an agency report.

This is just sad on some many levels. You don’t need to be an engineer to gather if you don’t take bulldoze these homes nothing can be built in their place.

The House today is debating the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) introduced an amendment that would require victims of Hurricane Katrina to perform 20 hours/week of approved "work activities" to receive financial aid for housing.

In an impassioned speech, Rep. David Scott (D-GA) addressed Hensarling on the House floor:

This amendment is cruel, it is cold, it is calculating, and it is pandering to the schizophrenic dichotomy that has plagued this nation since they first brought Africans on these shores from Africa. And that is the issue of race and poverty. Let me tell you something, gentleman. Where were you, where was your amendment when the Twin Towers were hit and the people in New york suffered that catastrophe? There was no cry before we gave them help. "They got to go get a job." Everybody was there and poured in help, as they should, the American way. Where was your amendment down in Florida when the hurricanes hit down there? Nobody said, "Make ‘em work before we help them."

Later in the evening, the House defeated the amendment 266-162.

Still realing from Hurricane Katrina and a previous stint in Iraq, the Mississippi Guard is among a number of ill-equipped reserves. But ready or not, some of the state’s guardsmen have been told to get their personal affairs in order and be ready for another trip to Iraq. [...] “Every state, none of us has the equipment that we need, but we’re not crippled and some other states are,” said Lt. Col. Tim Powell, a spokesman for the Mississippi Guard.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) quickly bought 145,000 trailers and mobile homes just before and after Katrina hit, spending $2.7 billion largely through no-bid contracts. Now, it is selling off as many as 41,000 of the homes, netting, so far, about 40 cents on each dollar spent by taxpayers. Our government at work ladies and gentlemen.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailer park was "abruptly closed down" this weekend because of "ongoing problems with raw sewage that pours onto the grass" and consistent power outages. FEMA moved many of the families to other nearby mobile home parks. Some of the displaced residents "questioned the genuineness of the sudden concern for their health because the stink of sewage has been a nuisance for about a year." "They know how to put me out," Katrina victim Allsee Tobias said, "but they don’t know how to help me out."

The Houston Chronicle’s Julie Mason provides some insight into how the White House advance team prepared for Bush’s visit to the Gulf Coast today:

One thing Bush likes to do in the Gulf Coast is hand out American flags to families rebuilding their houses. Long before he shows up, Bush’s advance team scouts the non-hostile property owners in a neighborhood, and later, the president drops by and gives the family a flag. The White House thinks this makes for good pictures—and maybe it did, a month after the storm. But a year and half later, with the region still a mess and so many people displaced, it seems a little tone-deaf to be handing out flags—politically, it does invite comparisons to what Bush isn’t doing in the region.

Wow, that is so nice of Bush. Maybe the families if they get enough of them they can stitch them together to build a tarp or a tent they can live in.