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Friday, August 29, 2008

Katrina 3-year coverage: Helping lower-income residents recover is Mississippi’s “single-greatest failure”

The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger reports about 2,800 families remain in emergency housing this anniversary. According to the Clarion-Ledger:
...the state of recovery varies from city to city, person to person. Wages on the Coast have not kept up with the rising cost of housing and insurance, stalling the recovery in some quarters while others race ahead.
Rent along the Mississippi Coast has increased by more than 40%, and as Facing South previously reported, the lack of affordable housing remains one of the main barriers to recovery. 

The state has put their faith in the market to correct the problem. According to the Clarion-Ledger:
For the past three years, Gov. Haley Barbour has insisted the private sector should lead Coast redevelopment, with government enabling recovery, not steering it. His administration has resisted pressure to interfere with market-driven practices.

In defending the state's use of federal money on economic development projects before the House Financial Services Committee last May, Jack Norris, executive director of Barbour's recovery office, said housing and business are intertwined.
This is a policy that has yet to deliver for renters in Mississippi, according to Reilly Morse of the nonprofit public interest law firm, Mississippi Center for Justice. He told the Clarion-Ledger that the state's efforts to help poor and working-class residents have not been enough. In fact the new report card on the state of recovery issued by the STEPS Coalition, an alliance of nonprofit groups, and the Mississippi Center for Justice found that the state’s efforts at helping lower-income residents recover is Mississippi's “single-greatest failure.”

The report takes the government in Jackson to task for leaving low-income residents behind in the allocation of its CDBG funding, the federal monies given to states affected by Katrina. According to the report, Mississippi:
  • has over 75 percent of its programs exempted from income targeting,
  • has spent only 13 percent of its disaster funds on lower-income storm victims,
  • lags badly in creating and implementing the programs designed to serve housing-challenged storm victims.
As the Clarion-Ledger reported, the federal government gave the state permission to spend hundreds of millions on economic development projects from a $5.4 billion grant pool normally restricted for low-income housing. The STEPS Coalition's report card concludes 83 percent of the money spent so far "primarily benefited wealthier homeowners, private utilities and insurance companies. The report also concludes that the state may be “violating fair housing laws by implementing programs that disproportionately under-serve lower-income and minority storm victims.”

In a press release Morse warned that with the March 2009 FEMA move-out date looming, “the state simply does not have enough resources directed towards affordable housing. The 7,200 people depending upon FEMA for temporary assistance will have no place to go if this is not addressed. Many thousand more Mississippians outside the system, living in unrepaired homes or with relatives, will see no relief because our State doesn’t think they deserve assistance.”

In other Mississippi news, the Jackson Free Press asked who benefited from the Hurricane Katrina recovery. Their answer: contractors and consultants. The storm’s victims haven’t fared so well, the paper noted. In their 2008 Katrina Index: Who's getting the money? the paper also found:
• Pre-Katrina affordable rental housing units in Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties, the three hardest-hit Mississippi counties: 25,234
• Post-Katrina affordable rental housing units in those same three counties: 19,535
• Community Development Block Grant dollars allocated to repair/rebuild rental housing in Mississippi after Katrina: $260,000,000
• Community Development Block Grant dollars disbursed to repair/rebuild rental housing in Mississippi: $0
• Dollars allocated to repair/rebuild public housing: $100,000,000
• Dollars disbursed to repair/rebuild public housing: $1,000,000
• Dollars allocated to homeowner programs: $2,500,000,000
• Dollars disbursed to homeowner programs: $1,600,000,00
• Number of Mississippi families still living in FEMA trailers as of April 2008: 7,574
• Number of Mississippi families moved from FEMA trailers to FEMA cottages: 2,700
• Number of residential units damaged in “high damage” cities: 14,433
• Number of residential building permits issued since Katrina in those same cities: 4,216
• Total Katrina dollars allocated: $38,500,000,000
• Total Katrina dollars not yet disbursed: $8,000,000,000-plus
• Most important obstacle to recovery in the housing market: access to financing

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posted by Desiree Evans at 12:33 AM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage : News Roundup: "New Orleans is still a city in recovery"

Two weeks after the levees failed, President Bush stood in Jackson Square in New Orleans and promised “to rebuild the city and the region.” At the time he said: “We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.” Last week President Bush visited New Orleans, noting the “incredible progress that’s being made.” He praised the funds given to the region, saying that “three years after the storm, we’ve helped deliver $126 billion of U.S. taxpayer money.”

Progress has been made in the past three years, but much remains to be done and the funds are not getting there. Following Bush's speech at Jackson Barracks, Sen. Mary Landrieu released a statement saying too much of the money has been lost to red tape and government inefficiency. She stated:
The President rightfully recognized the significant commitment already shown by the federal government. But let no one suffer the illusion that $126 billion has gone straight to where it is needed and where it belongs. The Government Accountability Office has reported that only a fraction of this funding has been invested in our long-term recovery. Far too much has been lost to the inefficiency and red tape of FEMA and the federal bureaucracy, as well as the pockets of out-of-state FEMA contractors. There also remain bureaucratic challenges at the city and state level that our local leaders must continue working to resolve.
The lack of progress being made has been noted by may observers this week. The Jackson Free Press reports that "the failure that many say summarized the nation’s immediate action pale in comparison to the long-standing, nagging failure of the government to clean the resulting mess." The paper went on to say:
A certain amount of unfairness is inherent in the patchwork of New Orleans’s recovery. The levees that failed were guaranteed by the federal government. Nonetheless, for many homeowners, especially those in poorer parts of town, government grants—based on their home’s pre-storm market value—have not been enough to pay for rebuilding.

Cash shortfalls are not the only obstacle to a more robust recovery. The city’s economy has always been a smoke-and-mirrors affair, based on tourism. But the federal government, while conceding that its old levees were sub-standard, has not given the kind of “never again” assurances—backed up with real money—that might foster confidence in the region.
The Times-Picayune also reports on the patchy and uneven development that faces much of the city:
Just blocks from the historic Louisiana National Guard facility where Bush delivered his comments -- and stretching for miles in every direction -- large swaths of New Orleans and nearby St. Bernard Parish remain a hodgepodge of restored houses and stores, rotting buildings and empty concrete slabs.

The region's health care, criminal justice and public education systems also continue to struggle through a long rebuilding process.
Facing South has reported on the problems that have plagued the Road Home program over the past three years. Many low-income people continue to struggle with the constant rule changes and bureaucratic holdups. As ABC News reports, three years on, 42,000 applicants have still not received any funds The Road Home. “The worst affected are people in the lower-income brackets who don't know how to navigate their way through the system where the rules seem to change from day to day,” Davida Finger, an attorney at Loyola University's Law Clinic, told ABC.

The bureaucracy didn't end with The Road Home program. Reuters Alertnet reports on the mental health impact of trying to rebuild:
The stress of crawling through Kafkaesque bureaucracy trying to sort out trailers to live in, new housing, or insurance claims has added an extra burden on Katrina survivors. New Orleans' survivors already suffered a higher mental health toll than many in natural disasters in which victims have reconciled themselves to inevitable acts of God.

In this case, residents were traumatised by the shock and insult of being abandoned during the storm, and the inhumanity and indignity of being sent across the country with no regard for their family or neighbourhood ties.
...
Life for millions of people in the Gulf Coast will never be the same again. Katrina not only changed the way the rest of the world views one of the richest countries on the planet, it changed the way storm survivors think about their government.

Three years on, New Orleans is still a city in recovery.
Many low-income residents and people of color are still unable to return to the city due to limited support. Mother Jones reports that “in the years after the storm, moving displaced low-income families back to New Orleans has become less and less realistic. Yes, 92 percent of hotels in New Orleans were open by mid-2007, but by June 2008, 40 percent of public schools remained closed. The number of public buses up and running is still nowhere near pre-Katrina levels.”

According to the UK Guardian, New Orleans' redevelopment has ignored the needs of what was one of the closest-knit black communities in America. The Guardian reports:
In August and September 2005, areas like the largely black Lower Ninth war, almost entirely invisible to the hordes of tourists who flock to New Orleans every year, attracted worldwide sympathy as the levees broke. Now they have been all but forgotten. While tourists long ago repopulated the French Quarter, 57% of New Orleans' black population – against 36% of whites – have yet to return to the city. Many never will. This is because since Katrina, developers have clubbed together with the authorities to complete New Orleans' makeover into a playground for wealthy tourists.
...
In the three years since, race and class stereotypes have paved the way for New Orleans' so-called “revitalization.”
...
What's certain is that the longer the world looks away, the more likely it is that a Disneyfied “new” New Orleans will mean the loss of a city that boasts one of the most complex cultural heritages in the world.

Three years on from the storm, during an election year that has focused attention on a spectacular symbol of African American success, it seems that once again, no one is looking in the direction of a black America that has experienced only the rough end of the American dream.
Moreover, problems still plague New Orleans' infastructure as it attempts to prepare for future storms. As Facing South reported earlier this week, the Department of Defense plans on again investigating allegations that the Army Corps of Engineers let a contractor install faulty pumps after Hurricane Katrina despite a warning that they might fail. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel recently sent a letter to President Bush  detailing that the previous investigation conducted by the Department of Defense into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ pumping installation and its contract with Moving Water Industries was “superficial and dismissive.”

The status of levee protection does not add much comfort to the city. The Associated Press reports that New Orleans will be protected by levees unable to protect against another storm like Katrina.
When and if the Army Corps of Engineers finishes US$14.8 billion in post-Katrina work, the city will have limited protection -- what are defined as 100-year levees. This does not mean they'd stand up to storms for a century. Under the 100-year standard, in fact, experts say that every house being rebuilt in New Orleans has a 26 per cent chance of being flooded again over a 30-year mortgage; and every child born in New Orleans would have nearly a 60 per cent chance of seeing a major flood in his or her life.
...
At every step in the scramble to correct the engineering breakdowns of Katrina, independent experts have questioned the ability of the [Army Corps of Engineers], an agency that has accumulated ever more power over the fate of New Orleans, to do the right job.
Despite the problems that still face the city, many New Orleans residents are working to rebuild for the better. As Reuters reported, in the Lower 9th Ward, the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association is working on a plan to attract businesses and residents based on sustainable development, including the use of renewable and energy efficient building practices.

"We have to give people a reason to come here," HCNA president Charles Allen told Reuters. "If we show them the neighborhood is alive and we are pursuing a path of sustainable development, that is a step in the right direction."

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posted by Desiree Evans at 12:10 AM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Reports show that New Orleans recovery still has a long way to go

Today marks the third anniversary of Katrina’s landfall over the Gulf Coast, but the recovery efforts in New Orleans remain slow and problematic and several barriers remain to rebuilding, according to several reports released this month.

Gulf Coast rebuilding must become a priority for the next president

“If the history of the Katrina recovery were written today, it would be a tragedy. Far too little progress has been made despite the remarkable effort and ingenuity of the people of the region who are fighting to restore their homes and their lives,” Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, said in a recent press release. “Much of the progress has come at the hands of Gulf Coast residents - in spite of significant hurdles placed in front of them by the federal government. The next administration must act quickly to remove those hurdles so Gulf Coast residents can truly and finally recover from the storms.”

In a new report, Oxfam America called on both presidential candidates to renew the federal government's commitment to rebuilding the region. "Mirror on America: How the state of Gulf Coast recovery reflects on us all,” reveals the slow pace of recovery in the region, what more needs to be done to rebuild, and urges the next administration to make recovery a national priority.

Some of the key findings include:
  • More than 35,000 individuals still living in FEMA trailers in the Gulf Coast;
  • Only 12 percent of African-American evacuees who returned to New Orleans after the hurricanes were able to find work, compared with 45 percent of white evacuees;
  • In Louisiana 82,000 apartments were damaged or destroyed by Katrina and Rita, but the highest official estimate proposes to replace only about 25,000 affordable units;
  • In Mississippi, federal money that was mandated for use in rebuilding low-income housing was, instead, diverted to improving the shipyards in Biloxi;
  • Compliance with federal labor laws has been ignored with frequent occurrences of safety and health violations, wage theft and exploitative treatment of immigrant workers.
Oxfam is urging the next administration to create an Office for Gulf Coast Recovery headed by a federal coordinator; to make sure all federally subsidized housing destroyed in the storms is reopened or replaced; to require states Gulf Coast states that receive federal recovery dollars to provide regular reports on the use of those funds; and to ensure compliance with labor laws.

“A new administration will face the challenge of correcting the mistakes of its predecessor and a critical opportunity to rebuild the Gulf Coast better and stronger," said Rhonda Jackson, Louisiana State Policy Specialist for Oxfam America, in a press release. "The time is now to renew our promise and commit to a full Gulf Coast recovery."

Gulf Coast residents wonder if they have been forgotten

Earlier this month, the Kaiser Family Foundation released its second survey of the attitudes and experiences of New Orleans’ residents. It found that six in ten New Orleans residents say they do not think the rebuilding of New Orleans is a priority for Congress and the president, and even more (65 percent) say they think “most Americans have forgotten about the challenges facing New Orleans.” Three in four say the federal government has not provided enough money and other support to the city. The survey also found that 55 percent feel there has been little or no progress in rebuilding neighborhoods, and 72 percent who said federal recovery money has been misspent. Residents feel ignored by policymakers in Washington, underwhelmed by the financial help provided by the federal government, and forgotten by their fellow Americans, the report found.

New Orleans faces a blight epidemic

A new data analysis by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center reveals that 16 of 50 New Orleans neighborhoods that flooded following Katrina have less than half of the households they did in June 2005. Neighborhoods struggling most to repopulate include many lower-income neighborhoods such as the heavily damaged Lower Ninth Ward, which currently has only 11 percent of its pre-Katrina number of households.

GNOCDC also found that New Orleans has a far greater proportion of vacant homes than any other city in the country, due in large part to the lagging recovery. More than one in three residential addresses are now vacant or unoccupied. According to the GNOCDC’s New Orleans Index:
New Orleans may be confronting fully 65,000 blighted properties or empty lots. Rising rents, now 46 percent higher than before the storm, threaten the ability of many essential service workers to afford housing, as wages are not keeping pace. The labor market remains tight as the service and construction industries seek workers. The public service infrastructure in the city remains thin, especially public transit, which saw ridership grow by 45 percent in the past year. And, the latest maps from the Army Corps of Engineers suggest that a number of neighborhoods in the city remain at risk of six to eight feet of flooding from a “1 percent” storm, signaling the need to commit to a coastal restoration plan that goes well beyond levees.
Housing remains a barrier to long-term rebuilding

A lack of affordable housing and a lack public services continue to plague the city where rents are now 46 percent higher than before the storm. As we previously reported, PolicyLink’s report, "A Long Way Home: The State of Housing Recovery in Louisiana 2008," shows that thousands of residents who want to return home are facing a critical rental housing shortage, inadequate rebuilding grants and a recovery plagued by red tape and ever-changing rules.

Katrina Fatigue impacting donations

The Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation reports that "Katrina fatigue" in Congress and elsewhere could affect future efforts, according to the Times-Picayune. In a new report, “Chronicles of Resilience and Resolve,” the charitable nonprofit says that the government in Washington and the general public are showing a decline in interest and in support, thus “making it difficult to find allies to advocate for more federal funds to support Gulf Coast recovery.”

Katrina cleanup far from over

The Associated Press reports that New Orleans is not even close to being finished with cleaning up the wreckage created three years ago by Hurricane Katrina. In an environmental assessment for the third Katrina anniversary, the Government Accountability Office found numerous environmental violations, such as illegal dumping and disposal of hazardous materials in landfills not suited to take them.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 12:04 AM | Email this post

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Gustav may test New Orleans' troubled rebuilding

With Tropical Storm Gustav spinning toward the Gulf Coast and expected to strengthen into a Category 3 hurricane, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has returned home from the Democratic National Convention, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison have arrived in the region.

Residents of New Orleans are on edge, and they have good reason to be: Lessons that should have been learned after Hurricane Katrina are going unheeded in the reconstruction, leaving the city vulnerable to another catastrophic flood, a recent newspaper investigation found:
In a year-long review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.
The $14.8 billion rebuilding of the area's failed levee system is not expected to be finished until mid-2011-- and when it is, the system will provide only 100-year protection. Under that standard, every house being rebuilt in New Orleans today has a 26 percent chance of being flooded again over a 30-year mortgage, according to the AP.

At the same time, political leaders have put area residents at greater risk of ruin by promoting wetlands development, frustrating flood protection efforts, and refusing to pay for adequate protections. Meanwhile, an analysis of what it would take to build 500-year protection remains unfinished.

Even something as basic as getting up and running the massive hydraulic pumps that drain New Orleans after heavy rains has run into serious trouble. As we've reported previously, an Army Corps of Engineers employee named Maria Garzino has repeatedly raised concerns about problems with and inadequate testing of the pumps, which were supplied by Moving Waters Industries, a company with close ties to the Bush family.

Last October, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel ordered a probe into Garzino's claims. In May, the Corps responded to the charges in a report that substantiated some of her concerns but concluded they were not serious problems. In response, Garzino provided the OSC with extensive documentary evidence of the urgency of the problems. In a letter [pdf] sent to President Bush earlier this month, Special Counsel Scott Bloch blasted the Corps for failing to take Garzino's claims seriously:
I am left to conclude that a thorough and impartial investigation conducted by independent professional engineers into these matters is warranted. Moreover, it appears that the pumps remain inadequately tested, and vulnerable to failure in the event of a hurricane.
The White House titled its official evaluation of what went wrong after the 2005 disaster Katrina: Lessons Learned. Here's hoping Gustav doesn't give that phrase the same bitterly ironic twist the insurgency gave the president's assertion of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq.

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posted by Sue Sturgis at 2:53 PM | Email this post

Remembering King’s dream

Today marks the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, spoken at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. King gave his landmark speech during the March on Washington for jobs, justice and civil rights before a crowd of more than 250,000 people.

As the New York Times reported, at least five veterans of that march traveled to Denver this week as Barak Obama became the first African-American to lead a major party's ticket for the White House. Among them was Representative John Lewis of Georgia, who is the last man alive of the 10 who spoke that day at the Lincoln Memorial. The NYT explained:
...these veterans of the March on Washington are the living connective tissue to the America of 1963, when the police in some cities and towns still beat blacks with truncheons, and the story of their journey is as complicated as race itself.
Despite this week's landmark presidential nomination, this week is also the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall over the Gulf Coast, an event that showed the deep racial and class divisions that still exist in the United States more than four decades after Dr. King's speech. 

Let's take this moment to reflect on the promise and the hope of Dr. King's dream -- how far the nation has come (as we see in Obama's nomination) and how far the nation must go to still see Dr. King's dream fulfilled (as we see represented in the struggle of those along the Gulf Coast). As Dr. King said:
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 2:51 PM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Building on community driven successes with the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act

By: Jeffrey Buchanan
Guest Contributor

The federal government and national organizations have failed to meet the needs of the Gulf Coast 3 years after Katrina hit. How are local communities coming together to build a new vision for resident-led recovery?

Almost three years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the breakdown of Louisiana’s federally constructed levee system, the media, Congress, the White House, our Presidential candidates and even, surprisingly, the progressive community have for the most part moved on. 

Fewer and fewer national media organizations regularly cover the region’s recovery and wall-to-wall coverage of the DNC and RNC Conventions in late August will likely keep media interest in the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to a bare minimum.

Though Congress passed appropriations this year to provide some funding for flood protection and housing for the chronically homeless, the 110th Congress was unable to address many of the critical environmental, community and human needs still stopping Gulf Coast families from realizing their human rights to return home, to participate in rebuilding their communities and to live with dignity and safety. 

The White House, for its part, fought to keep Gulf Coast needs out of supplemental appropriations bills, once again breaking the promises President George Bush made to the Gulf Coast and the nation in Jackson Square nearly three years ago, when he committed to “do what it takes, [and] stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.”

Sources within the Presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama believe it is unlikely either candidate will spend Katrina’s anniversary in the Gulf Coast.  Neither campaign has even committed to attending the YouTube/Google Forum in New Orleans on September 18th to discuss the region’s recovery, among other issues. 

Instead of partnering with community leaders and taking on the region’s recovery, many national progressive advocacy groups choose to co-opt the emotionally charged imagery of the devastation and the Bush administration’s failed response, in order to repackage their pre-Katrina agendas.  While issues like global warming and poverty played a role in the disaster and deserve attention, this approach disregards the fact that the disaster was not just a symptom of a larger national problem but a specific continuing crisis where vulnerable populations still suffer from political neglect and deserve targeted solutions.  

Each has turned their backs on the opportunity to confront this American disaster, leaving Gulf Coast communities and residents to their own devices in recovery.

While national leaders have failed to meet expectations, local community and faith based organizers have thrived in providing services to those in need, leading some of the most successful recovery projects to date.  ACORN New Orleans has gutted thousands of homes for working class, mostly African American families, protecting the frames of these homes from destructive mold and the possibility of having their properties seized or damaged by the city government.  Groups like Moore Community House in Mississippi have trained hundreds of low income women for good paying jobs in the construction trades.  Mary Queen of Viet Nam Church in East New Orleans helped bring back the majority of its parishioners, helping them to rebuild homes and restart businesses through their successful new Community Development Corporation.  These groups have been aided by thousands and thousands of volunteers and the generosity of thousands and thousands of Americans who gave charitable donations in response to the 2005 hurricanes.

In the months after the disaster, many conservatives have pointed to the success of charities and community organizers as a reason to forgo government-led rebuilding efforts.  But while these successes have been a bright spot for their communities, they have unfortunately often lacked in scale. With a disaster which caused more damage than our three previous largest disasters combined (Hurricane Andrew, the Santa Lomas Earthquake and the 9-11 attacks) destroying 300,000 homes, leaving $150 billion in damages and displacing tens of thousands of families, even a historic $4 billion in charitable donations and thousands of hours of from volunteers could only scratch the surface of community needs. Also much of these donations went to national relief organizations, some of whom served brilliantly; others like the Red Cross were reported to have squandered funds, where most of their funding went to immediate disaster response, things like food, short term housing, healthcare and giving cash to survivors for their immediate needs. A small minority of funds have focused on long term recovery efforts and funding local organizations.  Also while community efforts have flourished at addressing certain needs they have not been able to significantly confront internal displacement of low income families, insufficient infrastructure and affordable housing, and coastal erosion, each of which would require a larger public investment.

Tens of thousands of families remain scattered across the country and lack the resources to return home to reunite with family.  Schools still lay in shambles as parents fear not finding classroom space for their children. Cities still lack affordable housing as federal tax credits have not spurred development.  Thousands find themselves without homes as they are forced to leave toxic FEMA trailers which emitted unsafe levels of formaldehyde, causing health concerns for which many do not have access to treatment.  Public safety suffers as police stations and firehouses run out of FEMA trailers. Death rates spike as hospitals operate at limited capacity. Deficient levees and preventable erosion of natural flood protection, the wetlands, increases the threat of future disasters.  Without proper oversight, numerous workers, especially in the immigrant population, have experienced wage theft and sometime brutal labor abuses in recovery projects. Each of these needs further impacts the pace of the overall recovery and ultimately the human rights of the disaster’s survivors.

As we approach the third anniversary of our nation’s largest disaster, national leaders seem unwilling to confront the homegrown human rights crisis in the Gulf Coast.

In recent months a number of community and faith based organizers and service providers from diverse sections of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi have begun coming together to examine local, state and national level rebuilding policy.  While the exact nature of the devastation was different from neighborhood to neighborhood (for instance Mississippi and Alabama did not suffer as much extended flooding and internal displacement as did New Orleans and parts of Southern Louisiana) survivors and communities face many of the same problems.

With no real solutions coming out of Washington, community leaders have taken on the responsibility to develop their own homegrown solutions. In one such effort, Gulf Coast community organizers like ACORN, interfaith groups like All Congregations Together, Bayou Interfaith Shared Community Organizing, and environmentalists like Turkey Creek Community Initiatives began meeting and working with academics from San Jose State University including Dr. Scott Myers Lipton and human rights groups like the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial (full disclosure: my employer) to develop a federal policy to empower the region’s greatest assets, the disaster’s survivors, with the resources they need to return and confront many of these issues.  The effort, which became known as the Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign, developed federal legislation known as the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act. 

In early November 2007, Representatives Zoe Lofgren, Charlie Melancon and Gene Taylor introduced the bill in the U.S. House as HR 4048.  Since then the bill has reached 16 co-sponsors, including one Republican, and has been endorsed by a number of state political parties, including the Louisiana Republican Party and California and Missouri Democratic Parties.
 
The bill aims to jumpstart Gulf Coast recovery by funding critical infrastructure and environmental projects to create 100,000 job and training opportunities for displaced and current residents.  Instead of relying on inflexible bureaucracy, the policy allows residents and local leaders to communicate their needs and play a direct role in the development of their communities.  Through local advisory councils, leaders of community based organizations such as neighborhood associations and churches, who best know what their communities need, along with the public, participate in open hearings to determine what infrastructure and environmental projects their communities need to promote sustainable recovery.  This way community leaders not only determine how their communities are rebuilt but they can more effectively oversee how federal dollars are being used in their name to add an extra layer of accountability. 

Also community based organizations are allowed to contract with the federal government to help recruit and train workers.  This will allow the federal government to build on the knowledge and relationships these organizations have built in the recovery to more effectively promote economic development and provide opportunities to working families.  The bill also promotes stronger communities through living wage jobs, skills training, and supporting local businesses. It could be a pilot project for disaster recovery or rebuilding infrastructure and restoring the environment in other parts of the country.

The bill builds on the success of community organizations in recovery while leveraging the resources of the federal government to empower survivors of the disaster to realize their rights to return and rebuild.  In this way it closely resembles US international disaster recovery programs the US State Department uses to support international human rights laws in the countries of allies like Iraq, post tsunami Sri Lanka, and Colombia after disasters that cause large scale internal displacement.  Under the United Nation’s Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, national governments have a responsibility to rebuild after a disaster like the 2005 Hurricanes in a way that supports the rights of residents to return with safety and dignity and participate in the rebuilding of their communities. The United States has endorsed the Guiding Principles on numerous occasions, urging our allies to accept these human rights norms and funding projects to support the rights spelled out in the Principles.  In Iraq, the U.S. is funding an ambitious public works plan, guided by the local residents and leaders, employing 100,000 displaced Iraqis to rebuild their communities and help their neighbors realize their human rights to return.  Oddly, U.S. officials in 2006 told the United Nations that Americans displaced by Katrina are not guaranteed these same human rights.

If the United States wants to lead the world in human rights, leadership must begin at home.  As we approach the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and subsequently as we determine our next President and Congress, we should call on our leaders to support the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act and a new resident led vision for recovery along the Gulf Coast.  Supporters of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign have also been working to make sure both Democrats and Republicans refocus on these issues, urging the DNC and RNC Platform Committees to adopt human rights based rebuilding planks.  In the coming days national leaders of both parties have an opportunity at their National Conventions to partner with Gulf Coast communities and commit our nation to fulfilling its promises and human rights responsibilities, beginning with adopting the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act as a model for recovery.  Supporters of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act will be traveling to Denver and Minneapolis, accompanied by the KatrinaRitaVille Express FEMA Trailer Tour, to discuss this new vision with both parties.

Jeffrey Buchanan currently serves as information officer of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.  He is also a 2008 Taproots Fellow with the Center for Community Change. The opinions expressed in this article represent the opinions of the author and not that of any organization.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 1:17 PM | Email this post

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: New Institute report finds faith groups "critical" to long-term rebuilding

I and other Institute staff have gone to the Gulf Coast over 20 times since Katrina struck three years ago for our Gulf Watch project. And every time I've asked a resident or local leader about who have been the heroes of the Katrina recovery, the most common answer has been "people of faith."

After Hurricane Katrina struck three years ago, faith and religious groups mounted an unprecedented response that made them the go-to resource for tens of thousands of storm victims.

Now, as New Orleans and coastal Mississippi struggle to rebuild, the expertise, resources and commitment of faith groups will be an indispensable ingredient to the success of long-term revitalization of the Gulf Coast.

Those are among the findings of “Faith in the Gulf” [pdf] a new report we at the Institute for Southern Studies released today.

The study, the largest to date on the religious response to Katrina, also finds that faith-based efforts can’t replace the central role of government in Gulf rebuilding, but they can be a valuable catalyst and model for federal, state and local policy.

The report is the seventh Institute report tracking the Katrina recovery, and looked at more than 80 faith and community organizations in the Gulf Coast and nationally, from store-front churches in New Orleans to major national religious relief agencies. The study found:
• As government agencies stumbled after Katrina, faith-based groups filled the vacuum and mounted a historic response. Faith groups became the most important resource for tens of thousands of storm victims, quickly and effectively delivering food, shelter, supplies, money, medical care and other assistance. Local faith groups continued to provide these services months after the storms, even though in many cases they were among the over 900 houses of worship were damaged or destroyed in the Gulf Coast.

• Key to the success of the faith response was the backing of national religious agencies and networks, which quickly mobilized an unprecedented relief and recovery effort. National faith groups deployed at least a quarter million volunteers and raised over $200 million in relief funds in the first two years after Katrina. The value of faith-related labor, services, materials and funds combined can be measured in billions of dollars.

• Drawing on their success in Katrina’s aftermath, faith groups are now in a unique position to take leadership in the task of long-term rebuilding in the Gulf Coast. Faith-based initiatives can’t replace the central role of government in rebuilding – the scale and scope of the task is beyond the capacity of faith groups. But faith efforts will also be crucial, like the recently-launched Isaiah Funds, an innovative partnership of Baptist, Catholic, Jewish and Mennonite organizations that have raised $4.5 million for long-term revitalization projects in the Gulf.
As the Right Reverend Charles E. Jenkins III, Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, said in a foreword to the report [PDF]:
“The Gulf Coast was dealt a merciless blow from two hurricanes in succession, and yet it has also been transformed by the boundless energy and generosity of strangers from far and wide. We are three years on from Katrina and Rita and the needs are still here, and the faithful are still coming.”

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posted by Chris Kromm at 4:04 PM | Email this post

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Three Years After Katrina: While Republicans and Democrats Gather and Celebrate, A City Still Searches for Recovery

By: Jordan Flaherty
Guest Contributor

As headlines focus on conventions and running mates, the third anniversary of Katrina offers an opportunity to examine the results of disastrous federal, state and local policy on the people of New Orleans.  Several organizations have released reports in the past week, examining the current state of the city, and grassroots activists have plans to broadcast their message from the streets.  For those who have heard only uplifting stories about the city's recovery, the facts on the ground may be surprising.

According to a study by PolicyLink, 81 percent of those who received the Federally-funded, State-administered Road Home grants had insufficient resources to cover their damages.  The average Road Home applicant fell about $35,000 short of the money they need to rebuild their home, and African-American households on average had an almost 35% higher shortfall than white households.

More than one in three residential addresses – over 70,000 - remain vacant or unoccupied, according to a report by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. While workers with Brad Pitt's Make It Right project are working on overdrive to finish the first of their scores of planned houses in the notoriously devastated Lower Ninth Ward, the neighborhood overall ranks far behind other neighborhoods in recovery, with only 11 percent of its pre-Katrina number of households. The same report notes that since the devastation of the city, rents have raised by 46% citywide (much more in some neighborhoods), while many city services remain very limited – for example, only 21% of public transit buses are running.

Divided City

Its not just activists that speak of race and class divisions in New Orleans. A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 70% of residents feel we're divided by class and/or race.  The Kaiser survey also found unity among New Orleanians: we're united in feeling forgotten by the rest of the US. Eight out of 10 said the federal government has not provided sufficient support. Nearly two-thirds think that the US public has largely forgotten about the city.

The survey found large percentages saying that their own situation has deteriorated.  Fifty-three percent of low- income residents report that their financial situation is worse today than pre-Katrina. The percentage of residents who say they have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness such as depression has tripled since 2006.

There is a continuing debate about how many people live in New Orleans, with no definitive figures until the next complete census.  But last year, the census bureau estimated a population of 239,000.  Other analysts – and Mayor C. Ray Nagin – estimate the population to be nearly 100,000 higher.  By any measurement, the growth has stagnated, while even optimistic figures report that 150,000 - 200,000 former residents (out of a former population of nearly 500,000) have been unable to return.  The once nearly 70% African American city is now estimated to be less than 50% African American, a change reflected in the changing face of electoral politics statewide. While Republicans have been losing across the US, Christian Coalition candidate Bobby Jindal was easily elected Governor last year, and in the city, decades of Black-majority city council shifted to a white majority.

Blank Slate or Burial Ground

Much of the change in the city is led by a new strata of the city's population – planners, architects, developers, and other reformers.  Many of them self-identify as "YURPs" – Young, Urban Rebuilding Professionals - in their work with countless nonprofits, foundations, and businesses.  Some of New Orlean's newer residents have spoken of the city as a blank slate on which they can project and practice their ideas of reform, whether in health care, architecture, urban planning, or education. What this worldview leaves out, according to some advocates, is the people who lived here before, who are the most affected by these changes, and have the least say in how they are carried out. "It wasn't a blank slate, it was a cemetery," says poet and educator Kalamu Ya Salaam.  "People were killed, and they're building on top of their bones."

The vast majority of New Orleans' new professionals have come here with the best intentions, with a love for this city and a desire to help with the recovery. However, many activists criticize what they see as token attempts at community involvement, and a paternalistic attitude among many of the new decision makers.

For example, our education system was in crisis pre-Katrina, and certainly needed revolutionary change.  Change is what we have gotten – the current system is in many ways unrecognizable from the system of three years ago – but this revolution has been overwhelmingly led from outside, with little input from the parents, students and staff of the New Orleans school system.

Shortly after the post-Katrina evacuation of the city, the entire staff of the public school system was fired.  Not long after that, school board officials chose to end recognition or negotiation with the teachers' union – the largest union in the city, and arguably the biggest outlet of Black middle class political power in the city.  Since then, the school landscape has changed remarkably – from staff to decision-making structure to facilities. According to Tulane professor Lance Hill, "New Orleans has experienced a profound change in who governs schools and a dramatic reduction of parent and local taxpayer control of schools."

The school system used to consist of 128 schools, 124 of them controlled by the New Orleans School Board.  Now according to Hill, 88 have opened for the fall, and "50 of them are charter schools (privatized management) governed by self-appointed, self-perpetuating boards; 33 are run by the State Department of Education through the Recovery School District; and only five are governed by the elected school board."

"There are now 42 separate school systems operating in New Orleans," Hill continues, with their own "school policies, including teacher requirements, curriculum, discipline policies, enrollment limits, and social promotions.  Publicly accountable schools in which parents have methods for publicly redressing grievances are limited to only five schools (5.6% of the total)."

Several recent articles have expressed excitement and admiration for the new school system, including extended pieces in the New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.  For school reformers, who came to New Orleans with a desire to try out the changes they had imagined, this represents a dream come true.  They have media support, federal, state and city officials on their side, and a massive influx of money and cheap (and young, idealistic) labor. Teach for America supplied 112 teachers last year, has committed 250 this year, and a projected 500 next year, while tens of millions of dollars in funding is coming through sources such as the Gates and Walton foundations.

There is no doubt that some students receive an excellent education in the new New Orleans school districts, but critics are concerned that the students that are being left behind, are those that need the most help – those without someone to advocate for them, to research and apply for the best schools.  According to New Orleanian Kalamu Ya Salaam, who is director of a school program called Students at the Center, the new systems represent "an experimentation with privatization, and everything that implies."

Although the new charter schools have been able to choose from the best facilities and have used methods such as state standardized tests to pick only select students (including 40% fewer special education students), there are still serious questions over the extent to their much-heralded success.  G.W. Carver School, the subject of a fawning NYTimes piece last Spring, received an 88% failure rate for English and an 86% failure rate for Math on state standardized tests.

Anniversary and Commemoration

August 29, the anniversary of the devastation of the city, falls between the Democratic and Republican conventions. While the Democratic and Republican parties crown their nominees, activists on the ground will be on the streets, still fighting for a just recovery. "It ain't to rain on Obama's parade," says Sess 4-5, a New Orleans-based hip hop star and activist, "but the people down here need the world to understand that its still a tragic situation. The rent has tripled, the health care system is in shambles, we have less access to education for our kids. The working class and poor are being exploited, while everyone at the top is getting fat off our misery."

"We think August 29 should be holy day, not a day for business as usual," explains Sess, who is one of the organizers of a Katrina March and Commemoration, starting Friday morning in the Lower Ninth Ward, and marching into the 7th Ward.  That march is one of two activist commemorations in the city that day, the other starting uptown, near the BW Cooper development, one of the major housing developments torn down this year.  "The Mayor announced to the world that New Orleans was 'open for business' but we're here to tell you that it is closed for families," declares former public housing resident Barbara Jackson, who will be part of the demonstration at BW Cooper, called Sankofa Day of Commemoration.  "Five thousand demolished homes.  Eight thousand new jail beds. This is their one for one replacement plan for us."

Taking to the streets is not the only agenda of local activists.  In New Orleans, people have been organizing at the grassroots, working together to build a movement.  In the aftermath of the US Social Forum last year in Atlanta, a broad coalition of social justice organizations began meeting monthly to combine efforts.  This group, called the Organizers Roundtable, is an important spot for collaborations and community building.

It's been community, not foundations or government, that has led this city's recovery at the grassroots. Bayou Road - a street of Black-owned, community-oriented, businesses in New Orleans' seventh ward – has rebuilt post-Katrina to more businesses than they had before the storm.  It hasn't been government help that has enabled these businesses to come back, but the effort of community members coming together. It was also community, and local support, that has brought back the membership of many local cultural organizations, like the network of Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, who organize secondline parades nearly every weekend throughout the year, as well as benefits that provide school supplies for area youth.

The Right to the City Alliance (RTTC), a nationwide coalition of organizations that focuses on urban issues such as health care, criminal justice, and education, sees the continuing crisis in New Orleans as central to their work.  They are co-sponsoring the march in New Orleans, as well as actions in seven other cities, including Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland, Providence, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Miami.

The work of RTTC deserves special notice, as a coalition that has worked to support the struggles of the people of New Orleans, and to bring that struggle and solidarity home to their own communities, while taking guidance from voices on the ground. In this time of many competing visionaries struggling to reshape this city, that willingness to listen to the people who lives are being affected, and to take that struggle and those lessons home to their own communities, may be the radical change New Orleans needs most.

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine.  He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (Europe's largest circulation newspaper), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 3:10 PM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: The Katrina Pain Index: New Orleans Three Years Later

By: Bill Quigley
Guest Contributor

0.  Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant – compared to 116,708 homeowners.

0.  Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.

0.  Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.

.008.  Percentage of the rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied – a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.

1.  Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in percentage of housing vacant or ruined.

1.  Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in murders per capita for 2006 and 2007.

4.  Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.

10.  Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.

11.  Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.

17.  Percentage increase in wages in the hotel and food industry since before Katrina.

20-25. Years that experts estimate it will take to rebuild the City of New Orleans at current pace.

25.  Percent fewer hospitals in metro New Orleans than before Katrina.

32.  Percent of the city’s neighborhoods that have fewer than half as many households as they did before Katrina.

36.  Percent fewer tons of cargo that move through Port of New Orleans since Katrina.

38.  Percent fewer hospital beds in New Orleans since Katrina.

40.  Percentage fewer special education students attending publicly funded privately run charter schools than traditional public schools.

41.  Number of publicly funded privately run public charter schools in New Orleans out of total of 79 public schools in the city.

43.  Percentage of child care available in New Orleans compared to before Katrina.

46.  Percentage increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.

56.  Percentage fewer inpatient psychiatric beds than before Katrina.

80.  Percentage fewer public transportation buses now than pre-Katrina.

81.  Percentage of homeowners in New Orleans who received insufficient funds to cover the complete costs to repair their homes.

300.  Number of National Guard troops still in City of New Orleans.

1080.  Days National Guard troops have remained in City of New Orleans.

1250.  Number of publicly financed vouchers for children to attend private schools in New Orleans in program’s first year.

6,982. Number of families still living in FEMA trailers in metro New Orleans area.

8,000. Fewer publicly assisted rental apartments planned for New Orleans by federal government.

10,000. Houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina.

12,000. Number of homeless in New Orleans even after camps of people living under the bridge has been resettled - double the pre-Katrina number.

14,000. Number of displaced families in New Orleans area whose hurricane rental assistance expires March 2009.

32,000. Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans, leaving the public school population less than half what is was pre-Katrina.

39,000. Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair and rebuilding who have still not received any money.

45,000. Fewer children enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare in New Orleans than pre-Katrina.

46,000. Fewer African American voters in New Orleans in 2007 gubernatorial election than 2003 gubernatorial election.

55,000. Fewer houses receiving mail than before Katrina.

62,000. Fewer people in New Orleans enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare than pre-Katrina.

71,657. Vacant, ruined, unoccupied houses in New Orleans today.

124,000. Fewer people working in metropolitan New Orleans than pre-Katrina.

132,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the City of New Orleans current population estimate of 321,000 in New Orleans.

214,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the U.S. Census Bureau current population estimate of 239,000 in New Orleans.          

453,726. Population of New Orleans before Katrina.

320 million. The number trees destroyed in Louisiana and Mississippi by Katr
ina.

368 million.  Dollar losses of five major metro New Orleans hospitals from Katrina through 2007.  In 2008, these hospitals expect another $103 million in losses.

1.9 billion.  FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to metro New Orleans for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

2.6 billion.  FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to State of Louisiana for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at Quigley77@gmail.com. 

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posted by Desiree Evans at 2:53 PM | Email this post

Monday, August 25, 2008

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Has the media forgotten the Gulf Coast?

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, the world’s media has lost sight of the ongoing problems in New Orleans, reports the UK’s Independent, underscoring that “one of the world’s most cataclysmic natural disasters, one made worse by official incompetence and corruption, is almost forgotten.”

Indeed, one can do a search of news reports on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and find that in many ways the region’s story is vanishing both from public discourse and the mass media landscape.

As The Independent reports:
The visitor to the rackety bars of the French Quarter and restaurants such as Brennan’s, Mother’s and Bayona would have no idea that, even now, there is mile after mile of blighted housing a few minutes from the commotion of Bourbon Street. One third of the city’s population has yet to return, their homes wrecked or demolished, thousands still live in trailers, thousands more are waiting to be paid their rehousing allowance or insurance money. A recent survey published by The Times-Picayune showed that increasing numbers were thinking of leaving the city for good, citing increasing stress, poor health facilities, crime and corruption.

Instead, coverage by the international and national news media in the run-up to the anniversary is negligible, with only a report by the news agency Reuters contrasting the elegant streets of the French Quarter with areas like New Orleans East, where “many houses slowly rot, still bearing on their walls the painted marks left by the US military to show whether corpses were inside.”
“I don’t think [New Orleans is] on people’s minds,” Times-Picayune’s editor Jim Amoss told The Independent. “We have to contend with those voices, particularly on pop radio, which say ‘New Orleanians with their eternal whining – why don’t they pull themselves up by their boot straps?’”

Yet, even as the larger media outlets have lessened reportage on the region, many local bloggers continue to keep a critical eye on recovery. As The Times-Picayune reported, bloggers and online activists can and do play an important role in telling the stories of Gulf Coast residents and in covering the recovery.

As the three-year anniversary approaches and beyond, we at Facing South will continue to report on the troubled recovery and the continued barriers to rebuilding in the region. The stories of residents of the Gulf Coast remain important not only to the South, but to the nation.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 6:13 PM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Mississippi’s coast sees uneven development

The Mississippi Sun Herald reports that Mississippi's coastal cities are showing varied levels of recovery.  According to the Sun Herald:
In quaint downtown Ocean Springs, for instance, it's hard to tell from the thriving shops and tree-lined streets that there even was a hurricane. In Biloxi, rebuilding has resumed quickly along the beach, where glitzy casinos and new high-rise condominiums have sprouted in profusion.

But generally, the farther west one drives along the Coast, the worse conditions tend to be. In Hancock County, Ground Zero for the tragic storm, Waveland officials are still rebuilding a water and sewer system, and city government continues to function from a small fleet of trailers in a gravel parking lot.

In Bay St. Louis, the once-picturesque Old Town area struggles to hold up its battered head. A $90 million infrastructure overhaul has streets muddied and destroyed. Beach Boulevard remains rough and unpaved, with an arduous reconstruction expected to start in October. Both cities have issued thousands of residential building permits between them since the storm, but officials acknowledge there is still a long, long way to go.
The Sun Herald gathered statistical data and interviewed mayors and city officials in each of the 11 cities in Harrison, Hancock and Jackson counties. Their further findings can be found here in this report, Where We Stand, City by City.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 6:12 PM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: NYT story on Louisiana coastal erosion ignores offshore drilling's impact

Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast three years ago, we've reported extensively on the factors that contributed to making the storm one of the worst disasters ever to afflict the United States. One of the themes that's come up time and again is land loss -- the disappearance of the region's critical coastal wetlands into the Gulf of Mexico.

For decades, Louisiana has been losing up to 40 square miles of wetlands each year, an amount that represents about 80 percent of the entire nation's annual coastal wetlands loss. If nothing is done to slow the current rate of coastal erosion, an additional 800,000 acres of Louisiana wetlands will vanish into the sea by the year 2040, and the state's shoreline will move inland as much as 33 miles in some places. Because coastal wetlands play an important role in absorbing the impact of approaching storms before they hit populous areas, their disappearance will continue to intensify hurricanes' impact on the region.

Coastal erosion is also having a devastating effect on communities and cultures across the Gulf, as spotlighted in today's New York Times story about the impact of land loss on Louisiana's historic Cajun shrimping communities.

The Times report attributes Louisiana's land loss solely to the building of the levee system. And it's certainly true that levees have worsened wetlands losses by preventing the routine deposit of land-building sediments. But there are other critical factors exacerbating Louisiana's land loss that the Times fails to mention.

Like offshore drilling for oil and gas.

Offshore drilling operations carve out channels in coastal wetlands for exploration as well as for transporting resources back to the mainland. Those channels in turn provide a route for Gulf waters to wash inland, the salinity eventually killing trees and other plants that help stabilize land, further exacerbating its erosion.

To date, oil and gas companies have dug an estimated 10,000 miles of canals across the state's wetlands. Since 1983, Shell Oil alone has dredged about 22,000 acres of Louisiana wetlands for placement or maintenance of pipeline canals and other production facilities. Environmental advocates recently tried to present the company with a bill for $362 million for the damage.

At the same time offshore oil and gas operations are eroding coastal wetlands, ocean levels are rising due to global climate disruption, while a warmer atmosphere is intensifying tropical storms and hurricanes. The situation has resulted in an ongoing disaster for Louisiana.

The current bipartisan push to expand offshore drilling along the Southeast coast risks bringing to other states the same problems Louisiana is grappling with. One of the hard-learned lessons of Katrina is that we ignore offshore drilling's destructive impact on our fragile coastal wetlands at our peril.

(Photo from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

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posted by Sue Sturgis at 4:32 PM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Engineers to review post-Katrina pumps in New Orleans

The Associate Press reports that the Department of Defense plans on hiring an independent engineering company to review allegations that the Army Corps of Engineers let a contractor install faulty pumps after Hurricane Katrina despite a warning that they might fail

A whistleblower has said that the pumps installed after Hurricane Katrina weren't adequately tested and might fail during a big storm. Corps engineer Maria Garzino cautioned in early 2006 that the pumps would not work properly. She went on to say they were the wrong size and might self-destruct when started, had a flawed hydraulic system and would fail under a hurricane's stress. Garzino wrote that her inspection found that more than 40 percent had failed or were failing, the AP reports.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 3:38 PM | Email this post

Friday, August 22, 2008

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: The long road home continues: the New Orleans housing crisis

Facing South reported earlier about the affordable housing crisis on the Mississippi coast that continues to slow post-Katrina recovery in that state. But Mississippians aren’t the only ones whose post-Katrina housing needs are not being met. A new report released yesterday by the nonprofit research and advocacy organization Policy Link found that many New Orleans many residents are still unable to afford to rebuild their homes or find an affordable place to rent.

“A Long Way Home: The State of Housing Recovery in Louisiana 2008” shows that while some progress has been made during the past year, thousands of residents who want to return home are facing a critical rental housing shortage, inadequate rebuilding grants and a recovery plagued by red tape and ever-changing rules. The report analyzes three major federally funded housing-recovery programs: the Road Home and the state’s small and large rental-repair programs.

Some key findings:
  • In New Orleans, 4 of every 5 Road Home recipients rebuilding their homes did not get enough money to cover their repairs. Statewide, more than 2 of every 3 face the same predicament.
  • Statewide, the average Road Home applicant fell more than $35,000 short of the money they need to rebuild their home. The shortfall hit highly flooded, historically African-American communities particularly hard.
  • Nearly 40,000 low-income homeowners received an average of about $27,000 each from an additional Road Home grant program designed to help vulnerable residents.
  • Renters still face huge hurdles - only 2 in 5 damaged affordable rental units statewide will be repaired or replaced with recovery assistance. In the New Orleans metro region, it's an even more dismal rate of 1 in 3.
  • The national credit crunch and personal financial vulnerability keeps many mom-and-pop landlords from being able to rebuild through the small rental repair program. Meant to restore more than 10,000 rental homes, the program has completed only 82.
  • Nearly 28,000 families nationwide still rely on disaster rental assistance, with 14,000 in the greater New Orleans metro region alone. There will not be nearly enough affordable rental units on the market by the time the assistance runs out in March 2009.
The Times-Picayune also reports that most Louisiana homeowners did not receive enough Road Home money to completely rebuild their homes, and limited recovery dollars will only help replace a portion of the state's damaged rental units. Rents in New Orleans are now unaffordable for many of the 14,000 families in the metro area who depend on rental assistance from the Disaster Housing Assistance Program, which is slated to end at the end of February. According to the Times-Picayune:
In New Orleans, 81 percent of Road Home recipients received awards that did not cover the needed repairs to their homes. The average shortfall was $54,586, the [Policy Link] report stated. In other parishes, 69 percent of recipients had shortfalls.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 12:37 PM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Affordable housing remains a barrier to rebuilding on Mississippi’s coast

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi's battered coast is regaining population but still lacks affordable housing for its poorest residents, reports USA Today. The article goes on the say:
Lack of affordable housing remains a thorny challenge, according to a study by the Biloxi-based Mississippi Center for Justice. About 6,170 of damaged rental units in Mississippi's coastal counties are slated to be repaired, leaving about 4,500 unrepaired, according to the study.
…
As of March, only 13% of the $1.6 billion in the state's emergency community development block grant funds had benefited lower-income victims, according to the report.
According to the Associated Press, Gulfport City Council member Ella Holmes-Hines said that many coast residents have been “delayed in moving on with our lives.” In fact affordable housing remains a formidable barrier to rebuilding along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But the voices of low-income Mississippi residents continue to be pushed aside—as Facing South has previously reported, housing advocates have rallied against the State of Mississippi’s decision to divert $600 million in emergency federal housing recovery funds to expand the Port of Gulfport when the state has yet to meet its post-Katrina housing needs.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 11:32 AM | Email this post

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Cinema Fridays: “It’s not about a hurricane. It’s about America.”

Trouble the Water, directed by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, Zeitgeist Films, Opens August 22

Being hailed by the New York Times as “one of the best American documentaries in recent memory,” the film Trouble the Water opens today in theatres in Los Angeles and New York. The film won the 2008 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and it depicts the experience of 9th Ward residents trapped in New Orleans during the hurricane. Directed and produced by Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the film is based on footage shot by Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring New Orleans rap artist, as she and her husband Scott film their harrowing retreat to higher ground and the dramatic rescues of friends and neighbors. The filmmakers document the couple’s return to New Orleans, and it also reveals the devastation of their neighborhood and the repeated failures of local and national government.

“All we had been seeing in the media were images of helpless victims or of looters,” producer Tia Lessin told the New York Times. “Those were the two archetypes. Kimberly and Scott were neither. They were survivors, and they were putting everything they had into protecting themselves and their community.”

As the Village Voice says: “Fresh as a slap, the outrage of Katrina’s mishandling comes flooding back in Trouble the Water, a documentary account so starkly surreal that at times it seems wrought from another century's folklore.”



For more information visit: Trouble the Water.

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posted by Desiree Evans at 10:16 AM | Email this post

Wednesday, August 20, 2008