The magnitude of the Gulf Coast story presents tremendously interesting policy questions, yet has all but disappeared from the news. I have talked with friends on the ground there recently and there remain many questions about what happens next. While waiting for those answers, not to mention their insurance checks, people have spent several months elsewhere, enrolling their kids in new schools and maybe finding jobs locally, making the choice to return to the Gulf Coast another major life change decision. In the background, the greedy developers are trying to knock down houses that are not condemned. The rental property and labor markets are crazy. Businesses, hospitals, and schools are trying to decide whether to press on, change course, or fold. The Red Cross is wondering how to spend a zillion dollars in charitable contributions. And what is the government's role in all these issues? There are a million stories to mine.
FEMA yesterday increased its count of people displaced from the Gulf Coast by hurricanes Katrina and Rita by nearly a third, to about 2 million people. A FEMA spokeswoman attributed the sharp rise to a reporting error.
According to a news release, FEMA is paying rental assistance to 685,635 families whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the Aug. 29 and Sept. 24 storms, an increase of 167,000, or 32 percent, over a month ago.
In December, the agency counted only recipients of a transitional housing assistance program created Sept. 23, FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said. Shortly before Christmas, FEMA discovered that it had not counted families receiving rental assistance under a traditional disaster aid program, she said."We've never had a situation where an entire American city was evacuated, and they weren't able to go home," she said. "These numbers represent that phenomenon."
The figure exceeds initial post-hurricane estimate of 300,000 displaced families and an October estimate by FEMA to Congress of 450,000 to 600,000 households.
The estimate of 2 million displaced also dwarfs the number of people forced from their homes by past U.S. natural disasters, such as hurricanes Andrew, Charley, Ivan or Hugo, as well as the Dust Bowl migration.
Also yesterday, a federal judge in New Orleans ordered FEMA to allow hurricane evacuees in that city to stay in subsidized hotel rooms until March 1, extending a Feb. 27 deadline FEMA set Monday. FEMA also was required to continue providing lodging for at least two weeks for occupants nationwide whose eligibility for rental housing assistance is determined after Jan. 30, whenever that occurs.
1 comment:
Once you got the people off the buildings, the media had little interest.
They have important things to discuss like a president that insists on eavesdropping on terrorists.
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