Friday, December 21, 2007
Katrician, Heal Thyself
Kathy at Liberty Street describes the
Houston Chronicle's story on the Katrina evacuees who are losing housing assistance, and whose lives are unraveling.
There are over 700 comments to the story, all of them just bursting with holiday charity.
These warmed my heart:
saa106 wrote:
"...spay and neuter...not just for dogs and cats. If you get a job you wont have so much time to play hide the 'larger welfare maker'!!!"
MajorD wrote:
"I hate these types of reports from journalist who are so compassionate about the poor, and forgotten... Merry Christmas to those who are responsible adults."
Thanks, Houston.
====
There's an important element to the
Chronicle's story that is overlooked by the 700 comments, and it involves the landlords' response to the new DHAP program:
In the last month, a second displacement of hundreds of people has become more pronounced as the process of transferring the FEMA program to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development got under way. The shift between the two agencies has not been seamless with many local landlords, who accepted FEMA money before, opting out of the program that will require tenants to start contributing to their rent payments March 1. So far, 48 landlords representing 68 properties have said no to the HUD program, said Spurgeon Robinson, the director of Harris County's Disaster Housing Assistance Program, or DHAP.
Plenty of landlords in New Orleans are also "opting out" of DHAP, to a much greater degree than expected. HUD doesn't make it the transition easy for landlords, either. Landlords must go to an office in the abandoned CJ Peete projects, wait a long time, and do paperwork and watch a video. This is so they can understand their
tenant's new program, mind you. If you call the office, there's no response, and-- apparently-- unless you get there early in the morning, they'll turn you away and say come back tomorrow at 8:30am. (Yesterday, after repeated calls were rebuffed by automated recordings alerting me to full voicemailboxes, I went to the office without an appointment to sign up for the DHAP program and was turned away.)
Labels: Tejas, Thanks Houston
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12 Comments:
Ohhh, Lord.
Once again, such holiday cheer coming from online newspaper commenters and our guv'mint.
Schmucks.
Oy. What a "wonderful new community" we're transitioning to here.
Keep in mind, at the very least, Oyster is actually trying to work with that stupid and hostile system. How many landlords are going to find it worth their time to even make such an effort?
Oyster,
Come now -- you get the same kind of comment writers on Nola.com as well.
Actually, they're worse at nola.com.
100,000 people from New Orleans in Harris County? I doubt it. I think they're inflating the numbers to increase their haul from FEMA.
As for the morons in FEMA and HUD you just can't say enough.
I was actually surprised when I commented on Ashley's letter to the folks in Maine and the Maine site asked me to remove the word "hell" from my comment before it would publish it.
Wow, a commenting system associated with a publication that actually demands SOME standards of its commenters. Who'da thunk it?
i'm still scratching my head at why the landlords have to learn about the tenant voucher program. If you want businessmen to work with a gubmint agency, you need to give them a financial incentive, like the small percentage of sales tax the parish lets them keep, or the small percentage the lottery lets a retailer keep. The notion of driving into CJ Peete to get involved in a gubmint program doesn't discourage ersta, but it's damn sure going to discourage a lot of people who own rental property.
Now, the big question is, is this just stupidity, or is it something Rove this way comes?
oh, and, once again, my thanks to Leigh and all the rest of you who are willing to wade into the sewer that is Nola.com comments.
I still need a shower, mister. Really.
The idea behind the DHAP landlord education program is because the DHAP program is different than the old FEMA deal. DHAP supplies a smaller and smaller portion of the rent each month, and tenants are required to pay the ever larger difference. After a year or so, the tenant is paying the full amount-- hopefully. I assume HUD doesn't want a deluge of uninformed landlords complaining about why they aren't getting the full rent amount from FEMA like were (in many cases) last year.
I didn't find any information on the DHAP at HANO.org, except a listing of properties.
I did find information HCVP, which seems to be a permanent assistance program and a DVP which seems to be temporary.
No wonder people need video tapes to understand this stuff.
OK, so landlords need some 'splainin. I'll buy that. Have someone record one of the meetings with a landlord and put it on YouTube. When the rest of them wonder where their money is coming from, point them to the YouTube video. Since we're talking about owners of multiple properties, it's not unreasonable that they can access the intertubes.
