The Federal Emergency Management Agency reports that 253,000 Louisianans are eligible for state housing grants. In accordance with the goal laid out by President Bush in a Sept. 15 television address, FEMA aims to have temporary housing by Oct. 15 for all 55,000 evacuees now in shelters across the state.
But how FEMA intends to accomplish that is anybody's guess.
The agency will provide solutions preferable to state and local governments, says FEMA spokesman James McIntyre. Housing options could include converted military facilities, hotels and motels, available units for rent or lease, state or local government owned properties, closed hospitals, schools warehouses, "things of that nature," McIntyre says.
But if any of this stock is truly viable, that's news to Lafayette officials. City-Parish President Joey Durel pressed FEMA for more answers about a timeline for progress in a conference call last Thursday morning, Sept. 29.
"I said give me a clue as to the goal and what's realistic for when these people will have a place to live," Durel says. "And there was no answer."
Lafayette has approximately 800 parcels of land that could be freed up through adjudication, says Durel. About a third of the structures on those lots ' houses, warehouses and businesses ' are of decent quality. The rest would have to be torn down, and it's unclear how many of the parcels are suitable for building. Durel and his administration were actively investigating possible land uses for the parcels pre-Katrina, but it's been a slow process filled with bureaucratic red tape.
"So far it's been two years, and we haven't been able to sort it out," he says. "So it is evidently a more complex issue than it would seem to be. But maybe Katrina will speed it up. Sometimes out of extraordinary situations, you find a way to make those things happen."
One thing is clear: nobody in Louisiana wants villages of trailer parks.
In the weeks after Katrina, national news outlets descended en masse upon the troubled settlement known as FEMA Village ' 551 trailers built in the aftermath of Hurricane Charlie in Punta Gorda, Fla. This hot and dusty fenced-in compound, located five miles from the nearest shopping center, became a center of teenage fights, drug dealing and domestic strife, and a harbor for fugitives from the law.
"It is to be expected when people are under a tremendous amount of stress," says Bob Carpenter, a spokesman for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office.
That raises the specter that Louisiana, which has exponentially more displaced residents than Florida did last summer, could become a state filled with trailer villages. But there are factors weighing against that outcome: FEMA has checked out 300 sites across the state for mobile homes, and found only 33 that meet its criteria, according to Ron Sherman, who leads the agency's housing task force.
Elected officials in Ascension, Livingston, Tangipahoa and West Baton Rouge parishes have moved to oppose mobile home developments in their areas.
And Durel is adding his voice to the chorus.
A trailer village is more than a subdivision, he says. It implies thousands of people. It requires infrastructure, like roads, water and sewage, and services, like police.
"We don't want any new villages popping up in Lafayette that maybe five years from now, when the federal government and everybody is gone, we will have these things to deal with," says Durel. "You have to look at what you are going to inherit after four to six years, and that is what I am trying to talk about with FEMA. We have to deal with the immediate needs of people, but it is our responsibility to look at the future results of what we do immediately."
Asked about the skepticism to mobile home villages, FEMA's McIntyre says the objective is to provide residents with options, but time is of the essence. "Just put yourself in the place of the people who are sleeping on the floor. Would you like to wait months, or would you like somewhere where you could put yourself and your family?"
Many professionals who deal with housing and displacement issues warn against quick, temporary solutions.
"It's not a good condition for people to be in, and I say that because what we see in refugee camps around the world is that it causes a lot of social dislocation," says Lavinia Limon, president and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. "Essentially for people who are dislocated, there is very little investment in the place they are staying. Just what do I care if I throw a piece of trash on the floor? It's not my floor, in my community. If that is combined with an unnatural habitat, say thousands of trailers stuck in a field, you end up with a community prone to dysfunction because people are not doing what they normally do."
In Lafayette, housing groups are offering their own solutions as alternatives to trailer towns.
The Habitat for Humanity model of using volunteer labor to build low-income housing would provide the added benefit of putting people to work. Limon stresses that work is crucial for displaced people, because it bolsters self-esteem and provides a sense of normalcy.
Melinda Taylor, executive director of the Lafayette affiliate, says Habitat's model has proven itself: The organization recently completed its 200,000th home and is ranked the 17th largest builder nationwide, holding its own against the country's biggest for-profit construction firms.
Another possibility is expanding the existing Section 8 program, says Walter Guillory, executive director of the Lafayette Housing Authority. This federal program subsidizes the cost of rent by paying 30 percent of a household's median income. Guillory suggests putting money in the hands of landlords who want to qualify for Section 8 but need investments to bring houses up to code.
"One of the advantages of Section 8 is it's mixed all over the community," says Guillory. "It's not all in one place."
Representatives of local non-profit groups, government agencies and private businesses were scheduled to meet Monday afternoon, Oct. 3, at the Halliburton building to discuss a coordinated response to the housing crisis.
The meeting aimed to define the scope of the problem and identify what needs exist and what resources may already be in Lafayette to meet those needs, says Taylor.
"The meeting will give us an opportunity to pool our resources and find out what we are seeing," Taylor says. "It will allow us to formulate a coherent response, rather than each of us going on our own tangents, duplicating services and leaving out needs."
Rebuilding Together Acadiana, the lead organizer of the event, intends to renovate vacant properties, but will rely on other groups to find properties, facilitate home buyer's programs, and provide other services.
A liaison from city-parish government was expected to attend, along with local real estate agents and contractors. One option slated for discussion is Habitat for Humanity partnering with contractors and developers.
Meanwhile, Durel says he believes FEMA is doing the best it can and expects significant developments in the near future.
"I often say that when you put a business together you have a lot of loose ends ' you have the lease, office equipment, a contractor â?¦" he says. "It just takes time for all the loose ends to come together, and all of a sudden things work. I just have this gut feeling that in the next week or 10 days you are going to see a lot of things that are frustrating all start to come together."
MAY 20 This post by blogger CB Forgotston draws parallels between Gov. Bobby Jindal and two individuals he probably doesn't want to be aligned with: President Obama and former governor Edwin Edwards. CB says Jindal's trying to jack up the debt ceiling (an Obama play, according to CB) and buy votes from GOP leges who normally wouldn't go for that (an Edwards play, CB says).
MAY 20 Here's a post in the Baptist Message from an alumnus of Louisiana College. The author, Larry Burgess, calls on the leadership of the private school to take care of some pressing problems. Physical plant issues are critical and unaddressed, some faculty make so little they need government health care, and there is an atmosphere that does not encourage honest discussion, he writes. It's time to get things back in order, he says.
MAY 20 This post in Gambit tells of a benefit concert scheduled to raise money for the 19 people shot during a Mother's Day second line on Frenchmen Street in NOLA. Among them was Gambit blogger Deb Cotton, who spoke frequently about violence in the city and reported on the city's second line culture. Gambit's foundation, along with other NOLA non-profits, also is selling t-shirts to raise money for the victims.
MAY 20 Blogger Robert Mann is critical of the personal interest some legislators take in their work here, sharing the comments one NOLA solon made in explaining his decision to vote against a bill that would require people to stop discriminating against female workers. His wife might lose some salary, so he was going to have to vote against the equal pay bill, Conrad Appel said. Appel and everyone who heard him should have been ashamed, but they weren't, and that's what is wrong in that building, Mann argues.
MAY 20 American Press columnist Jim Beam writes about the budget again here, urging kudos for the House and its efforts to try to fix the budget as opposed to passing on a flawed and messy rubber-stamped document as it usually does. The Senate already is poo-pooing the effort, but instead Senators should be trying to find a way to improve it as well, Beam argues. He also has some predictions in here from LABI and CABL.
MAY 20 Here's a link to the photo gallery from Tulane's graduation this past weekend. Dr. John and Allen Toussaint played together and received honorary degrees. The Dalai Lama was so entranced by their performance he got up from his seat and walked across the stage to stand next to them. He even participated in a second line with his own personal, saffron-colored umbrella. To the graduates, he urged them to think about creating a peaceful, hopeful life and society.
MAY 20 This Picayune story questions the rhetoric of NOLA officials who say the city, aside from having a "murder problem," is safe. The talking points generally are that the criminals are killing each other, but everything else is OK. The police chief there says that even Lafayette is more dangerous than NOLA. But crime experts interviewed here say that NOLA's numbers indicate one of two things: either people are so used to violence they don't report it, or somebody's "fudging the numbers."
MAY 20 The Advocate's Mark Ballard writes about some of the background maneuvering that took place during the development of budget alternatives in the Legislature. From Rep. Joel Robideaux being called a "tax and spend liberal" to robo-call influence, Ballard lets us in on some of the work that happens behind the scenes but usually doesn't make it into the Advocate's daily coverage of the session.
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