Troubled contractor takes helm of Louisiana rental rebuilding program

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the devastation took a disproportionate toll on renters. According to a study (pdf) by Brown University sociologist John Logan, 45.7 percent of homes in storm-wrecked areas were occupied by renters, compared to 30.9 percent of homes in undamaged communities. But when Louisiana, where most of the damage occurred, launched its $7.5 billion Road Home rebuilding program last year, it focused solely on owner-occupied housing.

Seventeen months after the storm, that's finally about to change. Yesterday the state rolled out its Road Home program for small rental properties, with plans to distribute a total of $869 million to finance the repair and reconstruction of about 18,000 rental properties out of the 82,000 damaged or destroyed by Katrina and Rita. The program, though modest, will rightly focus on providing affordable rents to working families, according to an announcement on the program's Web site:

Participating property owners will be required to accept limits on the rents they charge and the incomes of the tenants they select. The amount of financing will be provided in three tiers based on the income level of the tenants to be served. The highest amount of funding per unit will be available to property owners who agree to offer the lowest rents. Awards are offered as no interest, no payment, forgivable loans, due only upon resale of the property or failure to comply with the rent restrictions and household incomes.

The funds available through the Rental program will not be able to provide every small-scale property owner with enough money for the repair or reconstruction of their rental properties, but it will spur development of quality rental units in the most heavily damaged areas.

In New Orleans, for example, landlords will be able to get as much as $47,000 to repair a two-bedroom property and charge $590 in rent if the occupant makes less than $26,125, about half the local median income. But if the renter makes $41,800 or 80 percent of the median, the landlord can borrow only up to $16,500 for repairs and charge $940 a month in rent.

Sounds good, right? But there's a catch: The same private contractor widely criticized for the glacial pace of its assistance to homeowners will also be in charge of disbursing the rental rebuilding funds.

ICF International of Fairfax, Va. will collect $756 million to manage the program, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. But the company has already come under fire for its failure to deliver financial assistance to homeowners promptly. Though it began distributing aid in August of last year (a month before issuing its initial public stock offering) and has received more than 103,000 applications, it has scheduled or held only 391 loan closings to date, according to its own program statistics. The loans on average have been about $80,000, but some have been as low as $10,000.

The company has been understaffed and has consistently underestimated the magnitude of the job it's taken on, according to a recent Times-Picayune investigation:

One homeowner griped that he showed up for his appointment with a housing adviser in New Orleans only to be told he wasn't on the list, and neither were nine other people who came that day -- including two families who had flown in from other states. He said he and several other applicants got in only after complaining to the media.

An elderly man and his wife claimed that in the middle of their appointment, a security guard evicted them from the Baton Rouge service center telling them their application was terminated and they should never return. The homeowner told a state legislator that he and his wife were "humiliated" at being treated like "common criminals."

Extravagant spending on the company's part has been another concern. Under the contract, ICF's lawyers make $375 an hour, which is much more than private attorneys working on a state contract earn, the Washington Post reports. The contract also allocates $19 million for travel expenses without requiring the firm to account for it.

In December, the Louisiana legislature approved a non-binding resolution calling on Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D) to terminate ICF's contract. But in a response statement (Word) issued by ICF, Blanco said the remedy was "to move faster, not start over from scratch." In fact, under the terms of the ICF contract, the state is pretty much stuck with the deal, with no significant penalties available for poor performance.

And there are already some signs of trouble brewing with the rental program. Earlier this month, ICF pledged to adequately staff the program with 170 employees, but it has already knocked that number down by 50, according to the Times-Picayune. Given that the Road Home contract is expected to make up about 40 percent of the company's total revenue, ICF has an obvious motivation to keep its program administration costs low.

Earlier this month, the Baton Rouge Advocate reported that Blanco was considering taking the small rental repair program away from ICF. Obviously, that didn't happen. The governor's inability to force the company to do right by the people of her state or face meaningful consequences illustrates clearly how the privatization of disaster reconstruction is enriching corporations while failing to hold them accountable to the taxpayers who foot the bills.

Docs and pols hit the Big Easy

We don't usually think of New Orleans as a remote place. After all, it's one of the world's most visited cities, a renowned center of art, culture, music, cuisine.

How a natural disaster -- compounded by official neglect -- can change things.

Two charitable medical organizations that usually provide care to remote communities from Africa to Appalachia opened a week-long free clinic in New Orleans yesterday and were overwhelmed with people seeking treatment. On the first day alone, volunteer doctors and nurses with Remote Area Medical and Operation Blessing International saw at least 500 patients, and they hope to treat as many as 10,000 before the week is through.

"We have put up approximately 20,000 square feet of tents, which are serving as vision, dental and medical exam rooms," says Jody Herrington, U.S. director of disaster relief for Operation Blessing, an organization founded in 1978 by controversial televangelist Pat Robertson.

This is the second year the groups have teamed up with the state and local health departments to offer care to residents of the New Orleans area, where the medical infrastructure remains severely crippled from Hurricane Katrina. Last year's Medical Recovery Week treated more than 9,600 patients and dispensed an average of 650 prescriptions each day.

* * *

Politicians also descended on New Orleans this week, and it didn't take them long to diagnose residents' growing frustration.

The U.S. Senate's Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee convened a hearing today at Louisiana's Supreme Court building to take testimony from federal, state and local officials. Scheduled witnesses include federal Gulf Coast Rebuilding Coordinator Donald Powell, Mayor Ray Nagin, and representatives of the Small Business Administration, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, FEMA, U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Louisiana Recovery and Greater New Orleans Inc.

Soon after Chairman Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) opened the hearing, he was interrupted by a protestor, the Associated Press reports:

The man yelled, "Stand up for justice! We want somebody to stand up for justice!" before a law enforcement officer led him out of the hearing room at Louisiana's Supreme Court building.

Lieberman acknowledged that it's "hard to come back here more than a year after Katrina ... without feeling that emotion," according to the AP. He also said that his colleagues "understand the work is not done, to put it mildly."

However, Lieberman himself is a source of frustration for some Gulf Coast residents seeking justice for the feds' bungled -- and allegedly political -- storm response. Though Lieberman had promised during his recent campaign to hold the Bush administration accountable for its mishandling of the disaster, he has since backed away from that pledge.

The fact that today's hearing was completely dominated by public officials was another sore spot for some. In an e-mail message sent prior to the hearing, Elizabeth Cook of New Orleans' United Front for Affordable Housing wrote:

Notice that the "menu" for the senate hearing, to be chaired by our favorite Senator Joe Lieberman, to be held in New Orleans this Monday does not include any citizens and/or activists for housing and human rights. HUD will be there. The LRA will be there. Nagin will be there ... all purveyors of the agenda to keep the working poor from returning to the city. We aren't invited.

Let's invite ourselves and crash this party.

Feds send more cops, but not teachers, to New Orleans

A federal official has publicly acknowledged that the problem of violent crime in New Orleans is largely the result of a troubled education system and entrenched poverty. Yet he intends to fight the problem not with more teachers or anti-poverty programs, but with more police.

Speaking yesterday at a press conference during which he unveiled plans to double the number of federal agents assisting the New Orleans Police Department, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten made this astute observation about the city's criminals, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

"They come from a failed educational system and poverty, and turn to drugs at an early age and settle things with guns," Letten said.

But Letten offered no plans to deal with that failed educational system, which just this week announced that it failed to meet its goal for qualified teachers, and that it had to place 300 students on a waiting list to get into the city’s overcrowded and under-resourced public schools. Letten offered no plans to address poverty, or to offer alternatives to the drug trade, or to teach young people how to settle disputes without weapons. Instead, this is what Letten offered as a solution:

"We need to get these violent offenders in the federal system."

Louisiana already has the highest incarceration rate in the nation, with 797 people imprisoned for every 100,000 residents, according to recent U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. That's more than 60 percent higher than the national rate of 491 per 100,000 residents, which is the highest rate in the world.

If incarceration solved the problem of violent crime, wouldn't it have worked already? How long will we stay this course before we realize we're heading down a dead-end road?

N.O. housing activists seek HUD investigation

The residents of Survivors' Village -- a tent city erected in New Orleans last year to protest plans to tear down virtually undamaged public housing complexes despite a severe affordable housing crisis -- are calling on the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Inspector General to investigate the proposed demolition. To help make that happen, they're asking concerned citizens to send letters, faxes or e-mails to the IG. For more details on the campaign, visit the group's Web site.

Katrina politics and the troubled state of our union

Though President Bush focused on domestic matters in last night's State of the Union address, he failed to make any mention of the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Katrina. There was not a single word about the storm and its aftermath in the 5,600-word speech.

In fact, the only acknowledgment of the biggest disaster ever to face our nation was the presence in Laura Bush's viewing box of Craig Cuccia, co-founder of Café Reconcile, a New Orleans nonprofit that works with at-risk youth and fed first responders and residents after the storm.

In last year's address, Bush devoted 165 words to Katrina.

Bush's omission drew criticism from Louisiana elected officials, including Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Reps. Charlie Melancon (D-La.), William Jefferson (D-La.) and Bobby Jindal (R-La.), who recently announced that he plans to run for governor against incumbent Democrat Kathleen Blanco. As the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

"While we are thankful for the support we have received from the federal government to date, I was disappointed the president did not address the rebuilding efforts on the Gulf Coast following our nation's worst natural disasters," Jindal said. "I hope he will continue to remember our plight and provide the needed resources to help rebuild Louisiana and allow our people to move forward."

Katrina did make an appearance at the top of the Democrats' response, delivered by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.):

Let me simply say that we in the Democratic Party hope that this administration is serious about improving education and healthcare for all Americans, and addressing such domestic priorities as restoring the vitality of New Orleans.

But if Democratic leaders from Louisiana have their way, the Bush administration won't be able to remain silent on the ongoing disaster in the Gulf. Spurred by former FEMA Director Michael Brown's charges of partisanship in the Bush administration's Hurricane Katrina response, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has asked Congress to create a bipartisan commission to investigate whether politics played a role in the botched relief effort, according to a statement posted to her Web site.

Blanco wants the commission to examine the role of White House political advisors in the response to Katrina and Rita, to take steps to "buffer" FEMA from partisan political agendas, and to achieve parity in distribution of federal recovery funds through standard criteria based on actual damage and need. Says Blanco:

"As evidenced by comments made by former FEMA director Michael Brown this past weekend, these steps are critical to Louisiana's recovery and the federal government's ability to adequately respond to future emergencies. All of us were sickened to hear that while thousands of our citizens were suffering during Hurricane Katrina, political operatives in the White House were playing party politics. These individuals based key decisions of emergency response on the gender and party affiliation of elected officials rather than on the urgent needs of our people."

Brown says the episode to which he referred in his speech Friday at a New York City college took place aboard Air Force One while it was parked at New Orleans' Louis Armstrong International Airport in the days immediately after the storm, the Times-Picayune reports:

While Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin were meeting with Bush in a conference room, Brown said he and some administration officials he declined to name talked in an adjoining office. He said that White House political adviser Karl Rove was not part of the discussions.

"It became apparent during the conversations that there were political considerations. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out," Brown said. "For someone to come out and say these are false allegations, it ticks me off. I'm willing to stand up and tell the truth, why don't some others?"

Spokespersons for the White House have insisted that Brown's charges are untrue, and that any investigation would detract from the ongoing recovery effort, according to the paper:

"Finger pointing more than a year after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina does not help to rebuild a single home, a single school or a single church," spokesman Blair Jones said while taking a none-too-subtle jab at Blanco's oversight of the recovery. "The federal government has sent over $110 billion dollars to the Gulf Coast for short-term relief and long-term rebuilding. In Louisiana alone, the federal government has secured $7.5 billion for Gov. Blanco's Road Home program and yet only 183 checks have gone from the state-run program to residents to rebuild."

Donald Powell, coordinator of the federal Gulf Coast rebuilding effort, also joined the fray with criticism of Blanco, the Times-Picayune reports:

"After more than a year of my office being a trustworthy and hardworking partner in her efforts, these statements are hurtful and represent an ungrateful attitude towards the American taxpayer," Powell said in a written statement.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told the paper that she supports Blanco's call for a new investigative commission, calling the Republican-controlled House and Senate probes conducted last year "somewhat limited."

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (ID-Conn.) had called for a new investigation into the White House Katrina response during his recent campaign but has since backed away from that position, as we reported earlier this month. However, Landrieu is expected to be appointed to lead a new subcommittee overseeing disaster response, which would give her the power to subpoena White House records.

Landrieu has been a vocal critic of Bush administration funding initiatives that have given proportionately more money to Mississippi than Louisiana, which bore the brunt of the storms' devastation. Last week she criticized administration plans to send 45 percent of $160 million in grants for health care relief funding to Louisiana and 38 percent to Mississippi, when Louisiana suffered 70 percent of the damage.

Earlier this month, she also blasted FEMA's decision to give Mississippi four times more housing money for alternative housing programs for hurricane victims than Louisiana, which sustained more than three times the housing damage as its neighbor:

"After FEMA's continued inability to defend its process, we have no option but to encourage Congress to investigate the process in making these unfair and illogical decisions," Sen. Landrieu said. "In response to repeated questioning, they can only defend their process as 'competitive,' but have never accounted for the most important measure of all -- need. A formula that distributes recovery funds with no regard for where they are most needed simply does not make any sense."

Meanwhile, the Lieberman-chaired Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a field hearing in New Orleans on Monday, Jan. 29 to consider Hurricane Katrina and Rita recovery issues. For more details on that event, click here.

FEMA grants reprieve to hurricanes' homeless

In a bit of good news on Hurricane Katrina and Rita recovery efforts, FEMA on Friday announced that it was extending housing assistance to storm-displaced Gulf Coast residents for at least another six months. The program was scheduled to expire next month, potentially displacing more than 100,000 families from their FEMA-funded trailers, mobile homes and rental units, as Chris reported here last week.

The news came via an announcement from U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), following a late afternoon briefing by FEMA Director R. David Paulison:

"This is very welcome news for the thousands of Louisianians still struggling with the everyday challenges of recovery and rebuilding," Sen. Landrieu said. "Empowered by the security of a roof over their heads, our people can go about the process of repairing permanent homes, re-establishing children's schools and working side-by-side with neighbors to stand up our great communities yet again.

"In our conversation this afternoon, I thanked Director Paulison for committing to this necessary extension of the housing assistance program, and reminded him that the road to recovery is long and we still have an enormous number of difficult challenges ahead. Foremost among these is transitioning residents from temporary structures back into permanent homes. We will need Director Paulison's partnership and FEMA's willingness to work with us if we are to succeed."

A formal announcement from FEMA is expected some time this week.

FEMA poised to intensify Katrina housing crisis

One of the biggest lingering challenges of Katrina is housing. Nearly 18 months after Katrina, tens of thousands of people displaced by the storm are still in limbo, waiting for housing to be rebuilt in New Orleans and coastal Mississippi.

And FEMA is about to make the situation much worse.

Some 110,000 evacuees are still residing in FEMA-funded trailers, mobile homes or rental units, but FEMA has announced it will cut off housing assistance on February 28. The grassroots group ACORN is mobilizing events in six Southern states this weekend to call on FEMA to extend housing help for 18 months:

"We have to have an extension," said Toni McElroy, ACORN Texas state chair in Houston. "It's the only fair and humanitarian way of dealing with this crisis. The alternative is leaving thousands of families homeless across the south."

As ACORN notes, Federal law provides for 18 months of FEMA housing assistance after a natural disaster, but the federal agency has granted extensions in the past to Florida residents and others.

If Gulf residents think crime is a problem now, just imagine what problems are likely when 110,000 people struggling to survive are kicked into the streets.

Where does FEMA think these people will go? Out of 97,000 homeowners who applied for Louisiana's "Road Home" assistance to rebuild, only 8,300 have received award letters -- and as of December, less than 100 had received checks. Not a dime has gone to rebuild rental housing, although about half of the displaced were renters.

Earlier this week, protesters stormed through New Orleans in opposition to HUD's plan to demolish 7,500 units of public housing -- many hardly scathed by the storm -- in favor of "mixed use" (i.e., more expensive) housing.

And that's not all that's keeping people in trailers. The other problem is infrastructure -- the basics that would make it possible for families to rebuild their lives in the Gulf. Despite some positive signs in housing permits and business recovery, the latest "Katrina Index" [pdf] from the Brookings Institution contains this damning report:

Infrastructure recovery is largely at a standstill with only one new school opened in December, no new hospitals, no new libraries, and only one new child-care center in New Orleans.

So housing is still a key problem -- but it's also a symptom of an overall failed recovery in the Gulf, a federal policy failure that will continue to stop the Gulf's people from being able to rebuild their communities and lives unless action is taken now.

[Photo courtesy of Craig Morse of culture:subculture, who is doing an excellent job documenting the still-unfolding Katrina tragedy]

UPDATE: The New York Times has a powerful editorial today making these exact same points. As one Gulf Coast activist writes to me, "maybe the tide is turning ..." [Thanks LH]

Petition urges independent probe into levee failures

When the levee systems built and maintained by the federal government failed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the resulting deluge flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and surrounding parishes, leading to more than 1,000 deaths and billions of dollars in property damage.

Unfortunately, the federal investigation into what happened -- and how such a horrific disaster can be avoided in the future -- was less than adequate.

The probe was conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force. However, because the USACE was the agency responsible for the levees' design and construction, its involvement in the investigation presents an obvious conflict of interest.

Since the investigation's findings were released last June, three independent scientific investigation teams have criticized the USACE's report as incomplete and technically inaccurate. Unfortunately, USACE's flawed findings are still being used to inform the repair and fortification of the entire south Louisiana flood protection system, which secures the lives and property of 1.5 million people.

Levees.org, a nonprofit watchdog group formed in Katrina's wake, has launched a petition drive calling on the new Congress to to establish an independent, bipartisan investigation into the levee failures in order to ensure that no more lives are lost due to faulty flood protection systems. To add your name, click here.

Concerns grow over expanded police powers in New Orleans

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has launched a public blog allowing readers to weigh in on the worsening city's crime problem, which led to yesterday's anti-violence protest marches that drew about 3,000 people and put Mayor Ray Nagin and other city officials on the hotseat.

A warning: The blog can be painful to read, with people's anger occasionally boiling over into hateful, racist posts. But there's also some thoughtful and informative writing there that makes it worth the effort.

Reading over the posts today, I was struck by one from Roberto Calderra, a New Orleans resident who writes about three disturbing encounters with police he experienced this week. One involved a checkpoint -- part of Nagin's latest crime-fighting strategy -- at which he counted 18 police cars plus a paddy wagon. Disturbed by what he perceived as overkill, he called it "bull" and accused the police of trying to drive people out of New Orleans.

For that, Calderra received a citation, though for what he's not sure. He writes:

New Orleans has a police problem. In one of the most historically corrupt police departments, it is a MISTAKE to give these jackbooted thugs more power. These are the same police that murdered Delgado College student Jenard Thomas in the ninth ward less than a year before Katrina. It's no wonder regular people in many neighborhoods hate the cops. Random checkpoints and issuing more traffic citations -- even issuing more DUI and simple drug possession charges -- will not address the systemic problems that cause violent crime in our city. If anything it will just create more fear among the populace -- fear each other and fear of the police.

Louisiana already has a higher incarceration rate that China under Mao. As of 2005, Atlanta has 354 police per 100,000 residents. Boston had 367, Oakland had 176. ***New Orleans already has 608 police per 100,000 residents***

(Click here for more on the Thomas killing.)

Calderra's not the only one with concerns about the impact on civil liberties of expanding New Orleans police powers. The ACLU of Louisiana this week issued a statement urging city officials to embrace common-sense alternatives to failed get-tough-on-crime approaches, including random checkpoints:

The ACLU strongly opposes the automobile checkpoints as announced by Mayor Nagin and Chief Riley at yesterday's press conference. Police will just waste valuable time on a fishing expedition, instead of using credible leads to pursue known bad actors. Checkpoints to gather general evidence of criminal wrongdoing have been declared unconstitutional. Innocent people should not have to suffer even more with the loss of their right to travel freely.

The organization also blasts some aspects of the crime-fighting proposal from U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), including provisions that would have FEMA violate federal privacy law by giving police identifying information on aid recipients, and the installation of surveillance cameras in public places:

No objective data exists to support the use of video surveillance by police in public places to prevent or solve crimes. In London, where 150,000 cameras were installed to reduce crime, certain incidents of violent crime actually rose after the network was installed. In-studio staff, however, were found to engage in violations of civil liberties: They focused almost exclusively on people of color, gays and young people, along with monitoring public meetings, marches and demonstrations. Instead of cameras, use the money on fundamental reforms proposed below to lower the crime rate.

Instead, the ACLU offers its own five-point plan to address the violence in New Orleans:

1. Invest in real crime prevention. Young men 15 to 29 years old commit most of the alarming street crime in New Orleans and across the nation. The key to crime prevention lies in strong families and communities -- jobs with a livable wage, decent housing and neighborhoods, quality schools for everyone -- not more prisons.

2. Move forward with staffing and funding the office of the Independent Monitor for the NOPD to hold the police accountable to the people who pay their salaries. People will not cooperate with police officers that they do not trust or respect.

3. Expand non-prison sanctions for non-violent offenders -- tickets instead of jail for minor offenses; wider use of release on personal recognizance, home detention, restitution, etc. Save costly prison space for those who should be removed from society. Cease wasting taxpayer money on wasteful incarceration in Louisiana's state and local jails that already cost taxpayers close to one billion dollars a year.

4. Treat non-violent drug abuse and small quantity possession as a public health issue, not a crime problem. Nearly two-thirds of today's prisoners are non-violent drug abusers. They need treatment, not a jail or prison cell.

5. Stop enacting or considering ineffective "anti-crime" laws or policies like check points, surveillance cameras, and release of FEMA lists to law enforcement that reduce our freedoms -- but not our crime rate. Many police, prosecutors and corrections officials agree that constitutional rights do not hinder effective law enforcement.

Road Home contractor breaks promise on aid pace

ICF International -- the private company that received a $756 million contract from Louisiana to administer its Road Home recovery program -- has reneged on a promise it made to step up processing of grants to homeowners, the Times-Picayune reports.

Last month, ICF Administrator Michael Byrne told Louisiana Recovery Authority members upset over the glacial pace of aid distribution that it would be handing out 500 grants a day by the end of January. As of Jan. 8, the program received almost 95,944 aid applications and closed only 118, with another 236 closings scheduled, according to the latest statistics posted to ICF's Road Home Web site.

There have been 68 closings in the 25 days since Byrne made his promise, an average of only 2.7 a day, according to the newspaper.

A report card on the Road Home issued two weeks ago by the Citizens' Road Home Action Team gave the program an "F" for its efforts to get the money flowing.

As we reported here last month, the Louisiana House and Senate have passed resolutions calling on Gov. Kathleen Blanco to fire ICF, state Rep. Charmaine Marchand of the Lower Ninth Ward camped outside the State Capitol to draw attention to problems with the company's administration of the program, and federal Gulf Coast Rebuilding Coordinator Donald Powell wrote a letter urging the company to pick up its pace -- all apparently to no avail. In fact, Blanco contributed comments to a press release put out by ICF in which she urged against firing the company.

Several members of the Louisiana Recovery Authority told the Times-Picayune that they plan to discuss the Road Home's problems at their meeting tomorrow. However, they agree with Blanco that ICF shouldn't be fired since bringing in a new contractor would create even more delays.

But how, then, is the company to be held accountable for its poor performance? It will be held accountable, won't it?

Judge rules for homeowner in Katrina insurance case

The Associated Press reports:

A federal judge ruled against an insurance company Thursday in a Hurricane Katrina damage case that may have implications for hundreds of other homeowner lawsuits against insurers who refused to cover billions of dollars in damage from the storm's surge.

U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. ruled that State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. is liable for $223,292 in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina to a Biloxi couple's home, but said a jury must decide whether to award millions of dollars more in punitive damages.

There are still settlement negotiations underway regarding a separate class action suit. The article says it is not clear how this latest ruling will affect those negotiations.

As protests mount, N.O. officials offer (superficial) crime plans

With at least two marches now planned for tomorrow to protest a recent spike in homicides, New Orleans city officials yesterday announced various plans to fight street crime. Unfortunately, the proposals fail to address the blind rage and growing desperation that seem to be fueling much of the violence.

Instead of the much-criticized curfew suggested by N.O. Police Superintendent Warren Riley, Mayor Ray Nagin called for more police checkpoints between 2 and 6 a.m. to search for drugs, the Times-Picayune reports. However, it's hard to see how that would have helped two recent high-profile murder victims: Hot 8 Brass Band drummer Dinerral Shavers, shot last month in broad daylight while driving down the street, allegedly by a teen who was aiming for Shavers' stepson; and filmmaker and Food Not Bombs activist Helen Hill, gunned down by an unidentified man one morning last week at her own home.

Speaking at a press conference with Nagin, Riley and District Attorney Eddie Jordan said they would cooperate to expedite murder prosecutions, leading one to wonder how they were treating such cases before the public outcry. They also plan to supplement the police force with about 20 sheriff's deputies and shift some desk officers to the streets, though it's hard to imagine what they will accomplish that the 300 National Guard troops and 60 state troopers stationed in the city could not.

To protest the worsening violence, the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization has scheduled a march to City Hall that will begin at 10:30 a.m. at 3438 Cleveland Ave., the home of slain filmmaker Hill. Organizers ask marchers to wear a white shirt and carry a photo or sign with the name of a crime victim. Another march to City Hall is set to begin at 11 a.m. at the World Trade Center of New Orleans.

The organizers of the latter march are collecting comments on their Web site from concerned citizens. One particularly thoughtful one was offered by Michael Kane, who references University of Massachusetts Professor Ervin Staub, an expert in the psychology of peace and origins of human destructiveness:

These are some of the "difficult conditions of life" that Staub talks about. Hopelessness is related to lack of skills and/or lack of opportunity. And the schools are cultivating hopelessness in the students. They have become factories of despair. If there are no living wage jobs, there is no hope. The only economy becomes the economy of the streets.

It might behoove all of us who care about violence in New Orleans -- and our nation in general -- to ponder what Staub wrote in his paper, "Notes on Cultures of Violence, Cultures of Caring and Peace, and the Fulfillment of Basic Human Needs":

Poverty has many negative effects, including an adverse effect on the way parents treat and guide their children. But economic deterioration can have especially strong effects. In addition to frustrating basic needs I described, it usually enhances the already existing discrepancy between more and less privileged groups. It activates or intensifies the experience of injustice. Social injustice -- or comparisons between self and other, or one's group and other groups, that lead to a belief that one is unfairly treated -- gives rise to anger and resentment and potentially to violence. Justice is a powerful human motive. Possibly, it is another basic need. But it may be, instead, that injustice frustrates many of the basic needs I have described, especially the need for a positive identity (as a person is treated with less respect and feels less worthy) and the need for effectiveness and control (because injustice means that one's actions can't bring about the outcomes one deserves).

If Staub is right that injustice leads to violence, is it any wonder that violence is racking New Orleans, a place that has suffered so much injustice? Does anyone really believe that stopping innocent residents at police checkpoints will help?

Don't blame immigrants for New Orleans' sorry health care system

A national civil rights group worries that a recent New York Times story about New Orleans' post-Katrina baby boom among Latinos—and the stress it's placing on the city's storm-devastated health care system—promotes prejudice against the people doing reconstruction's dirty work.

Written by the Times' Eduardo Porter, "Katrina Begets a Baby Boom by Immigrants" reports that "hundreds of babies" are being born to uninsured Latinos—some in the country legally, some illegally—who came to rebuild the flood-ruined city:

Because many immigrant mothers cannot afford to pay for prenatal care or delivery services, New Orleans’s newest citizens are adding an unexpected load to the decimated health infrastructure in a city abandoned by many of its doctors. Much of the state-financed Charity Hospital system, which before Hurricane Katrina provided the bulk of care to New Orleans’s uninsured and indigent population, remains closed.

The story quotes health care executives and providers discussing the surge they've seen in pregnant Latina patients and the challenges they present, from overcrowded prenatal care units to emergency-room deliveries.

In a post on the Advancement Project's Just Democracy Blog, Crystal Hill accuses the Times story of ignoring the shambles that Louisiana's health care system was in well before Katrina hit:

The reality is that there were already significant deficits in health care for low-income and uninsured people, most of whom were African Americans. According to a report release[d] earlier this year from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, the pre-Katrina health care system was in crisis. Services for low-income and uninsured patients were decreasing as the number of uninsured was rising. Medical administrators were considering alternatives to the state-run charitable health system that was in place.

Indeed, the January 2006 Kaiser Commission report, "A Pre-Katrina Look at the Health Care Delivery System for Low-Income People in New Orleans," noted that pre-storm Louisiana already had higher-than-average rates of poverty, uninsurance and poor health, and large disparities in health status between blacks and whites. Observes Hill:

Beyond those sobering facts, the truth is that whether in this country legally or illegally, the people working to rebuild the devastated Gulf Coast deserve access to low-cost health care. The double standard that is becoming the backdrop for the immigration debate—it's alright for immigrants to work doing hard labor with the sweat of their brows, in New Orleans and other cities, but they are not entitled to any benefits, basic rights to living, health, and welfare, as are others who inhabit this country—must be shattered. Inaccurate and misleading characterizations of immigrant populations only serve to fuel the fallacy of the "immigration epidemic."

Since the storm, the Advancement Project has been working to protect the rights of immigrant workers in New Orleans. Along with the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition and the National Immigration Law Center, the group published the report "And Injustice for All: Workers' Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans" documenting poor working conditions for immigrants. And with the People's Hurricane Relief Fund, the Advancement Project helped workers camped at New Orleans' City Park negotiate better conditions with the contractor running the site.

The fact is, the health care crisis for New Orleans' racial minorities—Latino or African-American—did not begin with Katrina, Hill notes:

These groups are simply caught up in a system of institutionalized racism within the health care system that dates back more than 400 years. Historically, Latino migrants have been employed in physically demanding labor such as agricultural work, yet discriminated against in virtually all aspects of American life, including health care, on the basis of economics and race. ... As we read news reports that consistently place blame on immigrants for the ills of our society, including failing health care systems, we must read with a critical eye, understanding that in most cases immigration is not the real culprit; racism is.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any quick fix in store for New Orleans' decimated medical infrastructure. The Louisiana Recovery Authority last month approved $74 million in funding for a new teaching facility to replace Charity Hospital and recommended $226 million in future funding. However, that spending must be approved by the Bush administration, which has advocated instead for a system of government-subsidized private insurance policies.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt had hoped to create such a system—which would probably be more expensive than the Charity Hospital approach—by putting a Medicaid waiver in place by Jan. 1. However, that deadline has come and gone with no waiver in sight.

State Sen. Joe McPherson (D-Woodworth), chair of the Health and Welfare Committee, recently told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that he would present his own health care reform plan to the legislature when it convenes in April.

In the meantime, though, the city's health care crisis continues to hurt residents of every race and immigration status.