About $890 million is left from a pool of $13.4 billion in Katrina and Rita aid, and more than $600 million remains from the $1.1 billion received after Gustav and Ike.
By Melinda Deslatte
January 3, 2014
...Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (click here) administration has defended the pace of spending, saying the Katrina recovery alone was one of the largest disaster rebuilding efforts in the nation’s history.
January 3, 2014
...Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (click here) administration has defended the pace of spending, saying the Katrina recovery alone was one of the largest disaster rebuilding efforts in the nation’s history.
“Recovery takes time,” said Pat Forbes, Jindal’s director for disaster recovery work. “We are constantly reviewing other unmet recovery needs for where funds could go.”
Millions remain in unused housing assistance money allocated to the Road Home program created after the back-to-back blows of Katrina and Rita in 2005. A slice of money set aside to rebuild rental housing is not yet spent....
The Lower Ninth Ward was the hardest hit in 2005, it should have been the first to be restored. The greatest number of deaths occurred in The Lower Ninth Ward.
AIR DATE: Dec. 28, 2013
The Lower Ninth Ward was the hardest hit in 2005, it should have been the first to be restored. The greatest number of deaths occurred in The Lower Ninth Ward.
AIR DATE: Dec. 28, 2013
JOHN CARLOS FREY: Errol Joseph (click here) had lived his entire life in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. He was raising his own family in the same house he grew up in. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina changed all that.
ERROL JOSEPH: This was our master bedroom … we had a utility room over here, and over here was like a storage and a pantry.
Jindal stated there needs to be spending plans submitted in order to move the money into action, but, due to his lax attention to the Lower Ninth Ward, the community has deteriorated and moved on. It is impossible to rebuild a community with a spending plan where there are so few still available to create that spending plan.
The restoration of The Lower Ninth Ward is long over due.
JOHN CARLOS FREY: Like all residents of the Lower Ninth Ward he and his wife and two kids were forced to evacuate.
ERROL JOSEPH: We couldn't get back into this area and you had the military police with the assault rifles telling' that's as far as you can go. You couldn't go in your house.
JOHN CARLOS FREY: So he moved with his family to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, before returning to a different New Orleans neighborhood, where he now rents. Still this 63 –year-old contractor longs to return to the house he grew up in, but eight and a half years after the storm his house is still a shell of what it was....Jindal stated there needs to be spending plans submitted in order to move the money into action, but, due to his lax attention to the Lower Ninth Ward, the community has deteriorated and moved on. It is impossible to rebuild a community with a spending plan where there are so few still available to create that spending plan.
The restoration of The Lower Ninth Ward is long over due.
