This blog post is by Elizabeth Nowrouz. In late November, Melissa Cha and I traveled to Houston to gain a little perspective into the issues of disaster relief and home repair as they impact the city’s low-income residents. We met with Jayne Junkin of the Texas Organizing Project (TOP), who graciously offered to introduce us [...]
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Tag Archives: Disaster relief
Another epic, preventable disaster strikes the poor
January 13, 2010
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Somilia, Katrina, Rita, Ike, now Haiti. Another epic disaster strikes a population of desperately poor people. Poor physical living conditions, makeshift homes, substandard materials. no building codes all magnify human suffering and deaths in each disaster. God does not seek out the poor to punish with disasters, we are each responsible for accepting poverty and substandard [...]
Read moreWhat the State of Texas must do to fix the Hurricane rebuilding plan (and what we plan to do to make sure it does)
November 23, 2009
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People have asked me what we want from the Texas CDBG Disaster Rebuilding Plan that we have criticized and that HUD has asked the Governor to revise. The complete answer lies in the extensive comments that we have submitted on repeated occasions to the State of Texas and in our complaints to HUD. Here is [...]
Read moreORCA’s public hearing for $1.7 billion disaster relief program crashes
August 13, 2009
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Today’s web based public hearing conducted by ORCA to accept public testimony on the $1.7 billion Hurricane Ike/Dolly CDBG Disaster Relief Texas state plan crashed. Among others, I dutifully registered in advance and followed the participation instructions provided by ORCA to log into the meeting. Public hearings are required by the federal government as a [...]
Read moreConfusion and delays plague temporary housing programs for Hurricane Ike survivors
October 30, 2008
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I have been spending some time this week trying to understand the way the FEMA temporary housing assistance programs have been working for the victims of Hurricane Ike. Even as a person who has spent considerable time reading and studying the FEMA programs and guidelines I have found it difficult to comprehend what is going [...]
Read moreThe toll from Hurricane Dolly is not in and we’re not prepared for a low income housing disaster
July 24, 2008
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At this hour we still don’t have a full account of damage from Hurricane Dolly which hit Brownsville and the Texas Rio Grande Valley head on. Regardless of the final damage tally Dolly should be a wake up call and a warning. We are not prepared to deal with rebuilding housing of the poor after [...]
Read moreFEMA and HUD: not who you would want to depend on to throw you a life preserver
June 4, 2008
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The House Financial Services Committee called HUD and FEMA to testify about when the lead federal agencies for hurricane relief are going to get the 2005 Hurricane survivors out of temporary and into permanent housing. The result: lots of agency mumbling and stammering. Listen to excerpts from the hearing in this NPR story. Also appalling is the failure of [...]
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