With the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s rampage through New Orleans and the Gulf Coast nearing, several reports on the area’s recovery conclude that the lack of federal aid disproportionately affects black residents and the poor.
In Louisiana and Mississippi, blacks are more likely to be renters than whites, according to U.S. Census data. Though a large proportion of the dwellings destroyed by Katrina were occupied by renters, only a fraction of the federal housing assistance has been earmarked for rental units, according to several of the studies.
A Mississippi conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People report said “the lack of rental aid will have long-term impacts on places like Biloxi, Miss., where 70 percent of renters were black, and Pascagoula, where 75 percent were black.”
A report by the Brookings Institution in Washington argued that with rents having risen 39 percent in New Orleans, the need to repair affordable rental units is crucial.
Other reports conclude that the recovery effort is slow and confusion filled.
“It’s a pretty bleak picture,” Minor Sinclair, head of the U.S. regional office of Oxfam America charitable organization, told the Associated Press.
Several reports focus on the failure of federal dollars to reach their intended targets, according to AP.
Oxfam concludes that although $17 billion has been approved by Congress to rebuild homes in Louisiana and Mississippi, not one house has been rebuilt with that money in either state.
The Democratic members of the House Small Business Committee have found that 80 percent of small businesses on the Gulf Coast have not yet received loans promised by the federal government. The Small Business Administration has approved loans of more than $10 billion, but only $2 billion been loaned to business owners.
The report also cited massive delays at the federal agency, forcing some business owners to wait as long as 100 days for a decision on loan applications.
