Institute's Capitol Hill testimony on post-Katrina housing needs

This afternoon, Institute for Southern Studies Executive Director Chris Kromm was among a panel of experts who spoke at a congressional briefing titled "Addressing Remaining Low Income Housing Needs for Hurricane Evacuees and for the Gulf Coast." Here are Chris's prepared remarks:

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to this important briefing on the housing crisis in the Gulf Coast.

I am Chris Kromm, director of the Institute for Southern Studies -- a non-profit research and education center that has been closely following the Gulf Coast recovery since Katrina struck.

I and many others across the country are very encouraged by this briefing and this week of debate about the Katrina recovery.

We also agree with many others who believe that Senate Bill 1668 is the single most important measure Washington can act on now to help thousands of people still struggling in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Shortly after Katrina, the Institute launched a special project -- Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch -- to investigate the hurricane's aftermath and promote a recovery that was accountable, fair and wouldn't leave behind the same people who suffered most when the hurricane struck: our children, the elderly, and poor and working families.

Gulf Watch has led over a dozen fact-finding trips to the Gulf, and published 20 investigative reports and in-depth studies on the recovery.

Just last month, we travelled across Louisiana and Mississippi, and talked with more than 40 community leaders working in the trenches, to ask what message they'd like to send to leaders in Washington.

These voices, together with reams of statistical research and agency data, were the basis for our most recent report, Blueprint for Gulf Renewal, published last month in partnership with Oxfam America and the Jewish Funds for Social Justice.

The picture that emerged was shocking. You've heard or will hear testimony that speaks to the scope of the tragedy, but two things are clear.

One, I think most Americans would be horrified to know that, two years after the hurricanes, countless miles of the Gulf Coast still lie in ruins, and that over 60,000 hurricane victims are still living in "temporary" FEMA trailers.

And second, it's important to realize that, for tens of thousands of families, the Katrina crisis never ended -- and I believe the word "crisis" is appropriate when homelessness has doubled in New Orleans, and an International Medical Corps study has found that suicide attempts among residents of Mississippi FEMA camps have skyrocketed 79 times over pre-disaster levels.

This is not what the citizens of the Gulf Coast and our country envisioned when, in September 2005, President Bush pledged from Jackson Square in New Orleans that our country would "do what it takes, and stay as long as it takes" to rebuild the Gulf Coast.

In fact, during the Katrina anniversary last month, President Bush was repeatedly asked about the dire state of the Gulf Coast and why the Katrina recovery has left so many behind. He defended his administration’s response, saying Washington has written a "big check" for the Gulf Coast, up to $116 billion dollars.

But many of the Gulf Coast leaders we talked to wondered if the check bounced.

The reality is that the widely-cited figure of $116 billion doesn’t give an accurate pictures of hurricane spending, and Washington continue to invest in the people of the Gulf Coast if there is to be a full and fair recovery.

According to our analysis of federal spending for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the amount appropriated by Congress and the White House to date comes just short of $95 billion.

That's a significant sum -- although it's important to understand it's still far short of what's needed to truly revive the Gulf Coast. For example, most estimates place the value of infrastructure damage in Louisiana alone at about $100 billion.

But the most important finding of our analysis, which was conducted with the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights, was that out of the $95 billion, only about 30% of that money has been aimed at the long-term rebuilding projects the Gulf Coast so desperately needs to get back on its feet. That’s through FEMA’s Public Assistance program and HUD’s Community Development Block Grants.

More than two-thirds of federal spending for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to date has been slated for short-term emergency needs -- vital items like the Coast Guard, providing shelter and debris removal.

But that has left only a fraction of the "big check" -- $30-$35 billion -- to tackle big, long-term projects like building and repairing roads, schools, hospitals and -- the focus of this hearing -- housing.

Even more surprising, our analysis revealed that, as of August, less than half of that 30% allocated for long-term recovery had actually been spent.

We can see the impact of these funding shortfalls and bottlenecks in the housing crisis, which every Gulf Coast leader we surveyed said was the #1 barrier to a real recovery.

Out of the $16.7 billion in HUD’s Community Development Block Grants in Louisiana and Mississippi, spending plans have included $12 billion for housing -- 69% of the CDBG money in Mississippi, and 84% in Louisiana.

That's still not enough -- the most recent estimates are now that the shortfall facing the HUD-approved Louisiana’s Road Home plan alone could reach $6 billion.

What's more, aid going to Louisiana and Mississippi hasn't been in line with the housing needs of each state. Although Louisiana suffered nearly 70% of Katrina's housing damage -- with 40% of damage "major or severe" -- it has received just over 60% of HUD’s CDBG funding.

Mississippi, which withstood 20% of Katrina’s housing damage, is in line to receive one-third of the program’s funding.

And again, money has been slow to reach those in need. As of July 2007, only $4 billion for housing rebuilding had been disbursed.

So it's not surprising that, when we asked Gulf leaders what they thought about the $116 billion "big check," to a person they responded like Tanya Harris, who works in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans: "Where did it all go?" Harris asked us. "Show me the money!"

These facts reveal three central points about what's needed now to address the Gulf Coast housing crisis and jump-start the lagging Katrina recovery.

First, now more than ever, the Gulf Coast needs a real commitment from Washington to fully fund the Katrina recovery. Given the staggering scale of the crisis -- especially with housing -- the check Washington has written is still too small, and has left the region starved for the resources it needs to rebuild and bring people home.

Second, a "trickle down recovery" won’t work. The strength of Senate Bill 1668 (and its House counterpart) is that it replaces a scattershot array of tax-breaks and half-measures with targeted assistance to the full range of people who need relief, from homeowners to renters and residents of public housing.

Finally, oversight and accountability are crucial. Congress must exercise its oversight powers and ensure federal aid reaches those most in need. S 1668 streamlines and clarifies our Gulf Coast housing policy, and builds in critical new safeguards to ensure spending for housing is well-spent -- a valuable model for other Katrina recovery appropriations.

This year, new leadership in Congress has given hope to many of us working for a better future in the Gulf Coast. But there’s still much unfinished business, and the lack of decent, affordable housing the crucial “lynchpin” to a vibrant recovery.

Our nation must live up to its promise to rebuild the Gulf Coast. And Washington must take a stand against special interests who threaten to undermine vital legislation like Senate Bill 1668 and its practical vision of a recovery that works for all.

Tanya Harris and thousands of Gulf Coast families will be watching in the coming weeks to see if we make good on that promise.

Thank you.

For more details about the briefing as well as other events that took place this week to draw attention to post-Katrina housing issues, click here.

Post-Katrina reconstruction of affordable housing lags in Mississippi

Poor New Orleanians are not the only Gulf Coast residents whose post-Katrina housing needs are being treated with disregard by their government: Low-income residents of Mississippi are also facing dire problems that have been exacerbated by the actions of Congress, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and state authorities.

As James Perry of the Louisiana Housing Alliance testified earlier this week before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, of the $16.7 billion that Congress appropriated for post-disaster needs in the form of Community Development Block Grant money, only $1 billion was designated to repair or replace affordable rental housing, including public and assisted housing, he told the committee. At the same time, Congress gave the states what he characterized as "unusual flexibility" in who could be served by CDBG funded programs. While the standard CDBG requirement is that 70 percent of funds should benefit low-income people (defined as those earning at or below 80 percent of the local median income), Congress required only 50 percent of the storm-related CDBG funds to serve this population -- and then gave HUD the authority to waive even the 50 percent requirement for "compelling need."

This has had an especially big impact on Mississippi, Perry told the committee:

Almost 92% of the $5.4 billion Mississippi CDBG allocation has now received waivers from this requirement. Additionally, the recovery allocations that Mississippi has dedicated towards housing recovery have been disproportionately skewed towards homeowners and away from rental repair programs.

But at the same time, Gov. Haley Barbour has proposed diverting $600 million of the CDBG housing recovery funds to expand the Port of Gulfport -- a plan that has provoked a firestorm of opposition, including an editorial in today's New York Times calling on Congress to revisit the waiver process "to make sure that states aren't using it to evade the income restrictions clearly laid out in federal law."

And now there's yet more evidence of the formidable barriers confronting low-income Mississippi residents trying to rebuild their lives after Katrina. The first comprehensive study examining the impact of the storm on housing in the state's three hard-hit coastal counties was released today by the RAND Corporations' Gulf States Policy Institute, and it found that affordable housing recovery lags behind the pace of the rest of the housing market in the region -- and that in turn is impeding the overall pace of the recovery, according to a release announcing the report:

This gap has seriously worsened the pre-Hurricane shortage of affordable housing in Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties, researchers say. The problem makes it particularly difficult to attract the construction laborers and other workers needed to rebuild the region's devastated infrastructure, the report says.

"The challenge for the region is to develop a balanced growth plan that provides housing for people at every income level," said Kevin McCarthy, the study's lead author and a senior social scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "There needs to be more affordable housing to create diversity in the economy and build a new, better Gulf Coast."

For a full copy of the RAND study, titled "Post-Katrina Recovery of the Housing Market Along the Mississippi Gulf Coast," click here.

HUD's rush to bar the door on New Orleans' poor

We recently brought you the story of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's plan to demolish four public housing complexes in New Orleans, despite the already severe shortage of housing affordable to the city's poor.

It turns out that the approval to demolish those housing complexes was rushed through the normal process. So reports Bill Quigley, director of the law clinic at Loyola University New Orleans and one of the attorneys who's been fighting the tear-down plans, in an article titled "HUD Demolitions Draw Noose Tighter Around New Orleans":

HUD told a federal judge ... "the average time [for the process of reviewing applications for demolition] is 100 days." They did suggest that the process could be expedited in the case of New Orleans. So it was. Instead of reviewing the details of demolishing 3,000 apartments and considering the law and facts and the administrative record for 100 days, HUD expedited the process to one day.

HUD and the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO, which HUD has been running for years) argued passionately that residents displaced from public housing (referred to once in their argument as 'refugees') are financially "better off" than they were before. This echoes the Barbara Bush comment of September 5, 2005 when she said, viewing the overwhelmingly African American crowd of thousands of people living on cots in the Astrodome, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- (she chuckles slightly) this is working very well for them."

However, public housing tenants vow that they will continue to fight the demolition plans. As Quigley reports seeing on a sign carried by a protester at a recent public housing rally: "We will not allow the community we built to be rebuilt without us."

Institute director to testify before Congress on Gulf Coast housing crisis and Katrina spending

Testimony comes as Bush administration, Senate GOP seeks to limit housing available to poor New Orleans residents

Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and author of a series of reports on the post-Hurricane Katrina recovery, is scheduled to brief Congress tomorrow in Washington, D.C. on the need for new programs to help tens of thousands of displaced storm victims still without permanent homes.

"More than two years after Katrina, over 60,000 people are still living in FEMA trailers because federal housing programs have delivered too little and too late," said Kromm, who most recently co-authored Blueprint for Gulf Renewal: The Katrina Crisis and a Community Agenda for Action (August/September 2007). Read a copy of the full report here (pdf).

Chris's testimony comes as the Senate considers the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act (S. 1668), a landmark piece of legislation that would boost and streamline programs to help homeowners and renters get back into houses across the Gulf Coast. A similar bill (H.R. 1227) overwhelmingly passed the House earlier this year by a vote of 302-125.

His testimony also comes as the Bush administration and its Republican allies in the Senate are fighting efforts to maintain the same number of pre-Katrina housing units affordable to poor residents of New Orleans, which would make it more difficult for displaced people to exercise their right of return. As we reported here previously, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last week approved a plan to tear down four public housing complexes in the city. During yesterday's hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, HUD officials revealed that they oppose the full replacement of demolished units as provided for in S. 1668, to the shock of the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

Landrieu expressed surprise at the administration's opposition to the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery bill given that similar legislation glided 302-125 through the House this year with strong bipartisan support, including from the entire Louisiana delegation. Landrieu and Dodd introduced their bill in the Senate in June.

"I'm operating for a year and a half with congressmen on both sides of the aisle with the idea that HUD is supporting our efforts," Landrieu said. "I am perplexed after a year and a half to hear you are not supporting this bill."

Among those opposing the legislation is Landrieu's colleague, U.S. Sen. David Vitter (D-La.), who incorrectly charged in a statement that the bill would "re-create the New Orleans housing projects exactly as they were." In fact, the proposal requires that any public housing apartment torn down be replaced with another form of low-income housing -- either subsidized public housing, partially subsidized "affordable" units or vouchers that offset a portion of rents. The measure allows local government officials and the Housing Authority of New Orleans to decide the appropriate mix.

Mississippi plan to divert Katrina housing money draws more protests

We recently brought you the story of Mississippi's plan to divert $600 million in federal funds from a housing program for low-income homeowners hit by Hurricane Katrina to improve the state port at Gulfport.

Advocacy groups including Oxfam America, the Mississippi NAACP and the Mississippi Justice Center protested the proposal being pushed by the Mississippi Development Authority, we reported. Since then, others have joined in to express concerns about the diversion.

More than a dozen religious leaders with the Mississippi Coast Interfaith Disaster Task Force expressed their opposition to the plan with Gov. Haley Barbour; they also collected 2,000 signatures on a petition opposing the shift, the Sun Herald reports. And today, state lawmakers met with Mississippi Development Authority officials to express their concerns about the proposal, according to the Clarion Ledger.

Today is the last day for people to submit comments about the proposal. Comments may be e-mailed to actioned@mississippi.org, faxed to 601-359-9280 or mailed to Mississippi Development Authority, Attention: Disaster Recovery, P.O. Box 849, Jackson, Mississippi, 39205.

Bush administration OKs demolition of New Orleans public housing complexes

Despite the severe shortage of housing affordable to low-income residents of the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Friday approved a plan by the Housing Authority of New Orleans to raze four public housing complexes with a total of 4,500 units and redevelop them as mixed-income housing, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

The developments targeted for tear-downs are C.J. Peete, St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper and Lafitte. The demolition work is expected to begin in the next two or three months, according to the paper.

Among those raising concerns about the plan are U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), the sponsors of the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act (S. 1668), which guarantees that any demolished public housing in the hurricane-affected region is replaced. That bill is under consideration in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which Dodd chairs. Reports the Times-Picayune:

"HUD is moving forward with the demolition of its public housing without adequate plans to ensure that replacement housing is developed in its place," Landrieu wrote in a letter dated Friday to HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson. "To do so in the midst of an affordable housing crisis in the area is shortsighted and undermines comprehensive congressional efforts to solve this issue."

Landrieu is among those scheduled to testify tomorrow before that committee in a hearing titled "Two Years After the Storm: Housing Needs in the Gulf Coast." Also scheduled to testify are Orlando Cabrera, HUD's assistant secretary for public and Indian housing; James Perry of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center; and Emelda Paul, president of the Lafitte Resident Council.

The tear-down plans resulted in a federal class-action lawsuit against HANO and HUD that accused the agencies of violating tenants' rights by refusing to restore the complexes to their pre-Katrina state. But in February, U.S. District Court Judge Ivan Lemelle ruled that HANO could move ahead with the demolition. And last week, Lemelle limited the case to those public-housing tenants who've been forced to pay utility bills since being displaced from their homes after Katrina, because public housing residents pay only rent. The plaintiffs' lead attorney, Bill Quigley of Loyola Law School, said appeals from both sides are likely, which will probably push a trial originally scheduled for November into next year, the Times-Picayune reports.

Help bring a presidential debate to New Orleans

Women of the Storm -- a nonprofit, nonpartisan alliance of Louisiana women whose lives were affected by Hurricane Katrina and/or Rita -- is working with Dillard, Loyola, Tulane and Xavier universities to encourage the Commission on Presidential Debates to hold one of their 2008 debates at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

The proposal has already been endorsed by the Washington Post, New York Times, New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the six U.S. Senators running for president.

Now, Friends of New Orleans -- another nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to support the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort -- has joined the initiative with an e-mail campaign on its Web site. Sending a message of support will take only 30 seconds of your time and is as easy as clicking here.

Would Mississippi take from poor Katrina victims to improve a port?

A Mississippi agency wants to divert $600 million in federal funds from a housing program created to help low-income homeowners who suffered losses in Hurricane Katrina and use it to spruce up the State Port at Gulfport, the Associated Press reports.

The MDA claims that the housing program has more than enough money to meet demand, making the diversion possible. "This funding will be an important part of helping the State Port Authority restore and enhance port infrastructure for economic development initiatives that will create jobs and improve quality of life for the citizens of the Mississippi Gulf Coast," Gov. Haley Barbour said in a recent statement.

Oxfam America, the Mississippi NAACP and the Mississippi Center for Justice oppose the plan, however. "It's just unfair," Reilly Morse of the Center for Justice told the AP. "We've been told affordable housing was supposed to be a priority. Don't rob the displaced to build a port."

As we here at the Institute for Southern Studies documented in our recent report Blueprint for Gulf Renewal, there's still a serious post-Katrina housing crisis on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Homeowners found the MDA's grant application process to be difficult and time-consuming, and many are still waiting for checks. In the meantime, there are few affordable rental units available in the region, another barrier facing internally displaced persons trying to exercise their right of return.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must approve the MDA's proposal, which is open for public comment until Sept. 24. Comments may be e-mailed to actioned@mississippi.org, faxed to 601-359-9280 or mailed to Mississippi Development Authority, Attention: Disaster Recovery, P.O. Box 849, Jackson, Mississippi, 39205.