U.S. to extend housing aid for Katrina victims

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Thursday that it would extend housing aid through March 2009 for hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a blanket expansion that more than doubles the amount of aid typically received by evacuees after a major disaster.

The decision is an acknowledgement that 20 months after the 2005 storms that devastated the Mississippi and southeastern Lousiana coasts, many residents remain without permanent addresses.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday it will continue to maintain trailers, mobile homes and apartments for about 130,000 households, an arrangement originally scheduled to expire two months ago. Federal law requires that aid provided by FEMA end 18 months after a disaster is declared unless the president grants an extension. President Bush has already approved one extension that would have expired in August.

“The overwhelming scale of this human tragedy has meant that families have been displaced for an unprecedented period of time,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said in a statement. “Such a reality calls for an unprecedented, compassionate response.”

The cost of the latest extension is estimated at $1 billion, FEMA officials said.

Officials also announced that HUD would take over management of the housing program from FEMA, which has faced persistent criticism from Congress, housing advocates and evacuees about the way it has handled the program.

“In my 30 years as a social worker, I have seen my share of poorly conceived and poorly executed human service programs,” Sheila Crowley, president of the Low Income Housing Coalition, told a Senate panel Tuesday. “Nothing comes close to the horrors of the FEMA rent assistance program.”

Housing advocates have complained that FEMA has closed some trailer parks on short notice, relocating evacuees who had lost homes previously. Warnings that the program was ending, followed by last-minute extensions, have added to the whipsaw effect, advocates said.

Under the terms of the housing program announced Thursday, the government will continue paying the costs for evacuees living in trailers, mobile homes and apartments for about another year, but will begin to add small rental charges in March 2008 for those who can afford it. Initially, evacuees will be asked to pay $50 monthly, with incremental increases each month until the program ends in March 2009.

On Monday, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general released a separate report on the way FEMA handled contracts worth $3.6 billion to maintain and dismantle trailers for hurricane victims.

He found that FEMA exposed taxpayers to “unacceptable risks” by accepting both grossly excessive and low-ball prices for services, risking that it would both pay too much and receive poor service.