Post-Katrina rip-off

[Claire]

I am so angry with this post Katrina world that I live in.
Pre-Katrina I rented a 2 bedroom 1 1/2 bath townhome in a great part of town. I lived 2 blocks off of Lake Ponchatrain, I could see the lake from my driveway. I paid $475/mo Now a 2 bedroom townhome is going fo $1500 -$2000 a month. They are so ripping people off down here! How in the hell do they expect people to live? The rate of pay has not gone up, unless you work at a fast food chain. Burger King is offering $9.00/hr with a $2000 sign on bonus. All of the jobs I have interviewed for they are offering less then that, am I supost to suck it up and go work for Burger King ??????? (not saying that it is a horrible place to work...but) People are ripping people off down here, they are ripping people off that right now really need the help so that they can survive. It makes me so mad. Why do people feel the need to try and make a quick buck off of people who have lost everything? There were these condo's that pre-Katrina, they were selling them for $85,500 each... now they want $130,000... I drove by and they had literly just stuck a sticker over the old price, I wanted so bad to rip that sticker off so that people could see how much they were being screwed!
The whole thing, all that is going on here, just makes me sick.
Then there are the repair men who are going to repair roofs and accidently start ripping off the roof on the wrong house, what do they do, they just stop and leave the damage and go on to find the correct home. People are comming home to find that their roof has been half way ripped off due to a mistake. Do the contractors pay for it, NO, the homeowner does. And those poor people who come home to find that their home has been looted. All of the possessions that they managed to save are gone. It just makes me sick to my stomach. Then there are the tourists that come to see the damage in Lakeview and they decide that it is ok to go into someone's home and take a souvionere (SP). That little thing you just took, well it may be that homeowners only possession left in the whole world. You know, I drove through Lakeview, but I was respectful. I did not take one picture, I did not get out of my car. Why did I go, because I have lived here my entire life and I wanted to feel for one moment what they are feeling.
I could go on forever about all of this.
Thanks for letting me vent.

[txshopper73]

WOW! It's sad everything that is going on with post Katrina. We still have a couple of students left that are our Katrina hurricane victims. It's sad that people/tourists are stealing. Such a shame. It's bad enough that these people have lost everything and now, what might be left is gone, too from THIEVES!

[LvLaila]

That is terrible. I hope things change and work out for you.

[Princessyorkies]

This story makes me sick. How can people do that to others? How would they like being in the same situation only to have this done to them. I know that it may not make things right now but in the end they will pay for the bad they have done. We were in Florida on vacation and as we drove around there I could not believe the damage. And the people who lived there were saying how much it was costing them to get what they needed fixed. Unreal is all I can say just UNREAL..

[KimMee's Mom]

THIS IS AN OUTRAGE- I think we need the citizens to form a brigade and take back their city. What these people are doing is a sin- they will get paid back for their crimes. Isn't there anyway to regulate housing at this time?

[Baileys_Momma]

Oh I am just so angry about this. I spent 6 weeks in New Orleans on an animal rescue and I didn't do that just so people could jack up the rates and make it unreasonable for people to come back to their homes. I think a letter to the legislature (sp?) or Mayor is in order.......

[heather_lathrop]

I feel the same way. I have not gone to see any of the damage. But I have heard horror stories just like these. I thought this was America, one of the Greatest countries! But some of the people here are taking advantage of this horrible tradgedy! It makes me sick to think that everything comes down to making a quick buck anymore.

[Claire]

Originally Posted by Baileys_Momma

Oh I am just so angry about this. I spent 6 weeks in New Orleans on an animal rescue and I didn't do that just so people could jack up the rates and make it unreasonable for people to come back to their homes. I think a letter to the legislature (sp?) or Mayor is in order.......

They know, but they have no clue what to do about it.


And by the way, THANK YOU for helping with the animal rescue. We need more kind people in the world like you. If I could reach through the computer to give you a hug right now I would! Thank you so very much!!

Thousands of animals have a second chance because of your help.

[bchgirl]

None of that surprises me in the least. Well, maybe the looting after the fact. I firmly believe that very very few of the people who lived in New Orleans will ever again to able to afford to live there. The housing that once was available will be replaced with something that will exceed their price range.

[bettyeanne]

I cannot believe some of the things that we see/hear on the news! Reading your post confirms what we have been suspecting and it is just sickening that people would treat other people this way! How in the world do they expect people to come home and try to rebuild by cheating them this way? I don't see how they could do it at the old prices ... much less at double!! Where in the world are the city & state agencies which should be overseeing this? I thought they were supposed to be in place to make sure that things like this don't happen!

I'm so sorry you are having to go through this horrible thing!! We will keep you in our prayers!

[Rockster's Mom]

I think it is very sad that people steal and take advantage of people who have had this devasting thing happen to them. I have family in Metarie, and they are currently repairing there home/store which had about 4-6 ft. of water in it. They are living in a travel trailer placed in there yard until there house is finished. They are older and did not want to leave there home. They have had total strangers come up to them and ask them if they could take pictures of their house and with them. I guess these people are tourist and think they are at Disney World. Don't get my wrong my family there has ventured out to other parts of the city to see the damage and took pics for us to see what has happened to our favorite city and there scarpbooks, but they were for respectfull to those who have lost everything. My great-aunt even stop and offered a shoulder to cry on for some of the people who were davasted of what they saw what was left of there homes.

[rrosenberry]

I'm sorry, sorry you have to go through this. But thanks for your insight, those are the kind of things people should know, things you don't hear about on the news.

[nifer]

Originally Posted by bettyeanne

I cannot believe some of the things that we see/hear on the news! Reading your post confirms what we have been suspecting and it is just sickening that people would treat other people this way! How in the world do they expect people to come home and try to rebuild by cheating them this way? I don't see how they could do it at the old prices ... much less at double!! Where in the world are the city & state agencies which should be overseeing this? I thought they were supposed to be in place to make sure that things like this don't happen!

clearly they aren't wanting/expecting the old residents to return. i guess to them, this is an opportunity to 'reinvent' NO by bringing in more expensive housing and a wealthier population. making a buck at the cost of the public.

here's an interesting read along the same lines:
Storm Victims Face Big Delay to Get Trailers
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ERIC LIPTON

SLIDELL, La., Feb. 6 — Nearly six months after two hurricanes ripped apart communities across the Gulf Coast, tens of thousands of residents remain without trailers promised by the federal government for use as temporary shelter while they rebuild.

Of the 135,000 requests for trailers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has received from families, slightly more than half have been filled. The delays have left families holed up with relatives or stranded out of state, stalled local economies and infuriated state and local officials, who criticize how the program has been managed. Further, officials and residents complain about problems with quality, like poor plumbing and electrical shorts, with the trailers they have received.

"The trailer problem is an individual human tragedy," said Reinhard J. Dearing, the chief administrative officer of Slidell, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Several city officials, including police officers, are still without trailers or just received them this week, and have been sleeping with friends or neighbors, and in one case, under a desk in a government office.

On Monday, frustrated by the delays, four members of the St. Bernard Parish Council performed what they called a symbolic act, taking three trailers from a local stockpile of about 275 and delivering them to residents.

"If this happened with any other business, you would find another purveyor," said Councilman Mark Madary, who represents a parish where 6,000 families are waiting for trailers and about 2,000 have received them.

The problems in administering the $4 billion trailer program mirror those of other major recovery efforts undertaken since the hurricanes crippled the region, and appear to be a result of failures at all levels of government. Local officials, contractors and residents say that some of the delays seem to stem from the federal government's poor planning and its frustrating layers of subcontractors and bureaucracy.

For example, trailers are often sent to two different holding areas before they are distributed, and sit collecting dust while families wait.

"It is so disheartening to see people living in houses with water pouring through the roof," said James M. McGehee, the mayor of Bogalusa, a small Louisiana city near the Mississippi border. Across the state line, Mr. McGehee said, are "acres and acres" of trailers in holding areas.

For its part, FEMA criticized local governments for rejecting trailer sites in neighborhoods and engaging in protracted negotiations about where the trailers should go. Agency officials also said that private companies, including electric utilities, had contributed to the problem by being slow to provide services.

"Everything from parishes not willing to accept trailers at all, to local rules and ordinances that we don't have authority to override, or the delay in getting power hook-ups, all impact the pace of getting trailers on the ground and occupied," said Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokeswoman in Washington. "The supply of trailers is not the issue; we have plenty of trailers."

FEMA, Ms. Andrews said, has about 19,000 trailers and mobile homes in staging areas, ready to go, but is waiting for Louisiana officials to decide where to put them.

Federal and local officials say the vast scope of this disaster has rendered all tasks Herculean.

"I'm not going to make excuses, but this has been an unprecedented event, and we have never, never in the history of FEMA ever had to house this many people," R. David Paulison, the acting FEMA director, said in Washington last week. "So there are glitches along the way."

The trailer problem is most acute in Louisiana, where 60 percent of the 90,000 requests for manufactured housing have not been met. Of the 21,000 requests in Orleans Parish alone, only about 3,000 have been filled. By comparison, in Mississippi, federal officials say that of about 40,000 such requests, 34,560 have been met. FEMA officials in Louisiana say that at the rate they are going — installing about 500 units a day — it will most likely be an additional 100 days before they are close to reaching their goal.

Residents who long to rebuild are impatient. Here in Slidell, where more than half the 10,000 homes are uninhabitable, Daryl Cleworth stood in his gutted house Monday afternoon, fiddling with some tools that seemed almost toylike compared with their task, and wondered when his several dozen calls to FEMA would result in a trailer.

"We'll take anything," said Mr. Cleworth, who is living with his wife and baby in New Orleans while his three older children stay with his mother in Colorado. "Just something to sleep in."

In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina blew through the Gulf Coast, FEMA signed contracts to buy about $2.5 billion in travel trailers and mobile homes from manufacturers and dealers across the country, in what was the single largest order in the history of the industry.

With all of these pieces in place, FEMA officials predicted in September that they would soon be able to install perhaps as many as 30,000 housing units every two weeks, a goal the agency has never even approached.

Already, the work completed so far is greater than any previous similar effort by FEMA. But the reality of the task along the Gulf Coast has proved far more complicated than FEMA officials expected.

The goal from the start, particularly in Louisiana, was to find wide-open swaths of land where group sites, which have become known as FEMAvilles, could be set up. That was crucial because a large share of the homeless in Louisiana were renters who did not have their own property where FEMA could place a trailer. Even if they did, whole sections of New Orleans were still considered uninhabitable.

The contractors sent teams of surveyors to identify possible sites for these new trailer communities. But as they began to negotiate the permits required, local authorities and landowners, one after another, started to turn them down.

"There is a very strong message: not in my backyard," said Mark Misczak, who oversees the temporary housing effort for FEMA in Louisiana.

Ronnie Hughes, the president of Ascension Parish south of Baton Rouge, where officials had considered a group site, said the parish instead decided to ban them.

"We are the fastest-growing parish in Louisiana prior to the hurricanes," Mr. Hughes said. "We don't have the infrastructure in place to support these cities."

To date, fewer than 5,000 of the 36,675 units of manufactured housing occupied in Louisiana are in group sites.

Carl Goss, a subcontractor hired to install FEMA trailers, said he could install six a day but often installed only two, because the paperwork was wrong 65 percent of the time. The documents sometimes call for a unit that does not fit on the lot, Mr. Goss said. "I'm real upset because I can't help people," he said.

Elected officials said they understood the complications. But FEMA, they added, has too many excuses.

"If you needed a classic example of how to make every mistake humanly possible and then throw more mistakes on top of that, that is what you have with this trailer program," said Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi, a vocal critic of the program who lost his home in Bay St. Louis to Hurricane Katrina.

With the cumulative costs of buying, installing and maintaining these units reaching $70,000 or more, and the months it is taking to finish the effort, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana, among others, says she wonders why FEMA put so much emphasis on manufactured housing in the first place.

"It's faster to fix apartment units that have gone down," Ms. Blanco told a Senate committee last week. In fact, FEMA is now renovating an apartment complex in New Orleans, which Ms. Andrews, the agency spokeswoman, said was an acknowledgment of the inability to get enough trailers into the city.

Shirley Harris, a 73-year-old Slidell resident, continues to live in a ramshackle house that was severely damaged by the storm. Ms. Harris said that FEMA had told her it could not install a trailer because she had electrical wires still hanging in front of her house. But looking across the street at a house with identical hanging wires and two FEMA trailers in the yard, she feels at a loss.

"I'd like to give up," she said, beginning to cry. "I just want to get away. But there is nowhere to go."

[red98vett]

This is just the kind of thing that needs to be brought up by the media...I can't believe it either and it's totally lowdown what they're doing over there....There are susposed to be laws against price gouging and I wonder why no one is stepping in to stop this ? It can't be legal to do that...you all were evacuated due to a force of nature and to come back to that is just a double whammy -

I feel so bad for you and all the Victims of Katrina....I can't say the word I want to here as I'm sure you didn't either....but...everyone was really Royally Screwed ...and this whole country should be very ashamed at how people were and ARE being treated.

[Claire]

Originally Posted by nifer

clearly they aren't wanting/expecting the old residents to return. i guess to them, this is an opportunity to 'reinvent' NO by bringing in more expensive housing and a wealthier population. making a buck at the cost of the public.

Anyone who has ever been to New Orleans will tell you that the people make New Orleans the great city that it is! If you bring back "new" people then who will carry on the traditions, who will continue to feed the soul of the city? You loose the people of New Orleans and you loose the city and eventually they will loose that quick buck that they are trying to make. Who wants to visit a geniaric (sp) city?
I want to raise my daughter in the rich culture that is New Orleans, not a prefab made up town.