Federal Emergency Management Administration Has Failed Displaced Gulf Coast Residents
February 26, 2008
Rep. Maxine Waters [D-CA]:Mr. Speaker and Members, I rise today to share with this body the unbelievable circumstances surrounding the victims of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
I thought the American people had been shocked at the lack of response by our Government to the victims of these hurricanes. I thought the American people could hardly ever get over the fact that they witnessed victims of a natural disaster held up in a convention center in New Orleans for days without food, without wa ter, begging for help.
It was unbelievable when we discovered that the head of FEMA, Mr. Brown at the time, said that he did not know that those victims were out in front of the convention center waving white flags, inside the convention center sick and even dying.
It was unbelievable to witness one of the richest, if not the richest country in the world with the lack of adequate response to its citizens at a time when we were needed most.
And so we're trying to work through this. We have been working to try and get money to the gulf coast, to New Orleans, to Mississippi. We have tried to work to save public housing so that residents could return who had been evacuated and told that the housing would be rehabilitated and they could return.
Many of us have been pushing not only on FEMA and our government, but working with the State and local government trying to correct the injustices that we have now come to know that have taken place in the gulf coast.
And now we're confronted with another unbelievable situation. How much bungling can you do? How much mismanagement can you be responsible for?
Finally, we find there's more. The Federal Emergency Management Administration, that is, FEMA, has admitted what people living in trailers have known for several years: that these trailers contain high levels of formaldehyde that pose serious health risks for residents. Almost after moving in, trailer residents started to complain about respiratory and other formaldehyde-related health problems.
Mr. Speaker and Members, we've got to force FEMA to rise to the challenge of getting these 38,000 families out of these toxic trailers as soon as possible and move them into safe, permanent, and affordable housing. Unfortunately, because affordable housing creation has not been a priority of this Bush administration, I know this is going to be a difficult task.
The Bush administration has failed to ensure that the gulf coast r egion has an adequate supply of affordable housing for its displaced persons, including those in trailers. The administration approved redevelopment plans in Mississippi and Louisiana that provide less affordable housing than was available before Hurricane Katrina. It even allowed, believe this, the State of Mississippi to move $600 million away from housing assistance to the redevelopment of the Port of Gulfport.
Now, mind you, there are still people who are out of State who want to come home. There ar e still people living in trailers. There are still people doubled up with family members. And this administration, this Housing Secretary said to the State of Mississippi, go ahead and take $600 million from housing assistance and you can go ahead and use it for the redevelopment of the port.
In New Orleans, the administration has approved the demolition of 4,500 units of public housing, with no regard to the fact that there are 12,000 homeless persons who could have benefited from having a roof over th eir heads. The demolition of New Orleans' public housing during an affordable housing crisis is a prime example of this administration's shortsightedness and lack of concern for our country's lowest income renters.
Mr. Speaker and Members, I simply close by saying, here we are, FEMA again, mismanagement, lives at stake. They have no answers.
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Contact: Mikael Moore
202-225-2201
