Welfare Warriors

Winter 2006

MW Voice FEATURE

Letters to the  Editor

War

Editor's Tidbits

Mothers news from around the world

Victories

  Winter 2006

Six Months After Katrina—Take Action 

Loyala University Law professor, Bill Quigley, lives and works in New Orleans. He researched and wrote “Six Months After Katrina: Who Was Left Behind – Then and Now.” As we all know, the poor were left behind, especially people with disabilities, elders, single mothers. children and prisoners. The majority of those poor were Africa American.

Quigley’s research (summarized below) shows that the poor are still being left behind. And plenty of “plans” are in place to make sure the poor stay left behind. There are still no public schools open, no public housing, and no electricity or gas in two thirds of homes! Don’t just get mad about this outrage. Take action.

            This most visible US war on the poor can be stopped by the people. The wealthy white business community want New Orleans for themselves. Please consider taking time to spend a weekend, a week, a month in New Orleans as a worker and a witness. We can not depend on FEMA, the federal government, or Halliburton to start treating the New Orleans victims fairly. They are the problem.  We must stop them.

Recruit a few friends and drive down to New Orleans or take the bus or train. Or find a drive-away company in your area that needs a car transported to New Orleans. Get your church to send a busload of volunteers this summer. Groups working in New Orleans need folks to help with clean-up, rebuilding, medical care, counseling, food preparation, and legal advocacy. Contact Common Ground Collective at 504-368-6897; 331 Atlantic Ave. New Orleans, LA 70114; commongroundrelief@gmail.com.

Then and Now

Quigley and his wife Debbie got out of New Orleans five days after Katrina. They left on a small fishing boat, the back of a garden truck, and the kindness of strangers. Quigley writes, “The Katrina evacuation was totally self-help. No provisions were made for those who could not evacuate themselves.”

Debbie worked as a nurse in a New Orleans hospital. 2000 patients, staff and their families huddled in the hospital surrounded by eight feet of brown floodwater. No lights. No phones. No drinking water. No flush toilets. No breathing machines. No Cell phones or computers. No medicines. No elevators. Soon, no food. And the entire city with tens of thousands of people left behind were in the same situations.

Who Was Left Behind?

• The poor, especially those without cars. 27% of the people of New Orleans had no car. Government authorities knew in advance that ".100,000 citizens of New Orleans did not have means of personal transportation." Greyhound and Amtrak stopped service on the Saturday before the hurricane.

• The sick. 24,000 people - staff and families of patients - were left behind in 22 hospitals

• Disabled people and their caretakers. Every study of evacuees in Houston shelters found one in seven physically disabled, 22% physically unable to evacuate, 23% stayed behind to care for someone physically disabled, and 25% had a chronic disease such as heart disease, diabetes or high blood pressure.

• The elderly. 280 nursing homes remained mostly full. Only 21% evacuated. 215 people died in nursing homes. The aged living at home--nearly half disabled—were left behind. 

• Children. No official estimate. One-fourth of the people living in the areas damaged were children, about 183,000 kids, including 47,000 children under the age of 5. Over half of the children displaced were African-American.

• Prisoners. 8300, most held on minor charges and too poor to post bond. No food, water, or medical attention. Doors of cells, halls, pods, entrances and exits didn’t open or close without electricity. 600 prisoners, one entire building, were left behind once the prisons were evacuated - left in chest deep water, locked into cells.  

Where Did They Go?

 40,000 people ended up in the Superdome.  20-30,000 people at the Convention Center.

240,000 in Houston. 60,000 households were over 750 miles away spread across the US in 18,700 zip codes.   

 270,000 Started out In Shelters. Who Were They?

 64% were renters  

55% had no car 

22% cared for someone physically unable to leave  

72% had no insurance  

68% had neither money in the bank nor a useable credit card  

57% had household incomes under $20,000 a year  

76% had children under 18

77% had a high school education or less  

93% were black  

67% were employed full or part-time before the hurricane  

52% had no health insurance  

54% received their healthcare at the big public Charity Hospital

Who Returned?

Quigley and Debbie returned 15 weeks later. Very few of the people who were evacuated with them have returned. “Most of the same people left behind in the evacuation are being left behind again in the reconstruction of New Orleans.” There are 469,000 fewer people in New Orleans in January 2006 than in August 2005.

Why Can’t The Poor Return?

 •  STILL NO electricity or gas. Two-thirds of the homes in New Orleans still have no electricity, even fewer have gas.

• Most public schools remain closed or have been converted into charter schools. Children can not return. From 117 public schools with 60,000 students to 19 open schools (8 of them new charter schools) serving 13,000 students. City teachers and staff have been fired.

• The cost of renting has skyrocketed 45% of the homes damaged were occupied by renters. A $600 apartment now rents for $1400. Most renters had no insurance. Over 10,000 trailers were still sitting unused on runways in Hope, Arkansas in February 2006.

• ALL Public housing is still closed (with special barriers bolted to the doors). There is no national or local commitment to re-opening public housing U.S. Congressman Richard Baker, a longtime critic of public housing in New Orleans, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying "We finally cleaned up in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

• Only 7 out of 22 hospitals are open, a 78% reduction. And NO public hospital opened. The sick can not return. From 53,000 hospital beds to 15,000. 8 hour waits in emergency rooms.

• The little reconstruction that has started is aimed at home-owners.

• There are 200,000 fewer jobs. The working poor have not returned. New Orleans averaged 124,000 bus riders per week. Now there are 11,709 a week, only 9% of the pre-storm number.

• The Disabled, who lived at home prior to the evacuation, fear being institutionalized.

• Only 7 of 42 public defenders have returned. Prisoners were kept in jail long after their sentences had run.

•Black homeowners less able to rebuild. White median income is $61,000; black income of $25,000.

• Bulldozing plans by the city target Black poor areas.

• Planning and homeowners insurance and flood insurance issues still not resolved • Poor people and those without work are overwhelmingly African-American. "New Orleans is at risk of losing 80% of its black population." Alphonso Jackson, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, told a Houston audience.                              Quigley ends his report: “There is not a sign outside of New Orleans saying "If you are poor, sick, elderly, disabled, children or African-American, you cannot return."   But there might as well be. We are back. But where are the hundreds of thousands of our neighbors and will they ever be allowed to return? If all levels of government and corporate power allow this to happen in New Orleans, do you think it will be any different in your city?

 You can reach Bill at Quigley@loyno.edu Read his report at CommonDreams.org.

ACTION NEEDED—Help STOP Attack on HOMELESS KATRINA SURVIVORS!  

 FEMA's short-term hotel program expired for most of the 26,000 displaced hurricane survivors. And most do not have long-term,or even transitional housing solutions. Yet te Stafford Act requires FEMA to provide housing for disaster victims for eighteen months.  Their attempt to cut-off shelter programs is illegal as well as immoral. And the Stafford Act requires that transitional housing and rental assistance must be provided near the survivors workplace. Trailers outside of NOLA are not feasible, or acceptable.

CONTACTS

FEMA Nicol Andrews, Deputy Strategic Director, 202-646-7917, nicol.andrews@dhs.gov

MAYOR NAGIN ph 504-658-4900, fx 504-658-4939

CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ph 504-658-(1010 John Batt) (1020 Renee Pratt) (1030 Jacquelyn Clarkson) (1040 Cynthia Morrell) (1050 Cynthia  Lewis) (1060 Ed

Sapir) (1070 Oliver Thomas)

GOVERNOR BLANCO ph 866-366-1121, fx 225-342-7099

WHEN YOU CALL OR WRITE:

Tell each council member and the mayor to provide housing now! Council members must stop pushing trailer parks out of their districts, and the mayor must take a stand for housing NOLA citizens.  Now is not the time for self-interested political jockeying.

Tell the elected officials: There are major absentee voting efforts organizing their evacuated constituents. If they do not act in the best interests of ALL their constituents they will be defeated in the upcoming elections.

Tell the elected officials: Governor Blanco's plan to shelter survivors for 30 days in cities far from their jobs and their damaged homes is unacceptable.  Those shelters must be provided in New Orleans.

Tell the elected officials: Our tax funded National Guard should not be used to force survivors into homelessness at gunpoint.

Tell everyone: The money that has been pledged to the recovery belongs to the people, not the corporations.  Homeowners need the grants to  rebuild, give corporations the loans – they were insured.

Tell these hotels to honor the FEMA extensions  Royal St Charles 504-587-3700, AmeriHost Inn and Suites 504-299-9900 Quality Inn: Maison St Charles 504-522-0187

For more info contact www.no-heat.org, 504-883-8225