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.
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30% of Those Killed in Gaza Genocide Were Children, Many From 'Deliberate' Targeting: UN Commission
“By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future," said the commission's head.
Jun 23, 2026
About 30% of those killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7, 2023, have been children, according to a United Nations inquiry on Tuesday, which found the "deliberate" targeting of kids to have furthered a genocide against Palestinians.
The report, authored by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, follows a previous finding in September that Israel's actions in Gaza constituted genocide.
"The deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza," the commission said.
Between the start of Israel's military campaign in October 2023 and the "ceasefire" agreement in October 2025, the report found that more than 20,000 children were killed, while more than 44,000 were injured. Among those killed, more than 5,000 were under the age of five, more than 1,000 were under the age of one, and more than 400 were newborn babies.
The report highlights documented instances in which Israeli forces directly fired upon children, with medical professionals testifying that they treated kids with "direct gunshot and sniper wounds, often to the head and abdomen." One sample of 168 children killed by gunshots found that 73 were shot in the head and 22 were shot in the chest, which the commission argued was evidence of intentionality.
"Based on the clustering of injuries and the targeted body parts, I assess that the Israeli soldiers have been deliberately shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice—a different body part being targeted on different days… There is a very clear pattern that suggests this is a deliberate aiming of different body parts [of children]," one doctor told the commission.
They also cited dozens of cases of children being targeted by snipers and quadcopters. The report quotes one Israeli soldier who appeared anonymously in a documentary about the war and described operating drones like a video game.
"The drones, in my opinion, are what most dehumanize the other side," he said. "You see everything on a screen. You drop the bomb. It feels like a game. You can sit in some basement of a house, safe, with your helmet off, scratching your balls, half-dressed, and kill Palestinians.”
The report also argues that the deaths of children in airstrikes were not mere collateral damage, as Israel often asserts, but the foreseeable result of Israel's use of high payload weapons against densely populated areas, which resulted in massive numbers of civilian casualties.
"These deliberate attacks wiped out entire families across two or three or even four generations, with the Israeli security forces fully aware that children would be present and that children, with their small, fragile bodies, have a higher chance of death and serious injury in such attacks," the report said.
"The Israeli security forces continued and repeated these attacks over a two-year period, without amending targeting criteria or selection of weapons, while child casualties mounted," it continued. "This indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional."
Adding to evidence of intentionality, the report said, was the direct targeting of neonatal and maternity care centers, which it said "directly endangered" the ability of newborn babies to survive and contributed to miscarriages and birth defects. In the first half of 2025, Gaza experienced a 41% decline in live births compared with the same period in 2022, the report found.
The report notes that numerous Israeli politicians have explicitly justified the targeting of children since the early days of the genocidal onslaught.
On October 9, 2023, Nissim Vaturi, the deputy Knesset speaker, called on the army to "Erase Gaza... Do not leave a child there. Expel all the remaining ones at the end." In January 2025, he said, “Gaza is full of terrorists and every child born there is already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth.”
Amid Israel's attack on the Al-Shifa hospital in July 2024, Israeli Knesset Member Amit Halevi stated that the hundreds of babies in its maternity ward were "all born terrorists."
This was part of a “systematic and complete destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza,” the report said, that fell heaviest on children. Attacks on pediatric hospitals forced sick and injured kids into smaller facilities without the necessary supplies or pediatric staff.
Israel's restrictions on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, meanwhile, turned survivable injuries into ones that caused death or permanent disability. Doctors said children were forced to undergo "horrific amputations" without anesthesia, while others who'd suffered burns and other traumatic injuries were left without painkillers.
The destruction of medical infrastructure, the report said, was not incidental. It said Israel had "operational plans and procedures for attacking healthcare facilities.” The result, it said, was preventing Palestinians' “capacity and possibility to heal, recover, and live.”
The report points out that since the ceasefire went into effect, more than 100 children had been killed and hundreds more wounded as of mid-January, with many being shot near the so-called "yellow line" that marks the edge of Israel's occupation area in Gaza, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been gradually advancing forward.
Israel dismissed the findings of the commission, rejecting what it called a “second defamatory advocacy report."
“Israel dismisses this libelous sham,” it said in a statement and added that while “every child deserves protection,” the report ignored “the brutal tactics of Hamas.”
Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the UN commission, said, "The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces."
“Even after the October 2025 ceasefire," he said, "children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”
Beyond Gaza, the commission reported that Israeli forces have killed more than 200 children in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, 2023. Hundreds more have been detained, often without any charge, and many have been subjected to systemic mistreatment in detention, including the deprivation of food and medical care, torture, and sexual abuse.
“Even if the bombs and guns fall silent in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinian children will not simply recover overnight,” said Muralidhar. “The destruction of their health, education, and development is irreversible.”
“The protection, care, and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” he continued. “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”
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Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Belgium, and other European countries were under red-alert warnings on Tuesday as an alarmingly early heatwave continued to scorch the continent, underscoring the threat posed by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis.
Météo-France, the country's official meteorological administration, said Tuesday that "further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year," as "sunshine continues to dominate across France, maintaining oppressive and exhausting heat throughout the country." In recent days, France has recorded dozens of deaths linked to the extreme temperatures, including two were children who died in a hot car and 40 people who drowned seeking relief from the heat.
“Heat is hurting children across Europe," Matilde Angeltveit, senior adviser and global climate advocacy lead at Save the Children, said Tuesday. "It affects their health and it is disrupting their education and the impact can sometimes be long term. This should be a joyous time as many children across Europe wrap up the school year, but for many it is not."
Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service said that while the ongoing heatwave is "remarkable for occurring so early in the year, this event is consistent with Europe’s rapid warming and with the increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves already observed in summer."
"Europe is the fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising by approximately 0.56°C per decade since the mid-1990s, more than double the global average," Copernicus noted.
Reuters observed Tuesday that Europe "was the continent furthest above its historic temperature norm on Monday."
"Heatwaves are no longer freak weather anomalies. They are now a recurring crisis inflicting suffering, claiming lives and fracturing our health systems and infrastructure," said Hans Kluge, European regional director for the World Health Organization, which estimates that extreme heat has killed more than 200,000 people across Europe over the past four years.
Campaigners said the current heatwave marks the latest evidence of governments' failure to rein in the fossil fuel industry, which has raked in massive profits this year thanks to the US-Israeli war on Iran.
"This isn’t a natural disaster," said Aaron Regunberg, director of the Climate Accountability Project at the US-based advocacy group Public Citizen, which declared in response to the European heatwave that oil giants "have blood on their hands."
"The fossil fuel industry’s pollution and decades of deception about the impact of burning fossil fuels has spurred this extreme heat, which has already killed multiple people," said Regunberg. "Decades ago, scientists at Exxon were discussing with other oil companies research connecting climate change with ‘suffering and death due to thermal extremes.’ These companies knew of evidence that their conduct would cause these harms, and orchestrated campaigns of climate denial to undermine that evidence. They should be held accountable.”
Areeba Hamid, the co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said political leaders "need to stop winging it on extreme weather and start treating it as the security and public health challenge it is."
"When classrooms become ovens, care homes overheat, transport starts to buckle and workers are forced to toil in dangerous temperatures, it’s clear the country isn’t ready," said Hamid. "Adaptation alone won’t be enough. Ministers must also stop fossil fuel giants from turning up the heat on our planet—and make them pay for the damage they are causing."
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President Donald Trump's unprecedented efforts to rig the 2026 midterm elections are on thin ice after having been repeatedly thwarted by courts, according to election law attorney Marc Elias.
In a Monday analysis published by Democracy Docket, Elias noted that the US Department of Justice has seen its attempts to obtain states' voter files shot down in court nine different times, most recently by a federal judge in Maryland who ruled the state was under no obligation to hand its voter file to the federal government.
Elias wrote that Trump needs states' voter files to build a national voter database, which would allow his administration to pick and choose which voters are eligible to participate in future elections and which should be purged.
"The problem for Trump is that his Department of Justice keeps losing cases that it needs to access this critical data," Elias explained. "This humiliating string of defeats threatens to derail Trump’s signature plan to subvert the 2026 midterm elections."
Trump will also have difficulty blaming these court losses on left-wing judges, Elias added, because Trump-appointed judges have been responsible for more than half of the defeats the DOJ has suffered, which he described as "nothing short of a debacle."
Elias, whose law firm has been involved in trying to block the DOJ from accessing voter files, said it was worth celebrating the latest victory over the Trump administration, but he warned that more fights are coming.
"As Republican electoral prospects wane, Trump will grow more desperate," he wrote, "and that desperation will lead to even more extreme actions by the administration. It will also require much more litigation."
Trump earlier this year signed an executive order instructing the United States Postal Service to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to its voter lists.
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