Six months after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, displacing more than 800,000 people from their homes, state and federal agencies are continuing to neglect poor communities, according to “Recovering States: The Gulf Coast Six Months After the Storm,” a report by international aid agency Oxfam America.
“Despite critical reports and investigative hearings of government failures,
despite the flurry of commitments to confront poverty in the U.S. – six
months after Katrina, little has changed,” said Minor Sinclair, director of
Oxfam America’s Regional Office.
“It’s unconscionable that the same
vulnerable people abandoned in the height of the storm could again be
neglected in the recovery. There are still thousands of people who don’t
have a place to live and don’t have answers to the most basic questions
about their futures in the Gulf Coast.”