Feud Brews Over Katrina Housing Funds
JACKSON, Mississippi - A state agency wants to divert $600 million from a Hurricane Katrina housing program to a port restoration project, outraging advocacy groups who say the proposal shortchanges thousands of people still homeless on the Gulf Coast.
The Mississippi Development Authority has proposed taking the money from the $2.25 billion remaining in Gov. Haley Barbour’s Homeowners Assistance Grant Program, which is funded by federal block grants. Part of that program is dedicated to low-income and working poor homeowners.
“It’s just unfair,” Reilly Morse of the Mississippi Center for Justice said Wednesday. “We’ve been told affordable housing was supposed to be a priority. Don’t rob the displaced to build a port.”
Agency officials said there would be enough money in the housing fund to cover about 30,000 homeowners applying for grants to restore or rebuild property destroyed by the storm.
The development authority chose to tap the Homeowner Assistance Grant Program because it had excess funding, Donna Sanford, director of MDA’s disaster recovery division, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
The proposal is open to public comment until Sept. 24, and organizations including Oxfam America and the Mississippi NAACP have said they will oppose it. The proposal needs approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The $600 million would be used to restore public infrastructure and publicly owned facilities at the State Port at Gulfport that were destroyed during the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane. It would also improve the operating capacity at the port, Barbour said in a news release.
Barbour said the restoration is “crucial to the economy of our state and essential to the revitalization of the Gulf Coast region.”
The port generates about 3,000 maritime jobs and is the third busiest container port in the Gulf of Mexico, said Don Allee, executive director of the Mississippi State Port Authority.
Thousands of families still live in FEMA trailers and affordable rental property is scarce. Roberta Avila of the Interfaith Disaster Task Force said many coast residents haven’t recovered because they don’t qualify for the governor’s housing program.
© 2007 The Associated Press
The housing in the picture is from a fund not discussed in the story. That picture shouldn’t be with this story…
But yeah, stealing 600 million from homeowners to help rebuild a port which is already heavily funded… More of the same.
All these years the Republicans cave to the core of that party again and again. But the Democratic party never even throws a bone. How do you fix it?
Fire all of them and get some new candidates and some new parties. Stop voting for the lesser of the two evils. Stop corporate campaign contributions. Get rid of the electronic voting machines. Get rid of the ‘two party system’. It hasn’t worked for at least 100 years.
Keep voting for the Republicraps and they’ll keep coming back.
Nothing new here - Republicans refuse to fund the poor it just makes more of them. They want to tax the poor, because if you tax something you get less of it.
This is actually the type of economics they believe in! Check their actions.
Sad - only 3 comments…
This is a crime as usual. But the criminals are handling all the funds. Where are the casino’s and all their money? They can’t kick something down to rebuild the port? Why isn’t both State & Fed government assisting in rebuilding the port with other monies rather than taking money from poor people? I guess we are only our brothers keepers in election years when cameras are rolling. I suppose Jesus would say build the port forget about building homes for people who are homeless.
You know it is a real shame that most American nations - North Central & South, are more literate then the United States? What are we doing to ourselves?
PBS stated that Louisiana suffered 90% or the housing damage but got only 60% or the funding and similar numbers for hospital losses. It seems that a Republican governor in Mississippi can get more help from Bush than a Democratic governor of Louisiana.
This is pretty dispicable. But screwing the people of Louisiana isn’t new - is it???
I just wonder how much money Haley Barbour and his friends will make off this swindle. The average person in Mississippi has been so marginalized for so long they are treated like lepers by State and Federal Government. The State is full of journalists with talent. Where are you .Start digging.
In “Natural Capitalism” Amory Lovins pointed out that 60 years after World War II and it looks like American cities were the ones who suffered bombing raids rather than London, Dresden and Hiroshima. . .And that book was written long before Katrina.
If this is the “Christian” nation Bush claims it to be…Jesus should return soon and smite those Republicans that are more interested in money than people.
The response of the privaate sector to the devastation caused by Katrina was commendable. WOuldn’t it be great if our elected representative government were so caring and generous?
Instead the Republicans continue to care only about getting themselves more oney and the Democrats don’t have the balls to stop this madness.
I guess when Jesus said, “the poor will always be with you”, our government took it as a mandate to ensure those most hit by Katrina lost even what little they had.
What a sad time to live in the US.
What can you expect what with the usual corruption in this State that has always placed the poor on the back burner? And the Federal Government is complicit in the looting, there is no doubt. Where is the voice in Katrina that is supposed to look after the people who have lost their homes. It probably wants another Miami where the rich are catered to and forget the poor. Why, immigrants from other countries who are rich have more rights in our country than people who have been here for centuries. And the usual theft and abuse of the indigent continues while the rich get the bigger pie.
Compassionate Conservatives- doing what they do best.