August, 29 2008, 10:18am EDT
Statement of the Katrina Housing Group on the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
WASHINGTON
Three years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast of the United States causing the destruction of hundreds of thousands of homes and the displacement of millions of people, a severe affordable housing crisis continues in the Gulf Coast states. Let us hope that Tropical Storm Gustav does not develop into a storm that causes further harm to the people of the Gulf Coast.
17,000 families still live in FEMA trailers, though many of these trailers have been proven to be toxic to human beings. 28,000 families who now rely on federal rent assistance will face a new crisis in six months, when that assistance is scheduled to end, because there are no affordable units to rent in their communities. Many more in need of housing aid have been cut off wrongfully. Homelessness in New Orleans is at record levels. Poor people whose homes were damaged in rural Texas and Alabama are still waiting for promised assistance to make repairs, and many in Louisiana who got some rebuilding help did not receive enough to complete the repairs necessary to make their homes livable. Thousands of residents in Mississippi were told they would get no help because, although their homes were battered by hurricane-force winds, they received no flood damage. Thousands of HUD-assisted units remain closed and neglected, while thousands of others have been demolished and not replaced. Families remain separated and once beloved communities are forever lost.
As extraordinary as the disaster of Katrina and Rita was, the failure of the recovery to rebuild the homes of the lowest income people is even more so. Poor planning, red-tape, mismanagement, and disregard of the needs of the lowest income families characterize the rebuilding efforts.
We, the members of the Katrina Housing Group, call for a renewed federal commitment to a housing recovery that includes all people who were displaced and room for everyone who wants to come home.
The Katrina Housing Group is composed of dozens of national and local non-profits, faith-based, legal service groups and organizations, which have met weekly since September 2005 to advocate on a federal policy response and to inform those communities that continue to struggle in the hurricanes' aftermath.
As we reflect on the fateful day of August 29, 2005, we remain steadfast in our advocacy, buoyed by the unwavering resolve and sheer will of the residents of the Gulf Coast. It is their continued determination to remake and better their communities, in the face of overwhelming odds, which offers hope for a better future.
But they cannot build that future alone. The rest of us, and our government, must help them. Congress must increase its oversight of the funding it has already provided to make sure that those most in need are truly being helped. Congress must also appropriate enough additional funds to finish the rebuilding job so that all of those displaced can have a home to return to.
We call on the Obama and McCain Campaigns to articulate what their respective administrations will do to assure decent and affordable homes in the neighborhoods of their choosing for all people who lost their homes to Katrina and Rita and to promise the people of the Gulf Coast that help and hope are on the way.
The Katrina Housing Group is convened by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Members include:
National Organizations
ACORN
American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging
Amnesty International
Appleseed Center for Law and Justice
Asian American Justice Center
Caddell Chapman, Inc.
Catholic Charities USA
Coan and Lyons
Enterprise Community Partners
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Everywhere Now Public Housing Residents Organization Together (ENPHRONT)
Fannie Mae
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Habitat for Humanity International
Hawkins Delafield & Wood LLP
Hip Hop Caucus
Jesuit Conference in America
Jewish Council for Public Affairs
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Local Initiatives Support Corporation
NAACP Legal Defense Fund
National Affordable Housing Management Association
National AIDS Housing Coalition
National Alliance to End Homelessness
National Association for the Mentally Ill
National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development
National Community Reinvestment Coalition
National Council on Independent Living
National Fair Housing Alliance
National Housing Conference
National Housing Law Project
National Housing Trust
National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty
National Leased Housing Association
National Low Income Housing Coalition
National Policy and Action Council on Homelessness
NETWORK: A Catholic Social Justice Lobby
Oxfam America
Policy Link
Presbyterian Church, USA
Public Interest Law Project
Technical Assistance Collaborative
Travelers Aid International
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)
United Way of America
Volunteers of America
Gulf Coast/Other Organizations
Alabama Appleseed
Alabama Arise
Bayou Clinic
Biloxi NAACP
Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of New Orleans
Coastal Women for Change
Christopher Homes, Inc.
City of Houston
Collaborative Solutions
Common Ground Solutions
Enterprise Corporation of the Delta
Fair Housing Center, Inc.
Florida Legal Assistance
From the Lake to the River: New Orleans Coalition for Legal Aid and Disaster Relief
Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center
The Justice Center
Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations
Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation
Louisiana Housing Alliance
Lone Star Legal Aid
Memphis Area Legal Services
Mississippi Center for Justice
Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities
Mississippi NAACP
Moving Forward Gulf Coast
New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation
Providence Community Housing
Rich Smith Developers
South Bay Community Alliance, Alabama
Steps Coalition, Mississippi
Texas Appleseed
Texas Low Income Housing Information Service
Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid
United Way Texas
UNITY of New Orleans
Volunteer Mobile, Inc
The National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated solely to ending America's affordable housing crisis. Established in 1974 by Cushing N. Dolbeare, NLIHC educates, organizes and advocates to ensure decent, affordable housing within healthy neighborhoods for everyone. NLIHC provides up-to-date information, formulates policy and educates the public on housing needs and the strategies for solutions.
LATEST NEWS
'McCarthyism Is Alive and Well': Google Fires 28 for Protesting Israel Contract
"These mass, illegal firings will not stop us," said organizers. "Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide."
Apr 18, 2024
The peace coalition No Tech for Apartheid accused Google of a "flagrant act of retaliation" late Wednesday night as the Silicon Valley giant announced it had fired 28 workers over protests against its cloud services contract with the Israeli government.
The firings came after Google organizers held two 10-hour sit-ins at the company's offices in Sunnyvale, California and New York City, demanding the termination of Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract under which Google and Amazon provide cloud infrastructure and data services for Israel—without any oversight regarding whether the Israel Defense Forces uses the services in its occupation of Palestinian territories and bombardment of Gaza.
Workers have denounced Project Nimbus since it was announced in 2021, but Israel's killing of at least 33,970 Palestinians in Gaza since October and its intentional starvation of civilians led employees to escalate their protests.
No Tech for Apartheid said in a statement that Google officials called the police to both offices to arrest nine protesters—dubbed the Nimbus Nine—on Tuesday morning, before utilizing "a dragnet of in-office surveillance" to fire nearly two dozen other employees on Wednesday.
"They punished all of the workers they could associate with this action in wholesale firings," said the coalition, which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change, a Muslim-led anti-war group.
Google accused the workers of "bullying," "harassment," defacing property, and physically impeding other employees—allegations No Tech for Apartheid rejected as it noted organizers "have yet to hear from a single executive about" their concerns over Google's collaboration with Israel.
"This excuse to avoid confronting us and our concerns directly, and attempt to justify its illegal, retaliatory firings, is a lie," said the workers. "Even the workers who were participating in a peaceful sit-in and refusing to leave did not damage property or threaten other workers. Instead they received an overwhelmingly positive response and shows of support."
The organizers staged the sit-ins on the heels of reporting in Time magazine about new negotiations between Google and the Israeli government regarding further potential tech contracts.
Kate J. Sim, a child safety policy adviser at Google who said she was among those fired this week, said the terminations show "how terrified [executives] are of worker power."
Google employees have a history of harnessing worker power to change policies at the company. In 2018, Google terminated a deal with the U.S. Defense Department to develop drone and artificial intelligence (AI) technology through a contract called Project Maven. The decision followed the resignations of several employees and the condemnation of thousands of workers.
Calling Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian "genocide profiteers," No Tech for Apartheid said Wednesday that they will not stop demonstrating against Project Nimbus until they get a similar result.
"The truth is clear: Google is terrified of us," said the group. "They are terrified of workers coming together and calling for accountability and transparency from our bosses... The corporation is trying to downplay and discredit our power.
"These mass, illegal firings will not stop us," No Tech for Apartheid added. "On the contrary, they only serve as further fuel for the growth of this movement. Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Amid Spying Fight, House Passes Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," said one advocate.
Apr 17, 2024
While applauding the U.S. House of Representatives' bipartisan passage of a bill to ensure that "law enforcement and intelligence agencies can't do an end-run around the Constitution by buying information from data brokers" on Wednesday, privacy advocates highlighted that Congress is trying to extend and expand a long-abused government spying program.
The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
"The privacy violations that flow from law enforcement entities circumventing the Fourth Amendment undermine civil liberties, free expression, and our ability to control what happens to our data," said Free Press Action policy counsel Jenna Ruddock. "These impacts affect everyone who uses digital platforms that extract our personal information any time we open a browser or visit social media and other websites—even when we go to events like demonstrations and other places with our phones revealing our locations."
"We're grateful that the House passed these vital and popular protections," she added. "The bill would prevent flagrant abuses of our privacy by government authorities in league with unscrupulous third-party data brokers. Making this legislation into law with Senate passage too would be a decisive and long-overdue action against government misuse of this clandestine business sector that traffics in our personal data for profit."
Wednesday's vote followed the House sending the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act to the Senate. H.R. 7888 would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad but also sweeps up Americans' data.
The House notably included an amendment forcing a wide range of individuals and businesses to cooperate with government spying operations but rejected an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the bill, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Thursday.
Noting those decisions on the FISA reauthorization legislation, Ruddock stressed that "today's vote is a victory but follows a recent loss and ongoing threat as that Section 702 bill moves to the Senate this week too."
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," she argued. "That means passing FANFSA and reforming Section 702 authority—and prioritizing everyone's First and Fourth Amendment rights."
Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Project on Surveillance Oversight, also praised the House's FANFSA passage on Wednesday.
"The passage of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale underscores the extent to which reining in abusive warrantless surveillance is a bipartisan issue," Scott said. "We urge the Senate to take up this measure and close the data broker loophole."
Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, similarly said Wednesday that "the bipartisan passage of this bill is a flashing warning sign to the government that if it wants our data, it must get a warrant."
Hamadanchy added that "we hope this vote puts a fire under the Senate to protect their constituents and rein in the government's warrantless surveillance of Americans, once and for all."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a critic of the pending 702 bill and FANFSA's lead sponsor in the upper chamber, called the the House's Wednesday vote "a huge win for privacy" and said that "now it's time for the Senate to follow suit."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Leaked Cables Show Biden Pressuring Nations to Oppose Palestine's UN Membership
"This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk," said one former Lebanese diplomat.
Apr 17, 2024
As the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote Thursday on Palestine's bid to become a full U.N. member, the Biden administration—which claims to support Palestinian statehood—is lobbying UNSC nations in an effort to wrangle enough "no" votes so that the United States can avoid resorting to a veto.
Leaked cables obtained by The Intercept show U.S. pressure on Security Council members including Malta—which currently presides over the body—and Ecuador.
While claiming that President Joe Biden backs "Palestinian aspirations for statehood," one of the cables asserts that "it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors."
"We therefore urge you not to support any potential Security Council resolution recommending the admission of 'Palestine' as a U.N. member state, should such a resolution be presented to the Security Council for a decision in the coming days and weeks," the document advises.
The U.S. argument essentially is that the U.N. should not create an independent Palestinian state by fiat—even though that's precisely how the world body voted in 1947 to establish the modern state of Israel.
The renewed push for Palestine's U.N. membership comes as Israel wages a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, which hasn't controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, rejected the Biden administration's requests to hold off on seeking full membership.
"We wanted the U.S. to provide a substantive alternative to U.N. recognition. They didn't," one unnamed Palestinian official toldAxios on Wednesday. "We believe full membership in the U.N. for Palestine is way overdue. We have waited more than 12 years since our initial request."
As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw noted:
Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority's request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.
Along with the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom are permanent members of the UNSC, so they also have veto power.
Ahead of Thursday's planned vote, Spain has been doing its own lobbying in Europe to build greater support for Palestinian statehood. At a joint Tuesday press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said the question is "when, not if, but when is the best moment to recognize Palestine."
Belgium—which is seeking economic sanctions against Israel in response to its genocidal war on Gaza—is expected to join Spain's push for Palestinian statehood after the country's European Union presidency expires in June.
Currently, 139 of the U.N.'s 193 member states recognize Palestine as an independent state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has also claimed to support a so-called "two-state solution"—has alternately boasted about thwarting Palestinian statehood.
Critics pointed to the leaked cables as more proof of U.S. duplicity and double standards on the Israel-Palestine issue.
"This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk," Massoud Maalouf, a former Lebanese ambassador to Canada, Chile, and Poland, said on social media.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular