FEMA to break promise on 100,000 HOUSTON Katrina leases. Merry Holiday!

FEMA squeezes city over apartment leases
The agency's demands could make Houston break promise to 100,000 exiles


By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Unless federal policy changes soon, Houston will find itself in an embarrassing position three months from today — breaking a key promise made to hurricane evacuees in their most desperate hour. Despite written statements to the contrary, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will cease honoring the 24,000 year-long leases, backed by the city, signed between hurricane evacuees and local apartment landlords.

As a result the city could fail to deliver on a promise made to nearly 100,000 storm-ravaged evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — a safe roof over their heads for a year.

Landlords, who are accepting tenants without a security deposit or credit checks, would be left with scores of families unable to pay their rent.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3497624.html

If anybody still trusts our government under this incompetent and criminal administration to protect Americans, they are fooling themselves. Those poor people. This will only add to their stress and uncertainty. After all they've gone through...

Oh, and I thought this was "working out well" for them. :grr:

stories, and read from them on the campaign trail.

then ask the crowds, "why would anyone with a heart or brain still vote republican?"

FAILING. More commitments and NOW broken promises. bush needs to be impeached for the single reason of gross incompetence and massive failings of leadership.

Bush is screwing up and destroying this country beyond recognition ON PURPOSE.

Hard to fight the Bush regime when everything's in chaos.

Anthony Patton, N.O. entrepreneur and member of Mayor Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back commission, thinks the year leases are misguided since they keep people from returning to their city (for the upcoming mayoral election, for instance, as well as to get businesses, schools, etc. back up and running). And if many people don't go back to N.O., Houston could easily find itself with a homeless problem worthy of, say, Bombay (Mumbai), all because it tried to do the right thing. :grr:

Leave it to FEMA to screw up by: a) locking people into year leases, rather than month-to-month, in the first place, and then b) defaulting on the year leases! Ye gods! Wait a minute -- Brownie's gone! Who is responsible for this colossal "Charlie Foxtrot"?

that is not a silver lining, there is no housing in the new orleans area

40 percent of orleans still has no power

huge swatchs of orleans are completely uninhabitable, it is a threat to health to live in most areas of new orleans east, lower 9th ward, many areas of lakeview/lakeshore & gentilly

the salt intrusion killed the vegetation in these areas, leaving dirt, the drought transformed the dirt to dust

people working in these areas during the day have to wear respirators, they can't stay there at night

there is no place for people to live here

if they are indeed run out of houston, they will end up in shanty towns or tents w.out electricity

FEMA needs to honor its promise

it's going to be way more than a year before some of these areas are habitable again, way more

If what you say is true, and I have no reason to doubt it since you're on the ground, why would Nagin, Patton and others be making these impassioned pleas for people to return?

What about the area in between the "purple zones" and the riverfront, basically Mid-City and Central City? Any hope of getting folks back in there? And what about Algiers and Jeff Parish? All filled up already?

Bear in mind there exists a slim possibility that I myself might be looking to get in next year, depending on the outcome of plans now afoot on some of the rebuilding boards.

The whole show was a made for TV production to show Bush and the Republicans from Texas as compassionate and competent, not like those Democrats running Louisiana and New Orleans!

It was all for TV.

Now, the Feds don't want to pay what they promised to pay. Guess what? Houston has excellent lawyers, some of whom will take this matter and hogtie FEMA in Federal Court. FEMA will lose this under the doctrine of Detrimental Reliance, among others.

They NEEDED to evacuate the people, but instead of just getting them far enough away from the damaged area..STILL INSIDE Louisiana, and getting working cell phones into their hands, they bused these poor folks all over the US..far from friends and family would would have GLADLY helped them.

I still think that LOTS of people in NOLA have family in OTHER cites,towns in LA. It would have been cheaper and kinder to toss a little money to the families of these people to help feed and house them, but keep them within their state, UNLESS they really wanted this chance to go elsewhere or had no one to help them..

The gubbmint took ANY choice they might have had away from them, and just dumped them...like a box of puppies that a callous person could not find homes for..

The people who had nowhere to go could have been housed in temporary housing set up well outside the affected areas, but within Louisiana.

This is how the *² adminsitration works, though.. They go on TV promising the moon, cranking out a few crocodile tears, and then after people have averted their gaze to the next disaster or their own lives, *² reels in the promisies made and renegs on offers made.

all for the marketing

of course, it was a fraud