The Disaster that Keeps on Giving

That's how my friend Derrick Evans refers to Hurricane Katrina these days. Here's Trisha Miller to explain a little of what he means by that.

The promise of renewal is fading with each passing anniversary. As a nation, we must lend a voice and a hand to help end the suffering among families who survived the hurricane but cannot find a path homeward.

It is unconscionable that a teenage boy in Pascagoula must crawl into his front door because the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not issue his family a handicapped-accessible trailer. Or that a mother in D'Iberville, whose home was reduced to rubble in the storm, cannot rebuild or reunite her family until she resolves a dispute with FEMA over her right to emergency assistance. Or that the lethargic pace of state recovery assistance means that an eligible Mississippi homeowner may lose his home through foreclosure while awaiting a homeowner assistance grant.

These are but a few examples of a continuing storm that has besieged the Gulf Coast. The road home rests with all of us.

This continuing storm is not a natural disaster:

In Mississippi alone, 70,000 homes were destroyed and 160,000 were damaged by the storm. Low- and moderate-income families occupied the majority of the homes affected by the hurricane. Affordable housing is desperately needed to help families rebuild their lives, but the state and federal governments have failed to deliver assistance to those most in need. Although Mississippi has received $5.4 billion in federal Community Development Block Grants, the Mississippi Development Authority has so far paid only $55 million to 787 lower-income households under the only income-targeted program for homeowners.

Mississippi has strayed far from Congress's goal to spend half this money on lower-income storm victims' needs. A recently released report authored by Mississippi Center for Justice for the Steps Coalition details how Mississippi has underfunded the lower-income population' recovery by $1 billion and what it would take to restore balance. See http://www.stepscoalition.org/news/article/steps_coalition_cdbg_report

More than 2,500 public housing units were damaged or destroyed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Two years later, HUD and the Mississippi Regional Housing Authority have not replaced the damaged public housing or provided a sufficient number of Section 8 vouchers.

16,000 FEMA trailers still serve as homes for many Mississippi families, and even this temporary housing may soon disappear. Local governments have begun the process of prohibiting FEMA trailers without offering housing alternatives to families living on the verge of homelessness.

The storm rages from southeast Texas, through southern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Two years and the government still has no plan for the devastated Gulf Coast region.