[StBernard] WP: Order reveals FEMA aid shortcomings

[Westley Annis]

WP: Order reveals FEMA aid shortcomings 
Fraction of households to reach limit; bureaucracy is faulted
By Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post
Updated: 5:37 a.m. CT Dec 3, 2006

WASHINGTON - In denouncing the way the Bush administration has denied aid to
tens of thousands of victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a federal judge
in Washington last week pulled back the curtain on a deeper mystery 15
months after the nation's costliest natural disaster:

What has happened to 2.6 million households that applied for disaster
assistance but have been largely shed from the rolls?

The numbers, recently disclosed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
are striking. FEMA projects that fewer than 4,700 families will reach a
$26,200 cap on all post-disaster aid by March, when an 18-month statutory
cutoff takes effect -- less than one-fourth of 1 percent. The figures are
all the more surprising given the storms' scope, the incomplete
reconstruction of New Orleans and the demographic profile of evacuees, who
tended to be poorer and less well-insured and to have higher jobless rates
than other Americans.

To anti-poverty advocates, FEMA's policies, combined with inadequate
computer systems and support staff, unfairly pushed thousands of disaster
victims toward homelessness, slowed the recovery of New Orleans and saddled
cities such as Houston and Austin with housing crises. The critics cite
damning federal court findings, FEMA policy reversals, and reports by Texas
and Louisiana housing officials and lawyers that the government's actions
hit the poor especially hard.

"I cannot name another circumstance when so many public servants have worked
so hard to provide such dehumanizing and shoddy service to citizens who were
entitled to basic help and deserved fundamental respect," said Sheila
Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a liberal
housing advocacy group that has led the clash with FEMA. The coalition is
pushing to extend the 18-month federal limit on aid, lift the $26,200 cap
and expand a Housing and Urban Development disaster program as advocates for
the poor want.


Bush administration defenders see good news in the drop. Those still
receiving aid were most dependent before Katrina, mostly single mothers on
welfare, while the rest are back on their feet, said Ronald D. Utt, senior
research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

"From a human suffering point of view, I think it's good news," Utt said.
Even for lower-income people who would struggle to pay higher rents in New
Orleans while looking for work, he said, "a lot of people have simply found
it easier to stay where they are, which are probably places of greater
opportunity than New Orleans."

Efforts defended
FEMA Director R. David Paulison, at a speech Thursday to the National Press
Club, defended FEMA's efforts, while warning a new Democratic Congress that
plans to hold hearings.

"No good deed goes unpunished," Paulison said, adding that FEMA helped more
people than it ever has despite overwhelmed systems, huge work volumes and
pressure to fight victim fraud. "We felt like we did a good job."


But, he also said: "We have to resist the call for additional investigations
unless they're based on new evidence and allegations. Rather than conduct
additional studies, inquiries, analysis that look backward and tell us what
we really already know, we should continue to focus on correcting the
problems."

The controversy stems from the Bush administration's improvised housing
programs last year. After committing billions for trailers and mobile homes
that were heavily criticized, the government paid for 145,000 hotel rooms
and apartments. But it soon phased out those costlier measures in favor of
giving victims rent money for three-month periods, pending recertification.

But the recertification requirement coincided in steep drop-offs. FEMA
declined to release monthly tracking data of the use and denial rates.
Spokesman Jim McIntyre cited the difficulty of producing the data from
antiquated computer systems and referred requests to FEMA's heavily
backlogged Freedom of Information Act Office. FEMA also declined to provide
an official to comment for this report, citing pending litigation.


Requests denied
But periodic updates show that by May, only one-third of households that
received rental aid sought recertification, and of 246,786 who requested it
75 percent, or 180,636, were approved. By Oct. 19, only 5 percent of the
720,590 households remained eligible for aid nationwide, or 33,889 families.
(Another 108,088 families are in FEMA-provided trailers and mobile homes
near their homes on the Gulf coast.) Analysts estimate each household
includes nearly three people.

By summer, four out of five recertification requests were denied, said
Heather Godwin, a lawyer with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. Advocates and court
records show that FEMA refused, against agency rules, to give aid to more
than one member of a family, even if they were separated across the country,
and that the agency concluded erroneously that many pre-storm homes were not
severely damaged and relied on computer systems that were unable to keep
track of applicants' documents and were plagued by overloaded workers'
data-entry errors.

Other bureaucratic measures, designed to combat abuse, required applicants
to provide written documentation of pre-storm housing payments, which was
unavailable to some emergency evacuees, or to meet inspectors even if they
were living miles away.

Applicants sometimes got unclear or contradictory notice and advice from
FEMA, resulting in what U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon concluded last
week was a "Kafkaesque" process.

Liberal analysts also cite other indicators that aid cutoffs are leading to
de facto relocation decisions as poor families are unable to get back to New
Orleans and are beginning to seek local aid where they are. In Austin, the
wait list for public housing has grown from 8,200 to 10,000 families, Godwin
said.

Landed elsewhere
In New Orleans, people working to curb homelessness say that an
emergency-housing program funded to help 45 families drew 300 applicants
this summer and that programs are seeing as many clients in two months
seeking help as they usually do in a year.

Barbara Sard, housing analyst for the liberal Center for Budget and Policy
Priorities, a Washington think tank, noted that more than 50 percent of
35,000-plus evacuee families that ended up in Houston remain on FEMA rental
assistance. But less than 2 percent of evacuee families who landed elsewhere
in the country retained eligibility.

Part of the reason is that Houston took in some of the poorest evacuees. But
the city, led by Mayor Bill White, has also pushed hardest to help and
advocate for its storm victims. In October, the city lobbied FEMA to extend
rental aid to 15,000 families through March, noting the failure of the
agency, the city and applicants to navigate FEMA's recertification rules.

"It certainly suggests to me that it isn't so much about the people as it is
about the process. . . . These people were visible because they had the
local government behind them," Sard said. "How many people didn't reapply
because they thought they weren't eligible, because they couldn't get
through the phone system, because they didn't have a piece of paper that
said what they had paid for rent before? . . . FEMA set up a nonsensical,
impossible system."

C 2006 The Washington Post Company
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16011645/