Hurricane Katrina Emergency Housing Act of 2005

HURRICANE KATRINA EMERGENCY HOUSING ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - October 06, 2005)

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Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, a little over a month ago, the gulf coast region was struck with one of the worst natural disasters ever to fall upon this country, Hurricane Katrina followed by Hurricane Rita.

In its wake, Katrina left hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, over 1 million citizens displaced, and countless families separated.

Madam Speaker, after the hurricane, hundreds of thousands of people were forced into churches, armories, hotels, community centers, Red Cross-managed shelters, the Cajun Dome, the Superdome, the Astrodome and on and on and on. Almost 5 weeks after Katrina, more than 100,000 people are still living in shelters, over 442,000 more in hotels, 4,600 on cruise ships, and untold others are camping out.

Now, certainly shelters are a short-term solution. None of us can be satisfied with what we have accomplished to date. We are failing to manage a credible program to house these hurricane victims. We can do better than that.

We in the Congress of the United States as public policy-makers have a responsibility to these victims to provide swift and targeted resources in order to assist in the reconstruction of homes, communities, and cities.

Today, we have three Katrina-related housing bills on the suspension calendar. None of them are adequate to do what needs to be done to get people out of shelters, to get people into viable temporary housing, or to rebuild the housing that has been lost in the gulf region.

H.R. 3894 provides temporary waivers for several bureaucratic provisions within the section 8 housing program, but it does nothing in the way of adding new vouchers or addressing the immediate need for housing construction in the affected areas; nor does this bill attempt to address the existing affordable housing crisis in other parts of the country, especially those cities providing shelter for the evacuees.

Madam Speaker, instead of providing additional resources to programs which we know work and which we know have the infrastructure to provide immediate relief and assistance to those most in need, we have again left the door open for another blank check to be written by FEMA.

This bill is a bill that would allow for an expedited process within the section 8 housing program. It will waive several requirements for what have been described as cumbersome roadblocks to housing section 8 voucher holders, such as income verification, tenant contributions, and initial inspections.

These things are helping, and of course, I am going to support the bill; but what I am really concerned about is all of those persons who were on the waiting list for vouchers, who are already eligible, even if they are given some temporary assistance from FEMA, even if they got it for 18 months, what happens then. They still need housing. They still are, what, on the waiting list?

It is all right to waive some of these bureaucratic rules, but this is the time that we should be thinking about what we can do about homelessness. That is not even addressed here. This simply says, if you had a section 8 voucher, we will replace it and we will make it a little bit easier for you. It does not talk about the homeless people who were not even in the system, nor does it talk about those who are on the waiting list.

There is an article that I would like to just read verbatim because I think it describes the mess that we are in; and while I do this, I am not placing blame on my friends on the opposite side of the aisle. Even though I am very concerned that we were so slow in getting to the floor with even this legislation that does not do a lot, I am really concerned that we did not take this as an opportunity to really deal with the housing crisis in the gulf as it is a housing crisis all over the country.

This is an article that I am just going to read because I think it sums it up very well: ``Housing Promises to Evacuees Have Fallen Short.'' It is a Washington Post article that was written just a few days ago, 10/2/2005, by Spencer S. Hsu and Elizabeth Williamson:

``Red Cross to Halt Hotel Stipends in 2 weeks, and Hundreds of Shelters Have Closed.'' Well, what is important about this is the President of the United States said he wanted everybody out of the shelters by October 15. That deadline is not going to be met.

``Two weeks before President Bush's mid-October goal for moving Hurricane Katrina victims out of shelters, more than 100,000 people still reside in such makeshift housing, and 400,000 more are in hotel rooms costing up to $100 a night. Housing options promised by the Federal Government a month ago have largely failed to materialize. Cruise ships and trailer parks have so far proved in large part to be unworkable, while an American Red Cross program, paid for by the Federal Government that allows storm victims to stay in motels or hotels is scheduled to expire October 15.

``It is projected to cost the Federal Emergency Management Agency as much as $168 million. Federal officials are struggling to launch an alternative interim housing program that would give families whose homes are destroyed or uninhabitable a lump sum of $2,358 in rental assistance, or $786 a month for 3 months, with the possibility of a 15-month extension.

``So far, 330,000 families have signed up for the housing assistance. But if evacuees have to use those stipends to pay for hotel rooms when FEMA stops covering such lodging, the funds will not last long. Last week, the number of evacuees in hotels increased from 220,000 to more than 400,000 people in 140,000 rooms. Many have no idea what they will do when the program ends in 2 weeks.'' No idea.

And they talk about this one man, whose case I am just going to read from this article: ``Ronnie Ashworth, a truck driver from Chalmette, Louisiana, east of New Orleans, currently lives at the Baton Rouge Marriott. If no other housing is forthcoming after October 15, `I'll be sleeping in the back of my truck,' Ashworth, 60, said. `I have no funds right now.'

``Red Cross spokeswoman Carrie Martin said, `We're administering the hotel program with the expectation that it ends on October 15. After that, we'll still have shelters open, but we definitely don't want to move backwards.' Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people remain in about 1,000 shelters operated by the Red Cross, smaller charities and churches, scattered across two dozen States as far flung as New York and Washington.''

I am going to discontinue reading this article because I think my colleagues get the picture, and I think we are all desirous of doing something substantial. But how long has it taken us to get to the floor with this minimal response to the housing problems of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and now Rita?

Madam Speaker, I think we can do better than this, and we should be on this floor today not only talking about vouchers simply for those who held vouchers before; but we should be talking about those people who were waiting for vouchers. We should be talking about how we are going to build permanent low- and moderate-income housing. Right now we are failing.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I, too, join with my colleague and the ranking member of our Financial Services Committee in commending those on the opposite side of the aisle who really do have the providing of housing for low- and moderate-income persons on the top of their priorities.

And while I commend them because they have always shown an interest in doing this, I think we are all to be criticized for how slow this process is in dealing with the victims of Katrina and Rita. We have just got to be able to move faster than we are moving.

And while, again, today what we do in replacing those vouchers is a good thing, I am still worried about the fact that there are so many people who needed housing even before Katrina and who are going to be left out there to receive whatever resources are available from FEMA, but they will be back in the same situation they were in before, still without adequate housing, still, I suppose, on some kind of a waiting list and still among those in the United States of America without decent and adequate housing for themselves and their families.

Let me just say, as I raise the question about us being slow and not doing enough, one may ask what could have been done in this period of time. Well, by now we should have an assessment of all of those buildings, all of those apartment buildings, all of those homes, many of which are considered dilapidated, sitting everywhere from Baton Rouge to Alexandria to New Iberia, on into Texas and other places where we could have created a program by which to provide resources to bring these houses and units up to code in order to create more housing. There are a lot of such homes, a lot of such units.

Do not forget, many of the areas that we are dealing with were in deep housing crisis before Hurricane Katrina. While I am very respectful of the fact that FEMA moved people to Utah, California and New Jersey, what I am hearing is people do not want to be in New Jersey and in California and other places. They want to be near their homes; they want to be near their home cities and their home towns.

I think that we could by now have done an assessment of all of those properties that could be rehabilitated, some of which are owned by individuals, others owned by corporations, and put together a program for rehabbing and rehabilitation and bringing them back online in order to make them available.

We should also be about the business of converting warehouses into lofts and moderate-income housing. And even in some of the factory areas that are closed down, dilapidated, boarded up throughout the South, there are opportunities for the creation of housing. And there are many nonprofit, low-income and moderate-income developers who are waiting for an opportunity to be of help. I think we could have done more.

While I am going to vote for this bill, I do not pat myself on the back, nor do I pat the Members from the other side of the aisle on the back. I know they may be confronted with an administration that says it does not want to spend any money, but I must say that our citizens do not want to hear that the President or this administration does not want to spend money to deal with this housing crisis created by a natural disaster at a time when we are dumping billions of dollars into war, into Iraq, into Afghanistan. Our citizens are disappointed that we are not doing better than we are doing.

Madam Speaker, I include for the RECORD the complete article that I read a portion of titled, ``Housing Promises Made to Evacuees Have Fallen Short.''

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