Group condemns FEMA move to evict thousands of Katrina survivors
Published: May 8, 2009
Updated 1 year ago
A Federal Emergency Management Agency deadline at the end of May that will leave thousands homeless in its wake was condemned by the U.S. Human Rights Network on Friday. The group called the move to reclaim temporary housing offered to victims of Hurricane Katrina a “violation of International law.”
The condemnation follows reports in The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune about Katrina victims struggling to repair their homes even as the government prepares to seize the only livable space they have.
“Federal officials, who have postponed the trailer deadline numerous times, say they have finally arrived at May 30 as the firm date for emptying the 4,600 remaining FEMA trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi,” reported Richard Fausset for the The Chicago Tribune.
Fausset continues, “Even now, however, the program is proving difficult to end. Housing advocates say that many of those who remain in the trailers are among the Gulf Coast’s most vulnerable residents — the poor, the ill and the elderly. And they are worried the residents have few other options on a crippled post-storm landscape.”
“Though more than 4,000 Louisiana homeowners have received rebuilding money only in the last six months, or are struggling with inadequate grants or no money at all, FEMA is intent on taking away their trailers by the end of May,” writes Shaila Dewan for The New York Times. “The deadline, which ends temporary housing before permanent housing has replaced it, has become a stark example of recovery programs that seem almost to be working against one another.”
Dawn adds, “Thousands of rental units have yet to be restored, and not a single one of 500 planned ‘Katrina cottages’ has been completed and occupied. The Road Home program for single-family homeowners, which has cost federal taxpayers $7.9 billion, has a new contractor who is struggling to review a host of appeals, and workers who assist the homeless are finding more elderly people squatting in abandoned buildings.”
In a Friday media advisory, U.S. Human Rights Network Executive Director Ajamu Baraka said, “It is a sad commentary on our priorities when our government can find billions of dollars to bail out banks but cannot come up with the funds to house families and individuals that were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. To take the most vulnerable victims of Katrina and leave them to fend for themselves is not only unconscionable, it is a violation of the government’s obligation under international law to protect people from arbitrary displacement from their homes.
“Additionally, the status of Katrina victims has been the subject of international scrutiny by both the UN Human Rights Committee in 2006 and the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2007, and it will be referred to in a report to the Human Rights Council by the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism next month,” he continued.
Baraka also said that the organization would lobby the Obama administration to provide “substantive direct support” for the impoverished victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The U.S. Human Rights Network has launched a campaign to force government compliance with International laws governing treatment of internally displaced persons.
“Moreover, we call on our member organizations, allies and friends to join us in the struggle to ensure that the rights of internally displaced Gulf Coast residents are protected and the Government creates the conditions for their return, resettlement and reintegration,” they add.
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10-20 Million illegal immigrants can find work in the USA and apparently 10,000 former New Orleans residents can’t? Give it up already. Sorry folks, I am from Houston and have first hand knowledge of what the detritus can do.
“Houston police say evacuees have been victims or suspects in about 20 percent of the city’s homicides, more than double their percentage in the population. This is leading to a feeling among some Houstonians that perhaps the evacuees are wearing out their welcome.”-
Got your eye on some prime real estate over there in New Orleans, do you?…pick it up real cheap…as soon as they move all the “undesirables” out, of course…
Wow, natty , you’re a real humanitarian.
You’re blaming the victims of crime for wearing out their welcome? Real classy.
The people who would lose these trailers have nowhere else to go - they would be homeless. Is that what we want - more homeless? And what does the government intend to do with all these used trailers? Junk them? Why kick people out of trailers, only to get rid of the trailers and create another class of homeless people?
Help these people relocate, or build some public housing, or do something sensible, but not this.
Don’t worry I’m sure FEMA will put them up in those nice, cozy concentration camps KBR has built for them all over the country.
These people are the poor, elderly and disenfranchised that are unable to afford a house or rent a place unless it’s rent controlled. Many of these people may have lived in govt. housing or the projects before Katrina. Why hasn’t the govt. rebuilt the housing projects and other destroyed homes on the lower 9th and other districts. It’s because they have a plan for New Orleans that will make it the Las Vegas of the Gulf. And this will entail making the city have a smaller footprint using much of the lower 9th as a park slash flood plain. And it also helps the rich and the politically connected get rid of the “problems” (we all know what the hell they are talking about) they perceive has been making it impossible for New Orleans to compete.
In there mind they get rid of the poor, the black and anyone they deem not part of the big picture. They want to remake the city and that is why they aren’t so quick or not at all to building back up areas of the city.