Judge Orders FEMA to Help New Orleans’ Displaced

It was bad enough that the levees were not adequately designed or maintained. It was worse that the poor were left at the Superdome and Convention Center. However, the worst is that, more than a year after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had to be ordered by a judge to help those still displaced. Vets coming home from Iraq may wish to pay close attention to how the government takes care of folks.

Only the most rabid anarcho-capitalist would argue that the people of the US had no duty to help their fellow citizens in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after a pair of hurricanes whacked them. Private donations poured out across the country because Americans, for all their faults, are generous as a people. Of course, the job of fixing millions of lives is too big for private charities, no matter how good they are. One of the reasons the Constitution was drafted was to “promote the general welfare” -- a governmental function.

According to Michael Hedges and Mike Snyder of the Houston Chronicle, “In the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, FEMA began paying rent and utilities for evacuees through programs administered by local governments. At its height, Houston's Joint Hurricane Housing Task Force housed about 34,000 households. In February, FEMA began shifting evacuees into a separate housing program that pays rent but not utilities and has tighter eligibility rules. Ultimately, the agency decided about 2,600 Houston households were ineligible for that program. Those families received their last rent payments in August.”

“FEMA's notice provisions are unconstitutionally vague and uninformative," Reuters quoted from US District Judge Richard Leon’s decision. FEMA must “free these evacuees from the 'Kafkaesque' application process they had to endure.” He added FEMA must “pay to each of these evacuees the short-term assistance benefits they would have otherwise received from September 1, 2006, through November 30, 2006.”

FEMA claimed its program was supposed to be a short-term solution. FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker (who has one of America’s toughest jobs), said, “FEMA’s emergency sheltering initiative was conceived as a compassionate but short-term solution to shelter evacuees. By law, sheltering assistance can be provided for only a limited period of time.” Of course, had FEMA done its job of getting the recovery of the Gulf Coast sorted out (although no one expects it to have been completed in a year or so), short-term help would have been sufficient.

No one approves of fraud, and anytime the government (or anyone else) hands out money, there is a chance someone will put out an undeserving hand. That is, however, not reason enough to deny help to the truly needy. FEMA doesn’t seem to get that, but then, FEMA hasn’t done well under the dysfunctional Heimatschutzministerium of which it is a part.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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