Katrina One Year Later: No Job, No Way to Pay Rent

[Omaha Steve]

Full article: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/26/katrina-one-year-later-no-job-no-way-to-pay-rent/

Katrina One Year Later: No Job, No Way to Pay Rent

Today, we continue a series of profiles highlighting the experiences of Hurricane Katrina survivors—and exposing the gap between Bush administration spin and on-the-ground reality for the tens of thousands of survivors whose lives are still torn apart one year after the storm.

When George W. Bush flies into New Orleans next week to boast about the progress that has been made in rebuilding homes and lives on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, he won’t be talking about people like Oveal Jackson.

Jackson, 50, a custodian at Charity Hospital, which closed after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, is out of a job, has exhausted her unemployment benefits, has been unable to get assistance from the Bush administration and doesn’t know how she’s going to pay the rent next month for a house in Alexandria, La., where she moved—225 miles from her destroyed home in New Orleans.

She and her four adult children lost everything, escaping literally with the clothes on their backs. Jackson says:

It’s been rough. I mean, real rough. When you lose everything, and you can’t save nothing. When you see your house split in half. And all that water.

I don’t even have a picture of myself. I don’t have a camera. I lost everything. The only picture I have is one I got from my mother’s house of me when I was 18. I don’t look like that anymore.

But the family’s biggest loss is not material. It is the loss of loved ones that hurts most. Since Katrina hit a year ago, Jackson has lost four family members, including her nephew, who was shot by alleged looters when he returned to New Orleans from college Sept. 4, 2005. Now, her father is seriously ill, and her husband is hospitalized in Alexandria because of the psychological trauma he experienced during the hurricane and the impact of the family deaths.

A year after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last Aug. 29, killing more than 1,800 people and causing $81 billion in damage, the Bush administration has failed to provide the resources and leadership to get the area back on its feet and help residents rebuild their lives, according to a congressional report released Wednesday.

[Nozebro]

1. The idea is that by delaying/stalling rebuilding efforts, fewer poor

people (minorities, especially) will return to New Orleans, and those that try will not find affordable housing - and as that information gets spread around to other poor people that left the state, they too, will be unlikely to even attempt to return. Some might say that what is going on is tantamount to an ethnic cleansing campaign...part of a long-term strategy to "remake" New Orleans.