Doing More for the Katrina Homeless

As the images of thousands of evacuees fade from the national consciousness, a new and more alarming reality is developing on the periphery of our view. The reality is that the thousands made homeless by recent hurricanes will remain without permanent housing for a very long time, and some may never establish long-term housing. Current Federal disaster assistance policies do very little in assisting the poor and those without adequate resources in acquiring permanent housing. There are low interest loans for those who can afford to repay, there are billions of dollars available for temporary housing in the form of rental assistance and mobile homes, but the Stafford Act, which guides federal recovery efforts, has no provisions for long-term housing to assist those who are below the poverty guidelines. Although there are repair grants under the program, Congress has limited these amounts to $5,200 for minimal repairs, and $10,400 in total replacement funds; this is woefully inadequate to make any substantially damaged home habitable again and certainly insufficient to replace a destroyed home.
The Stafford Act, leaves the long-term needs of the poor to various voluntary agencies. And those agencies are doing what they can, but with the magnitude of the disasters in recent years, there will still be many thousands of people homeless as a result of these storms.
Congress has long ignored the problems of the disaster homeless in their need for permanent housing. Hurricane Katrina presents an opportunity to rethink our policies in housing the poor and those without resources. There are disaster resistant housing designs as well as policies to prevent construction in hazard prone areas. If there were a mechanism to incorporate Federal dollars into the funding of non-profit corporation’s housing programs, it would go much further to alleviating the suffering of our nation’s most vulnerable population.