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| New Orleans Update -
11-16-05
Quote:
FEMA to Stop Paying for Evacuees' Hotels
WASHINGTON - FEMA is stepping up the pressure on some 53,000 families left homeless by hurricanes to leave government-paid hotel rooms and find long-term housing.
The agency said Tuesday that it will stop paying hotel bills by the end of the month for most of the families devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, even though housing advocates fear they won't have enough time to find other places.
Most of the people still staying in hotels and motels are in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had previously set the December deadline as a goal to have evacuees out of hotels and into travel trailers, mobile homes or apartments until they find permanent homes.
Tuesday's announcement marked the first time the agency said it would cease directly paying for hotel rooms that have cost FEMA $274 million since the storms struck.
FEMA granted exceptions to evacuees in hotels in Louisiana and Mississippi, where there is a shortage of housing. Evacuees in those states have until Jan. 7 to find homes, said David Garratt, FEMA's acting director of recovery. He said 9,830 households remain in hotels in Louisiana and 2,508 in Mississippi.
"There are still too many people living in hotel rooms, and we want to help them get into longer-term homes before the holidays," FEMA Acting Director R. David Paulison said in a statement. "Across the country, there are readily available, longer-term housing solutions for these victims that can give greater privacy and stability than hotel and motel rooms."
"Those affected by these storms should have the opportunity to become self-reliant again and reclaim some normalcy in their lives," Paulison said.
After Dec. 1, most hurricane evacuees who aren't ready to leave hotels will have to pay the costs out of pocket — either with FEMA rental housing aid they receive or from their own funds.
Katrina hit on Aug. 29, followed by Rita on Sept. 24.
In Houston, Mayor Bill White demanded that FEMA grant a similar extension to the city as it moves 19,158 evacuees out of city hotels.
"We have moved more evacuees out of hotels than any other city has ever had in hotels," White said in a statement. "So we encourage those new to it to ask us, not tell us, how to do it."
The hotel program marked FEMA's second step in finding homes for hundreds of thousands of evacuees displaced after the storms. Over the last month, FEMA has moved 8,748 people out of emergency shelters and into hotels and other transitional housing, Garratt said. As of Tuesday, 2,491 evacuees remain in shelters, down from a high of 321,000, he said.
Also by Dec. 1, thousands of evacuees who receive FEMA housing aid in vouchers issued though state or local authorities will have to sign a rental lease to remain eligible for the funding. Three months later, on March 1, FEMA will end the voucher program and send housing aid directly to evacuees who qualify.
Additionally, the six-month leases for evacuees living on cruise ships will end March 1, Garratt said.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose state welcomed many Katrina evacuees, said: "We recognize and agree with FEMA's decision to make personal responsibility a part of the hurricane recovery process. However, my great concern is that there is still no long-term housing plan for the hundreds of thousands of Katrina victims who lost everything — including their homes — as a result of the storm, and come March 1 many of them may find themselves with no long-term housing options."
Housing advocates said FEMA has not given evacuees enough time to find homes and sign leases — a process that can take months in rental markets already nearing capacity.
So far, FEMA says it has provided $1.2 billion in transitional housing assistance to more than 500,000 households displaced by the hurricanes.
The Red Cross had not seen details of the plan Tuesday, but spokesman Michael Spencer said "the time has passed for emergency housing."
"Interim housing is the responsibility of the state and federal government, and we have to assume they have a plan in place," he said.
LINK | In other words "Life sucks, then you deal with it, so move on with your lives, you fucking worthless shitbags!"
In unrelated news...... Quote:
Big Easy uneasy about migrant wave
Thousands of Latino laborers have beaten a path to hurricane-battered New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in a quest for paychecks. Hopes are high. So are tensions.
NEW ORLEANS -- Every day throughout the French Quarter and downtown, the ranks of deeply tanned, Spanish-speaking men in soiled clothing grow and become more visible amid the ruin.
Two men from Mexico, now working here for a Houston contractor, are being tossed out of a Bourbon Street strip joint because they don't have any U.S. identification. "They're coming from all parts" of Mexico, one man said of his compatriot illegal migrants.
On nearby Canal Street, bisecting the city's heart, where street gutters are lined with putrid debris, Jaime Salas Aguilar, 27, wanders about with a desperate and hungry look. "You got any work?" he asks a visitor.
A native of the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi who paid a smuggler $2,000 three years ago to guide him illegally across the Arizona desert, Salas, whose features hint of his Mayan ancestry, left Atlanta for New Orleans about a month back because he had heard of bigger paychecks here.
He is among uncounted thousands of migrant Latino laborers beating a path to New Orleans and other parts of the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast, sensing an extraordinary opportunity for jobs if they're willing to work 70 to 80 hours a week for $8 an hour or better.
They face harsh living conditions, ranging from tent camps to dilapidated motels, and they often are cheated out of their full earnings by labor brokers.
The emergence in New Orleans of America's ubiquitous pool of illegal immigrant workers--estimated at up to 12 million nationwide--is straining ethnic tolerance in a city that had counted only 3 percent of its population as Hispanic. That was before Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29.
More migrants, more tension
The swelling numbers of Hispanic migrant laborers, legal or not, have raised political tensions. A Tulane University historian speaks of a possible "population swap" between the city's evacuated black population and its new Latino workforce, and the backlash was fueled by New Orleans' African-American mayor, C. Ray Nagin, who recently uttered remarks deemed offensive by some.
"How do I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexican workers?" Nagin asked at an October forum with business people as he discussed the city's future.
That comment prompted rebukes from both African-American organizations typically friendly to rising leaders such as Nagin and from Latino groups, which together called the comment "an example of remarks that can divide Americans at a time when we need to be united."
"We are united in the belief that legitimate concerns should not be the catalyst for pitting one group against another," said the joint statement by the National Urban League, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Asian American Justice Center.
FULL ARTICLE |
Remember a few months ago when the President of Mexico made national headlines when he said something to the effect of "my people are great because they take the jobs that not even blacks will do"? Gosh, HE WAS FUCKING RIGHT!
All the shitbags of New Orleans are sucking money from the government trough, while doing fuck all but sitting on their asses, while the Mexicans are moving in to do the rebuilding work. Using the stats from the previous story, I'd say there are 53,000 volunteers who need a fucking boot up their asses to get them back to the shithole they used to call home, and rebuild it themselves! |
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