[StBernard] EDITORIAL: For the people

[Westley Annis]

>From time to time, the LRA shares commentaries about issues surrounding the recovery. The Times-Picayune published this editorial Sunday about the Road Home.




Times-Picyaune Editorial: For the people



Almost 22 months after Hurricane Katrina swept ashore in south Louisiana and the flood walls that were supposed to protect us fell apart, tens of thousands of people are essentially homeless.

They may have shelter -- a brother's spare room, a tiny FEMA trailer, an exorbitantly expensive apartment -- but they are not home. And the program that state and federal leaders promised would get them there is an estimated $5 billion short of the money needed to do so. 

As Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco prepares to meet this week with Congress to make the case for as much as $4 billion more in federal assistance, this is what our leaders in Washington need to remember: these people who are suffering are your people too.

And as much aid as Congress and President Bush have generously sent to this region since Katrina, the needs are still massive and money is running short. 

When the Army Corps of Engineers' flood walls crumbled August 29, 2005, and flood waters filled all but a sliver of New Orleans and every corner of St. Bernard Parish, entire communities were emptied of life.

The damage spread from here across the entire southern end of Louisiana as hurricane Rita hit less than a month later.

Repairing such massive ruin is not a quick or inexpensive task, but just how arduous and costly our recovery would be couldn't be fully fathomed until we were in the midst of it. Almost two years into the rebuilding of this singularly beautiful place, progress is unmistakable but so is the depth of damage. 

A year ago, President Bush and recovery chairman Donald Powell successfully pressed Congress to give Louisiana $4.2 billion in housing aid. Combined with $6.2 billion approved earlier, it seemed at the time as if that would be enough. It won't be. 

The landscape of disaster isn't static. People who thought they would get enough insurance to cover their losses found insurers stingier than they ever imagined. Homeowners trying to rebuild found that the cost for construction was skyrocketing. And state officials, faced with a disaster unlike any experienced in this history, tried to cover as many storm victims as possible with the Road Home program.

So a program that initially expected to serve 114,500 homeowners -- based on FEMA's estimate that 123,000 homes had major damage -- has more than 145,000 applicants in the pipeline. The number of people requesting rebuilding aid is rising by a couple of hundred every day, and the average grant is expected to be around $79,000 instead of the $60,109 estimated a year ago. 

When the application deadline passes July 31, state officials will have a better handle on how many people are seeking grants. Soon after that, they should know how many of these new applicants qualify for the Road Home and how much they are in line to get. 

Estimates now are that 41,000 eligible applicants could be left with nothing unless the program gets an infusion of money. Part of that money will come from the state, but Louisiana cannot afford to bear the entire burden -- nor should it be expected to do so. 

Louisiana isn't asking for too much. To date, Mississippi has received about $5.5 billion in federal block grants. We don't begrudge our neighbors the aid they've gotten, but Congress should be fair. Louisiana had four times the damage of Mississippi, and if aid were given our proportionately, this state would get $20 billion in block grants. So far, we've gotten only half that amount.

Our nation is the wealthiest and most powerful on earth, and our leaders pledged to see us through this unimaginable hardship. 

President Bush stood in Jackson Square about two weeks after Katrina, when New Orleans was still awash in fetid floodwaters and pledged to "do what it takes ...stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives."

His words gave us hope: "All who question the future of the Crescent City need to know there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again."

In the year after Katrina, Democrats in Congress, frustrated with the pace and degree of federal aid, pledged to do right by us if they got the chance. Now that they are in power, they can make good on those promises.

We trust that they and the president meant what they said. We believe that our nation's leaders would not leave any American to suffer such grievous losses -- especially not when the federal government's lapses multiplied those losses exponentially.

And we believe that they will find a way to get Louisianians back home.

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Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated South Louisiana, claiming 1,464 lives, destroying more than 200,000 homes and 18,000 businesses. The Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) is the planning and coordinating body that was created in the aftermath of these storms by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to lead one of the most extensive rebuilding efforts in the world. The LRA is a 33-member body which is coordinating across jurisdictions, supporting community recovery and resurgence, ensuring integrity and effectiveness, and planning for the recovery and rebuilding of Louisiana.