Katrina Hotel Situation

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azredhawk44

Moderator
Thousands of Katrina Victims Evicted

There are some key phrases from this article that just bug me.

First off is the title. They are living on the dole, and have been doing so for months, without getting jobs. This title is so caustic and accusatory.

Secondly, this paragraph (and the mindset that created it) really steams me:

Wheeling out her boxes of belongings, 20-year-old Katie Kinkella and sister, Jennifer, were heading back to their ruined house in heavily flooded St. Bernard Parish. The sisters had stayed first at the Marriott, and later at the Crowne Plaza as they waited for FEMA to deliver a trailer. Then they waited some more for FEMA to hook up the electricity at the trailer.
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Doesn't anyone realize that FEMA are people too? I hate bureaucracies as much as the next gun-toting fellow on this board, but these benefits that people expect from FEMA are delivered and implemented by flesh and blood, not by mandate and statute and magic. It takes sweat to get this stuff taken care of.

What gets me the most is that all of the "victims" are sitting back and having a vacation in the Crown Plaza and Marriott hotels, while FEMA and other relief agencies FROM OUTSIDE THE STATE do the cleanup.

What this means to the rest of us:

1. We pay for all the FEMA staff, their salaries, their emergency housing on site, their hazard pay for dealing with crocodiles and spilled chemicals, etc.

2. We pay for reconstruction costs of a city that F'''ed up big time, plus we pay to build the levies that we already paid for before, but never got built.

3. We pay for housing for all the refugees in very nice hotels. They don't participate in the cleanup process. They get living stipends.

We could instead use those affected by the hurricane as local labor sources. Pay them the wages we would originally pay to FEMA and house them in the emergency FEMA housing. Set them to work rebuilding their own homes.

Instead, we have whiney-@$$ Katie Kinkella and her sister waiting for yet another handout. And another. And another. ad nauseum.

My God, where did the people and heart that built this country disappear to?

Who is John Galt?
 
Should we offer to trade Mexico a few of New Orleans' finest for a few of their hardest workers. (they did offer to send us water)

We wouldn't have to worry as much about immigration if we had a little deportation.

Thank goodness it's just Kinkella and Jennifer. The rest got jobs right?
 
Good points and well written AZ!

Now the so-called mayor is patronizing France for help b/c according to him...our govt is of no help...:barf:

That's the most irresponsible breech of fiduciary responsibility by him as a mayor...
 
I just saw on NBC that there are thousands of mobile homes available in Arkansas(?) but either the people don't want them or local regulations won't accept them! There is too much red tape for FEMA to try to break through to deliver housing in needed areas!

Can you beleive it?! So much red tape that even the federal government can't break through!

How long have these people being evicted from posh hotels had to find a job and find a place to live? Now they are surprised that they are being "thrown out on the streets" all of a sudden?!

Seems like if you bite the hand that feeds you, you get a bigger piece of the pie!

Seems like the ones living below sea level in NO, living on welfare, paying nothing to live there, are the ones offended that not enough government help is being given!

From "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime" to "don't try to teach me, I don't want to learn! just give me the fish I deserve!"

Katrina has shown us that welfare is a self defeating cause. Make a society dependant on government, then blame that same government of not doing enough.

If it were up to me, I'd make every welfare recipient work for the money by cleaning up trash along roads. And if they had kids in order to increase their payout, I'd make them work longer hours to pay for after school daycare!
I'm tired of seeing nice cars outside of government housing and fatherless kids running around joining gangs and leading a life of crime.
 
We pay for reconstruction costs of a city that F'''ed up big time, plus we pay to build the levies that we already paid for before, but never got built.
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How did the city "F'''ed up". City was fine for Katrina which incidetally went east of NO and hit the Mississippi coast instead. Problem came day later when the levie on the Pontertrain side broke. Brown, who was gwbs appointed head of FEMA at the time, last week testified that he had warned the white house several days before, of what could happen. Also the 2002 national budget for levie maintenance was cut.

They don't participate in the cleanup process
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.

Where did you get this information? Have you been down there or you just dumping "washington buck passing" propaganda? IF you had been down there you would know that there are millions of people working and making big money (payed by us through FEMA) to restore the area. Many of those workers are locals and displaced refugees. Yea, its our money but I much prefer it go there than places like Israel.

Incidentally, some of the south american countries donated free oil to the area but you don;t here much about that because they are guilty of not kissing the washington administrations a#$.
 
This Country should have just left that cesspool under water instead of having the Army Corp. of Engineers flush that toilet.
 
Biased News Media!

People working their tails off, taking responsibility for themselves and others is not news. But freeloaders in crisis are news. It's not reality but rather just the news.

That's my take!
 
While the headlines try to paint an ugly picture, the details in the articles tell a different story.

FoxNews carried an article titled FEMA to Stop Paying for Katrina Evacuees' Hotel Privileges. Is the story about the big, bad government abandoning the homeless victims of Katrina? Hardly.
Last week, the occupants of roughly 4,500 rooms lost FEMA funding for failing to register with the agency.
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When people are too lazy to even sign up for free money, I have NO sympathy for their plight.
Of those departing on Monday, FEMA officials said 10,500 families, or 88 percent, have received rent-assistance checks from the agency, said Libby Turner, FEMA's transitional housing director. The cash can be used to pay for an apartment or to continue their hotel stays. It can also be put toward fixing their ruined homes.
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When people have received money for housing, the government certainly shouldn't be paying twice by also picking up their hotel bill.
Yet 1,100 families living in the subsidized hotel rooms are not eligible for further assistance from FEMA. Turner said those evacuees have been referred to other charitable programs.
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These are the only people I would have questions or concerns about.
 
Couple of messages:
1. TEXAS: We'll trade. You keep the ones still there and we'll take the illegal Mex. workers.

2. FEMA: I'll put it in direct, politically incorrect, words: No one want's an instant ghetto in their back yard...in our heart, black or white, we know this. Figure out 300 small widely spaced sites rather than 30 big ones.

3. Army Corps of engerneers: The hurricane was over and done with. It's the levey system failing that caused the problems. Point all the fingers you want about the handing of the situation after the event....won't change the basic fact that this is an man-made failure.

I did have flood insurance and homeonwers...flood has paid me, homwowners is still farting around (use to live 150yards from the 17th street canal breech you see on every news story). 12.5 feet of fast moving water will not only take the houses out, will take all the trees out...which take out the sewer lines, gas lines, water lines and even destroy slab foundations. To this day, have not put the doors back on teh house or even covered the gaping holes in the walls or roof...there isn't antyhing in there anyone would want to steal.

Ugly thoughts: Bluffed my way in while there were still searching going on. The dead were just tied to something that wouldn't move easily, were looking for live ones. Found my neighbor in her car...been dead a long while, evidently she tried to get out when the flooding started, but it picked her car upand rammed it into her own house, upside down in 12 feet of water. Pretty sure it was her, hard to tell as the critters (mostly dogs and cats) had eaten her face, hands, feet. Guess they picked her up a week later.

Have police still lving on cruise ships...have some MD's and nurses living in hospital rooms...and have NO PLACE for anyone without $ to live. Will gladly take all the workers you want to sned, but tye are pretty well living in tents under interstates, RV's in parking lots, and stacked 8 to 10 in a hotel room.

FEMA trailers on your onw property?...not unless you have a working sewer system, water, and electricty. Large reas doen't have those three things, so even all these months later, couldn't hook up your trailer.

Yep...the last 10K out of any large city are not going to be the best and brightest. Many are the fourth and fith generation welfare folks. They are not going to do jack, are unemployable...whee ever they are not, they'll stay unless someone offers free trandpost, free housing, free hospitaization, and even then will complain about it. Ya'll are welcome to them...figue out what to do with them.

Yep..took me 5 months, but I found a job...wife's job restarted in october, and as she only has afew years to get to her 30, we came back. Could have relocated and found a job easily, but with her here and an 88 year old mother-in-law to take care of, that's not an option.

Just a "chocolate city" guy living as a vanailla sprinkle.
--- Guns?

Take a plastic container 12 feet high. toss in all your guns. Roll the container around for a couple of hours. Fill with salt water. Add four shovels of dirt, handfulls of any chemical you migh have in a house, take a crap in the container, add a dead cat. Poke a pin sized hole in the bottom of the container and walk way for 34 days of 100% humidity and +90 degree temperatures.
 
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You get more of the behavior you reward.

The type of behavior we are hearing about is the kind that's been rewarded for years.

No surprise.
 
The bigger story behind this may be why thousands of furnished mobile homes - more than 10,000 just at the municipal airport in Hope, Arkansas - that FEMA purchased are sitting empty.

Federal-local conflicts keep victims out of FEMA trailers
In its search for places to put them, the agency has run into two roadblocks: a lack of basic services such as water, sewers and electricity, and the not-in-my-backyard attitude of many residents who don’t want their communities turned into giant trailer parks.

“Right now, we’ve been handcuffed in certain respects. It hasn’t been easy to find land,” said FEMA spokesman Marty Bahamonde, who recently worked a stint in Baton Rouge, La.

And the greatest resistance is often where there is the greatest need. Only half of Louisiana’s 64 parishes are willing to accept FEMA trailers, and 24 of those 32 willing communities will accept them only if they are for their own original residents.

“We can’t come in and take their land, and you don’t want to put them someplace outside of town with no services. In many cases, our hands are tied,” Bahamonde said. “Right now we’re concerned that there’s going to be a greater need than we have places to put people.”
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Looks like a "jillian" setting at Craig Field in Selma Alabama and thats just 3 hours from Biloxi Mississippi.

To get a trailer, first the owners lot must be big enough to accomodate one, must have sewer, water, and electricity. Once trailer is placed on the lot the placement is "confirmed." And the wait begins for the utilities to be hooked up. Once that is completed, then one waits for the inspector to approve the hook up before the move in can be made. So far, this proceedure has taken several months, some not done yet.

I had an uncle and aunt whose house was flooded in Mississippi. His children came in from as far away as WY and before FEMA delivered a trailer to his place they gutted the house, rebuilt it and they moved back in. No thanks from FEMA.
 
Got that right., if it can't tie into power, water, sewage then a trailer isn't real useful.

Don't really understand the complaints...it really isn't FEMA...it's the local govenments lagging behind in providing the needed power , water, sewage as well as the permmiting hoops. Best estimae is that there are 100,000 to 150,000 homes that still couldn't take a trailer as they've none of the services.....will take a while to patch or replace the underground lines.

Simple enough: the local workers don't want to do those jobs. If you are able bodied, the burger joints are paying $10 an hour and a $2000 sign on bonus (paid out over a year). thee is more than enough work in any construction trade...even with the imported labor, still have more work than anyone can handle. It's the CONTRACTORS that are complaining...the people on a waiting list for a roof don't give a rat's rump who swings the hammer.
 
original post by ribbonstone
it really isn't FEMA...it's the local govenments lagging
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In many cases, especially in mississippi and Alabama its FEMA, the utility companies have been done for months and there are still those without trailers, hooked up. And they don;t get the keys until they are hooked up and approved.

The Contractors could care less for a speedy recovery as time is money to them. They are the cause of a lot of the delay. Many are slow in obtaining materials and workers are just twiddling their thumbs and drawing the money waiting on materials.
 
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