I picked this up from the T-P late tonight. My heart hurts, and sleep is very far away right now.
This story upsets me greatly:Without the fact of Fate and a wonderful partner, I could easily be one of the future homeless people. I’m permanantly Disabled, 22 years of HIV and HEP-C…. I’ve worked for almost four decades, a veteran for nine years, and I’ve spent the last three decades working on Social Issues.
Would someone like me stand for this Federal screw-job on poor people?
If I had an AK-47 and a 9mm Glock, FEMA would need some new people. (I don’t miss. I’m a professional.)
I don’t care what anyone thought of the folks in the Treme, the 6th through 7th Wards, the Lower Ninth…. they are freakin’ us! They are part of our city, and dammit’, we need to fight for them.
This was a Federal Disaster… it hurt all of us, and the freakin’ Feds had better own up to that. The Feds owe us.
Look… I’ve had a 45 in my chest, been chased on my bike at 4 AM. That’s freakin’ life. All of us deserve to come home to N.O.. Maybe things will be different… maybe not, but that’s the city. It’s what we live with and accept.
I biked the neighborhods… watched the Grannies cooking gumbo, the kids playing in the yards… Try to find that anywhere else in America. Rejoice in what we actually have here… a real Culture.
This is my city… my home. Accept it as yours, and get ready for the fight of your lives. It’s coming, and our city is worth saving. There is nothing else we can do.
I’m ready… are you?
Policy shift could leave thousands of evacuees homeless
By Bruce Nolan
Staff writer
A coalition of advocates for displaced New Orleans residents called on the city’s mayoral candidates Wednesday to speak up for thousands of families exiled to Houston and elsewhere who are about to lose FEMA rental assistance, and perhaps their apartments.
A FEMA spokesman in Austin confirmed that about 7,000 of the 36,000 New Orleans area families now living in Houston are at risk of losing rental vouchers because they do not qualify for a longer-term federal assistance program with tougher eligibility requirements.
Local families displaced to other states after Hurricane Katrina are in a similar bind, although national numbers were not available Wednesday.
The news distressed local housing advocates for the poor, who said they worry that New Orleans tenants evicted in Houston may try to make their way back home, where there is little to no affordable housing for them.