Report finds progress for some, hardships for many since Katrina

The recovery of Louisiana's people from Hurricane Katrina is far from complete.

That's the conclusion of a report released today by the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps, a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit that helps families and individuals recover from storm-related losses. Titled "Progress for Some, Hope and Hardships for Many," the report examines the obstacles still faced by many Louisiana residents and highlights what officials can do to help.

"Just like our state's levees, roads and homes, the lives of our people still need our attention and resource commitments," says Recovery Corps CEO Raymond Jetson. "Some residents are on the road to recovery and some are facing roadblocks."

The report was based on a survey of more than 2,100 storm-impacted residents in Calcasieu, Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes. About 45 percent of the households surveyed were black while about 51 percent were white. About 60 percent of the households surveyed were made up of adults without children, 20 percent were single adults with children, and 17 percent were married couples with children.

Among the report's key findings:

* Only one-third of impacted residents consider themselves mostly recovered from the disaster.

* Residents of Orleans Parish report the greatest challenges and slowest progress toward recovery.

* Black households report much greater impacts than white households. For example, nearly half of black households live someplace different than before the disaster, compared to only 20 percent of white households. This holds true even for black households with higher incomes.

* Only 20 percent of residents feel there are adequate resources to aid in recovery.

The report offers a number of broad policy suggestions that include confronting the emerging disparity in access and interest in training and employment opportunities, homeownership and stress management; initiating interventions that are "culturally competent and relevant"; and creating services to provide one-time financial help to impacted residents.

As the report concludes:

The human voice in recovery has been often overpowered by the sound of progress in rebuilding buildings, repairing levees, or even the silence of barren neighborhoods once full of life. The collective future of Louisiana is tied to the way in which we continue to approach recovery, particularly human recovery. The voices of people, our people, are shouting loudly to all that can hear. Are you listening?

McCain on Hagee's Katrina remarks: "Nonsense!"

During presidential candidate John McCain's visit to New Orleans yesterday, reporters asked him about Pastor John Hagee's statements that Hurricane Katrina was God's judgment against New Orleans for a gay pride parade. While Hagee has endorsed McCain -- an endorsement McCain has said he's glad to have -- the Arizona Senator wants to make it clear that he does not endorse Hagee's remarks. Here's what he had to say:

"It's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense. I don't have anything additional to say. It's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, I don't have anything more to say….it's nonsense. I reject that categorically."

But McCain's rejection of Hagee's Katrina comments didn't stop him from getting in a dig at Sen. Barack Obama's relationship with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who by the way will be the guest tonight on the PBS show Bill Moyers Journal. Asked about whether commenting on surrogates and endorsers is interfering with the campaign, McCain answered:

I didn't attend Pastor Hagee's church for 20 years. There's a great deal of difference in my view between someone who endorses you and other circumstances.

Televangelist repeats Katrina-as-punishment-for-gay-pride comments

Remember Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, the televangelist who told a radio show that Hurricane Katrina was God's judgment against New Orleans for a gay pride parade? Well, he's back at it. Think Progress reported on comments Hagee made this week on another radio show when asked to clarify his earlier remarks:

The topic of that day was cursing and blessing. … What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God, in time if New Orleans recovers and becomes the pristine city it can become it may in time be called a blessing. But at this time it's called a curse.

Hagee, you may recall, is the same religious leader whose endorsement presidential candidate John McCain solicited, accepted, and said he's still "glad to have." We wonder if Hagee's remarks will come up during McCain's visit today to the still-recovering city. We also wonder if North Carolina's GOP leaders gave any thought to Hagee's statements when they decided to run ads linking Obama to the controversial comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright over McCain's protests.

P.S.: Well, apparently Hagee's comments will come up during McCain's visit to New Orleans, thanks to MoveOn.org.

Katrina's homeless hit hard psychologically, study finds

New Orleans residents who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina were five times more likely to experience serious psychological distress a year after the disaster than those who did not.

That's among the findings of a new study presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in New Orleans. The research was conducted by Narayan Sastry of the University of Michigan and Mark VanLandingham of Tulane University. They examined the mental health status of New Orleans' pre-Katrina residents one year after the disaster.

Blacks reported much higher rates of serious psychological distress than whites. Almost one-third of blacks were found to have a high degree of distress, compared to just 6 percent of whites. Those with higher incomes and more education were much less likely to experience serious psychological distress, while those born in Louisiana were much more likely to suffer serious distress.

"Our findings suggest that severe damage to one's home is a particularly important factor behind socioeconomic disparities in psychological distress, and possibly behind the levels of psychological distress," Sastry said. "These effects may be partly economic, because, for most families who own their home, home equity is the largest element of household wealth."

The researchers note that severely damaged or destroyed housing may also prevent people from returning to their community, which in turn affects social ties and employment. Given the magnitude and permanence of a housing loss, they say, the psychological consequences of the experience could be profound and lasting.

(FEMA photo of destroyed homes in New Orleans by Marvin Naumann)

The new HUD nominee and the Katrina housing crisis

On Friday, President Bush announced his nominee to replace outgoing Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson, who resigned while under investigation for illegal partisanship and cronyism in the provision of contracts. Jackson was also criticized by low-income housing advocates for pushing a plan to tear down public housing complexes in New Orleans that were barely damaged by Hurricane Katrina and replace them with mixed-income developments with less room for the poor -- a plan that's now faltering due to the credit crunch.

Bush's choice is Steven Preston, currently head of the Small Business Administration and a former executive with ServiceMaster and an investment banker with Lehman Brothers. Preston came to the SBA in 2006, at a time when the agency was under fire for its slow response to requests for loans from small businesses and homeowners impacted by Katrina. Shortly after he took over, the backlog of loan requests fell by 80 percent and its response times increased by 90 percent, as Bush noted during the press conference announcing the appointment:

Steve Preston is an experienced manager who knows what to do. He knows how to tackle a problem, devise a solution and get results. That's exactly the kind of leadership I was looking for.

The nomination was met with cautious praise from the U.S. Senators representing Louisiana. Democrat Mary Landrieu called Preston a "willing and able partner" and said she hoped HUD would be a "better partner" under his leadership, while Republican David Vitter said he was "encouraged" by Preston's "track record as a reformer and problem solver."

But others in Congress were less optimistic about Bush's choice. Noting that the United States faces the biggest housing crisis in recent history, Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said the nation needs a leader with expertise in housing issue, "yet the President’s choice has no apparent housing background, which raises questions." Rep. Nydia Velazquez, a New York Democrat who chairs the House Small Business Committee, was even less charitable in her assessment of the nomination:

Trading one troubled agency for another is short-sighted, and it could not come at a worse time for the American people. HUD’s crisis must be resolved without delay. But the fact remains the agency Mr. Preston has been responsible for leading is still plagued by serious problems of its own. Large businesses continue getting small business contracts, SBA’s Katrina disaster relief program is a failure, and morale of the agency’s personnel is one of the lowest in the federal government.

Indeed, while the President focused on Preston's achievement in reducing the backlog of Katrina-related loan requests, the SBA under his leadership was lax in preparations for future disasters. In a report on the agency released last February, the Government Accountability Office acknowledged improvements under Preston but noted that the SBA still lacked a timetable for completing a disaster management plan.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, National Low Income Housing Coalition Director Sheila Crowley discussed the serious problems with housing since Katrina, including Jackson's poor handling of the region's federally assisted housing. She shared her wishes for what Preston's priorities would be:

I have high hopes he'll roll up his sleeves and dig into the Katrina mess, given that he has knowledge from another agency perspective. We'd also like to see immediate attention to issues related to getting adequate funding for public housing agencies. What HUD has lacked for the past eight years is an agency secretary who is an advocate for the agency's programs and who cared that the programs they worked for served the American public. And what we're looking for in a secretary is someone who has that commitment.

Will Preston be that someone? Time will tell.

(Photo of Preston and Bush from www.whitehouse.gov)

FEMA trailer toxin linked to Lou Gehrig's disease

Earlier this year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that trailers the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided to families displaced by Hurricane Katrina were contaminated with dangerously high levels of formaldehyde. Now, a new study suggests that the chemical -- which has already been linked to cancer and respiratory illnesses -- carries another risk: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

ALS is a progressive disease that causes damage to nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and leads to paralysis and death. There is no cure or effective treatment for the condition.

The study's lead author is Marc Weisskopf, an assistant professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He and his colleagues analyzed data from an American Cancer Society study of more than 1 million people who were monitored for 15 years, finding that 617 men and 539 women died of ALS during that time. Only those who reported formaldehyde exposure had a higher risk -- 34 percent -- of developing the illness.

At this time, neither the CDC nor FEMA have any programs in place to help trailer residents with medical expenses incurred as a result of living in unsafe housing.

"This is like Baghdad": Accused teen acquitted in killing of popular New Orleans musician

The December 2006 murder of Hot 8 Brass Band drummer and high school music teacher Dinerral Shavers shocked New Orleans. Followed a week later by the killing of filmmaker and Food Not Bombs activist Helen Hill and coming amidst mounting violence in the storm-ravaged city, the incident sparked protest marches and official promises to crack down on crime. The initial failure of District Attorney Eddie Jordan to bring charges for Shavers' shooting, which took place while he was driving down a public street in broad daylight, was also part of the controversy that led to Jordan's resignation last year.

David Bonds, 19, was eventually charged with Shavers' murder. But after a four-day trial this week during which teenage witnesses proved reluctant to finger Bonds, a jury voted to acquit him of second-degree murder. Bonds allegedly shot Shavers by mistake while aiming for the man's teenage stepson because he did not "belong" in the neighborhood.

As the trial concluded, Judge Jerome Winsberg offered his personal commentary to the courtroom, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

"This is like Baghdad," Winsberg told the jury after reading their verdicts aloud. "It is appalling...It is shocking."

People shooting each other over neighborhood alliances, the veteran judge noted; children not only raising themselves, but being left to care for toddlers and babies in the 2200 block of Dumaine Street.

Winsberg said he wasn't commenting on the verdict, only on the four days of testimony that preceded it. A subset of New Orleans unfolded in court, the judge said, one in which no one seems to live with their parents, but guns and "beefs" and threats are ever-present.

Also commenting on the trial was Silence Is Violence, an anti-violence campaign founded following the murders of Shavers and Hill:

The world our young people are living in came to terrifying light through the fearful testimony of witnesses, justifiably afraid; through the defendant's assertion that he sells drugs in order "to help my family" (this forming part of the defense in this trial); through the repeated references to petty but clearly deadly turf wars being fought by children too young to drive from one neighborhood to another.