The Uncertainty of Life After Katrina

For many Katrina evacuees and survivors, there is little to no certainty as to where they will eventually end up living permanently or as to how they will provide for themselves. The NY Times revisits a family that has bounced from one place to another after fleeing New Orleans:

The small room where Tracy Jackson, Jerel Brown and their four young children share a twin bed and thin mattress on the floor is the 14th place they have laid their heads since Hurricane Katrina struck just over 14 weeks ago.

Five shelters. Six hotel rooms. Twelve days in the home of a good Samaritan in a tiny Louisiana town where they were the only black people. Six weeks in Durham, N.C., in the two-bedroom apartment that a church found for Mr. Brown's mother after the storm, where no buses ran nearby and a cab to Wal-Mart cost $10.

The immediate aftermath of the hurricane exposed the deep divide between New Orleans's haves and have-nots, as middle-class families rushed to hotels while the poorest of the poor suffered in the squalor of the Superdome.

The chasm remains, more than three months later. Thousands of the displaced have taken significant steps to rebuild their lives, returning to surviving sections of the region or finding new jobs, new schools and new homes out of state. But the Jackson-Browns, who are not married and lack high school diplomas, credit cards, even driver's licenses, are among the legions of desperately destitute still lost and in limbo.

Reading the article, it's clear that the couple has made mistakes, and they've had trouble adjusting to living with strangers, or in shelters. Jobs are hard to come by for people who are essentially transient, and who lack even a driver's license for identification. But it's also clear that beauracratic rigamarole has left them in limbo, wondering when they'll finally be able to settle down in a home of their own. The couple longs to return to New Orleans, but without help they face an uncertain future.

FEMA, for it's part, has been prevented from cutting off the many thousands of evacuees still trying to make a living in motels and hotels when a federal judge ordered an extension of federal aid. Judge Duval Jr. harshly criticized FEMA for their arbitrary deadlines and threats to cut off the evacuees:

Calling the Federal Emergency Management Agency "numbingly insensitive" and "unduly callous," a federal judge ruled yesterday that the agency must pay the hotel bills of hurricane evacuees until Feb. 7, handing a reprieve to thousands who faced a Thursday deadline to check out or begin picking up the tab themselves.

"It is unimaginable what anxiety and misery these erratic and bizarre vacillations by FEMA have caused these victims, all of whom, for at least one point in time, had the very real fear of being without shelter for Christmas," wrote Judge Duval, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.

His ruling is premised on an interesting legal notion:

The judge said he based his ruling on the federal law that authorized FEMA. It requires the government to ease suffering and damage caused by natural disasters. The arbitrary deadline violates that legislation, Judge Duval wrote, and discriminates against victims based on their economic status.

I'm somewhat surprised that he ruled against FEMA in this case. The judiciary tends to give wide leeway to federal agencies to fulfill their mandates under the laws that created them. Clearly the judge founds FEMA's actions to be so egregious that it was easy to rule against them, even under a loose stanza. Part of the problem appears to been the fact that FEMA wanted to cut aid to people who were waiting to find more permanent housing because of FEMA's own delay in processing aid applications.

A new deadline of Feb. 7th has been established.