Just saw this on CNN; this article is from a few months back. Sad.
FEMA to evict Katrina victims Many say they can't afford housing
NEW ORLEANS - Inside trailer No. 27 here at the A.L. Davis Playground, where the government set up a camp last year for displaced residents of Hurricane Katrina, Tracy Bernard's meager possessions are all packed up, even though she has nowhere to go.About a month ago, workers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency swept through her trailer park, a bleak tableau of housing of the last resort, taping eviction notices on the flimsy aluminum doors. Thousands of other trailer residents across Louisiana were informed by FEMA last week that they too would be evicted in the next six months.
But few of them will be able to return to the city from which they were flooded out 27 months ago.
More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is suffering from an acute shortage of housing that has nearly doubled the cost of rental units in the city, threatening the recovery of the region and the well-being of many residents who decided to return against the odds. Before the storm, more than half of the city's population rented housing. Yet official attention to help revive the shattered rental home and apartment market has been scant.
In some core middle- and lower-income areas, blighted dwellings stretch for blocks on end, and the city has been slow to come up with ideas for what to do with those that have been abandoned. Last week, the city housing authority approved the demolition of 4,000 public housing units at five projects damaged by the storm. In their place, the authority plans to build mixed-income projects, large parts of which will not be affordable to previous residents.
Although repairs are being made and more housing is available now than a year ago, demand is still outpacing supply.
Few homes; high rent
Bernard, a veteran worker for the local public transportation agency who has to move by today, has been scouring the city for a place to rent. Properties in her price range, if they exist at all, routinely come without finished walls or stoves.
"A lot of the city is still boarded up," said Bernard, who rented a one-bedroom house in eastern New Orleans for $300 a month before Hurricane Katrina. "Where are we supposed to go?"
One of the more striking changes to appear lately in New Orleans is the highly visible number of homeless men and women living under bridges and in parks. Social service groups say about 12,000 homeless people are living in the city, about double the number before the storm.
The sense of an impending housing crisis grew stronger last week with FEMA's announcement on Wednesday that it would close all the trailer camps it runs on varying schedules by the end of May. More than 900 families are living in FEMA trailer parks around the city.
The agency said its action was intended to hasten the move of residents to permanent housing from trailers. It said counselors would assist every resident in the transition. "We're with them every step of the way," Diane L.W. Perry, a FEMA spokeswoman, said Wednesday.
Help is hard to find
But in interviews at trailer parks last week, a reporter found that some residents had not spoken with a caseworker in weeks, even though they were scheduled to be evicted within days.
"The caseworker is very hard to get in touch with," said Martin Blossom, a pizza cook who lives in a trailer.
Ramona Jones said her counselor gave her several listings but some of the apartments were not ready for habitation by her eviction date -- or they were, in her words, "rat holes." Landlords are asking $1,100 a month or more. Though Jones and others are eligible for financial assistance to help pay the high rents, many are reluctant, knowing that, like the trailers, the assistance could disappear, leaving them stranded with huge bills.
"I don't know what's going to become of us," said Tiffany Farbe, who lives in a trailer park near the Mississippi River in the Uptown part of New Orleans with her son and mother. "They said get out. I've explained to them over and over again our situation. FEMA just makes you feel like dirt."
The agency objects to that characterization and says it is only trying to help. "It's the next step in the recovery," said Ronnie Simpson, a FEMA spokesman. "It's the individual's responsibility to go out and find what's suitable for them."
While the agency provides listings, Simpson said it did not necessarily endorse the properties or know much about them beyond their locations and the basics.
"We're very sensitive to the fact that this isn't an easy move. But it's a necessary move," he said.
newsobserver.com | FEMA to evict Katrina victims