New Orleans to push homeless into barrack

At the same time public housing complexes in New Orleans are being torn down and redeveloped into mixed-income communities with less space for the poorest families, Mayor Ray Nagin has announced his intent to push the homeless people who've been living under Interstate 10 near the French Quarter into a tarp-covered barrack.

The 120-foot-long, 30-foot-wide structure stands on the grounds of the New Orleans Mission in the city's Central Business District. The barrack was built by nearly two dozen volunteers from churches around the country and funded largely by First Baptist New Orleans and the Louisiana Baptist Convention. New Orleans' homeless population is estimated to have doubled since Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005.

The homeless relocation program is not voluntarily, according to a report from the Associated Press:

The city's public advocacy unit, unarmed officers with the New Orleans Police Department Homeless Assistance Collaborative, city housing department workers, and mission staff will usher people into the barrack as early as Thursday, [Nagin spokesperson Ceeon] Quiett said. Those who do not go elsewhere will face citations, and arrests could take place if drugs are found, city officials said.

KatrinaRitaVille Express is coming to tonight's presidential debates!

Several Gulf Coast organizations have purchased two FEMA trailers that are now touring the country to raise awareness about the ongoing nature of the crisis in the region and the government's failure so far to rebuild in a manner that meets the needs of poor and minority residents. The trailers will be making a stop at tonight's CNN Democratic Presidential Debate from the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. At 7 p.m., the debate will be shown live on the side of one of the 32-foot trailers. For more details about the KatrinaRitaVille Express, visit the tour's Web site here.

Citing formaldehyde risks, FEMA begins "aggressive" relocation of Katrina trailer dwellers

But no financial assistance provided for those sickened by unsafe housing

Almost two years after first being notified about the problem by environmental advocates, federal health officials this week confirmed dangerously high levels of formaldehyde in travel trailers and mobile homes occupied by people displaced by Hurricane Katrina -- levels expected to rise with temperatures. Consequently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it would take "aggressive action" to move people out of manufactured housing and into more permanent homes by summer, or at least into hotels and motels until more long-term solutions are found.

In a Feb. 14 press conference held in New Orleans with FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding discussed the preliminary findings of her agency's study of formaldehyde in housing for Katrina victims. The chemical, which is emitted by building materials, has been linked to breathing problems and cancer.

One-third of the 519 travel trailers and mobile homes the CDC tested had formaldehyde levels high enough to cause respiratory symptoms in children, the elderly and people with respiratory diseases such as asthma. Both housing types were found to have high levels -- on average, about five times the levels in most modern homes. About 5 percent of the units had levels so high that even people without vulnerabilities could experience breathing problems.

Though the majority of units tested had relatively low levels of the chemical that would not be expected to cause health problems over the short term, Gerberding acknowledged that "exposures do add up over time" and that even residents of units with low levels of formaldehyde were at risk of health problems over time.

FEMA and CDC staff are in the Gulf region to meet with study participants and advise them on the findings, and the agencies will hold community meetings to provide information to Katrina trailer dwellers who were not chosen to participate in the federal study. FEMA will offer caseworker assistance to help affected families find new housing alternatives, and the agency will provide financial assistance with food, furniture and boarding of pets for families in need.

The CDC is also creating a registry of people who lived in manufactured housing after Katrina in order to study their health over time and gain a better understanding of formaldehyde's impacts. However, neither CDC nor FEMA have any programs in place to help trailer and mobile home residents with medical expenses incurred as a result of living in unsafe housing.

At the peak of the Katrina-related displacement, about 144,000 families were living in trailers, with an average of about three residents per trailer, according to Paulison. About 38,000 families are still living in those units, and about 30,000 of those are parked next to private residences that are being renovated or rebuilt. FEMA reports that about 800 to 1,000 displaced families are moving out of manufactured housing each week.

Because the Katrina disaster wiped out a significant portion of the region's affordable rental housing stock, FEMA has faced difficulties in getting displaced renters into permanent housing. To address this problem, Paulison announced plans to create a joint federal-state relocation task force to help improve placement efforts. He could not provide any figures on how much the relocation effort would cost.

When asked about how the agency would deal with families that chose not to leave their travel trailer or mobile homes, Paulison said that would be an issue for the joint housing task force to address.

"That's going to a tough decision for us," he said. "Some people aren't going to want to move."

In response to concerns about mobile homes originally designated for Katrina victims being used to house families left homeless by the recent tornadoes in Arkansas and Tennessee, Paulison said his agency would allow the use only of those units that had been aired out for at least a week and that had been tested and found to have low formaldehyde levels. Furthermore, he said FEMA would not use use travel trailers to house disaster victims in the future. But he didn't offer any plans to provide additional testing on units as the weather warms up and formaldehyde off-gassing increases.

CDC is now doing further work to identify those manufacturers whose units tested especially high. Gerberding said that analysis would be available in a few weeks. But she cautioned against using the results for Katrina units to make judgments about manufactured housing more generally.

"We learned something about mobile homes and need to step back and see what relevance this has," she said, adding that manufacturers have taken steps over the years to lessen formaldehyde off-gassing.

Neither Paulison nor Gerberding mentioned the Sierra Club, which first discovered high formaldehyde levels in the manufactured housing FEMA provided to Katrina victims. Findings released by the environmental advocacy group in the spring of 2006 found that 88 percent of trailers tested had formaldehyde levels above the federal recommended limit.

But it wasn't until heated congressional hearings held last July that FEMA leaders agreed to work with the CDC to conduct their own study of trailer air quality. As a result, some advocates have suggested that the agencies intentionally delayed the tests until cooler weather arrived, bringing down formaldehyde levels.

There are a steps that people still living in FEMA trailer and mobile homes can take to minimize formaldehyde levels, according to Gerberding. These include ventilating the units, spending more time outside, and not smoking tobacco inside, which worsens formaldehyde pollution and also makes people more susceptible to respiratory problems. Trailer and mobile home dwellers experiencing respiratory symptoms should contact their doctor. Residents can call toll-free 800-CDC-INFO for more on health effects and 866-562-2381 for FEMA relocation assistance.

Gerberding hopes that by next Valentine's Day she will be in the Gulf to celebrate the placement of all Katrina-displaced families in permanent housing -- because, as she said, "home is really where the heart is."

Human rights advocates blast U.S. record on race, Katrina

Later this month, representatives of the Bush administration will travel to Geneva, Switzerland to defend the the United States' human rights record before a United Nations committee. Meanwhile, human rights advocates charge that the administration is not only failing to comply with a treaty to eliminate racial discrimination but is trying to whitewash the reality of racial inequality in America -- particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

On Feb. 21 and 22, officials with the U.S. State Department and the Department of Justice will appear before the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which is examining compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. When the United States signed the ICERD treaty in 1994, it agreed -- though with some reservations -- to eliminate "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life."

Under the treaty, the United States is obligated to prepare a report every two years documenting its compliance and steps it's taking to remedy racism. However, the United States has submitted only two such reports, the first [PDF] in 2000. The second report [PDF], released last April, met with widespread criticism among human rights advocacy groups -- including many associated with the Atlanta-based U.S. Human Rights Network, which produced its own so-called "shadow report" documenting problems the Bush administration's report fails to acknowledge or discuss in depth. Said USHRN Executive Director Ajamu Baraka:

"Our analysis reveals that the Bush Administration is utterly out of touch with the reality of racial discrimination in America. From failing to address the chronic persistence of structural racism to even acknowledging the disparate racial impact on people of color of Hurricane Katrina, the State Department reports reads like a fantasy; unfortunately a fantasy that is to often experienced as a nightmare for Americans of color."

According to USHRN, the U.S. government's report:

* does not mention the race- and poverty-related impacts of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath;
* ignores the issue of policy brutality, which it calls "one of the most blatant and common forms of ongoing differential treatment based on race";
* does not discuss the "school to prison pipeline," in which discriminatorily applied "zero tolerance" policies and criminal justice-based responses to overcrowding and under-resourcing of public schools drive children of color out of the educational system and into the prison system;
* provides information about compliance with the Convention at the state level only for Oregon, South Carolina, Illinois and New Mexico while overlooking states with some of the country's largest populations of people of color and immigrants as well as the Gulf Coast States impacted by Katrina;
* suggests that racial disparities in incarceration rates may be "related to differential involvement in crime" rather than the cumulative impacts of racial disparities in the treatment of minorities at every stage of the criminal justice process;
* fails to acknowledge widespread racially and ethnically targeted law enforcement practices since 9/11 such as the special registration program and aggressive round-ups and interviews of thousands of non-citizen Muslims, Arabs and South Asians; and
* ignores the profound and ongoing effects of colonialism and racial discrimination on indigenous people in the United States.

Activists and experts affiliated with the Network will be attending the Geneva hearings to monitor the U.S. presentation and hold press briefings.

Last month the Institute for Southern Studies released its own report documenting U.S. non-compliance with international human rights standards in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, focusing specifically on the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

More improprieties surface involving HUD chief who pushed NOLA public housing teardowns

We've reported previously on revelations that U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson oversaw the award of a contract for redeveloping a New Orleans public housing complex to a company that owes him hundreds of thousands of dollars, that he hooked up a friend and golfing buddy with a $485,000 job at the Housing Authority of New Orleans, and that dozens of no-bid contracts approved by HUD in post-Katrina New Orleans went to politically connected companies and consultants.

Despite the ethical clouds hanging over Jackson, though, the New Orleans City Council recently approved his department's plan to tear down four public housing complexes that were barely damaged by the storm and replace them with mixed-income units offering fewer slots for the poor.

Well, new allegations of improprieties on the part of the nation's housing chief have surfaced. Today's Washington Post reports that Jackson allegedly demanded the Philadelphia Housing Authority Transfer a $2 million public property at a deep discount to his friend, developer and noted songwriter Kenny Gamble. When the PHA refused, Jackson's aides threatened to strip the agency of its ability to spend some federal funds -- a move that could result in rent hikes for most of its 84,000 tenants and layoffs for 250 employees. The PHA filed a lawsuit against HUD and Jackson in December. Jackson also remains under investigation by HUD's inspector general and the Justice Department.

Meanwhile, poor and working-class people are finding it ever harder to locate affordable housing in New Orleans.