Held at the Good Deeds Community Center in Gulfport, Miss., the town hall meeting gave voice to the frustrations and fears Gulf Coast residents have grappled with since losing loved ones, homes, and jobs to Katrina. Most participants agreed that a year into a hurricane recovery, remarkable not only for its scale but its willful neglect of the poor, the region’s neediest residents have not received adequate help, despite the billions of dollars spent and allocated.
“The reality is that folks on the Gulf Coast still need our help—maybe even more than they did a year ago,” said Danny Glover, an actor and activist, who spoke at the event. “We’ve got to make sure that this multi-billion dollar investment in rebuilding the coast is fair to everyone, especially the region’s poorest people. They need a place in this recovery—not on the sidelines, but front and center.”
“Envisioning a better Mississippi” was the theme of the two-hour town hall meeting, which covered eight broad areas, including housing, jobs and economic development, environmental justice, and governance and accountability.
“This town hall meeting gives coastal residents an opportunity to have a voice in what has happened one year out and the impact those decisions have had on their lives and their ability to rebuild,” said Derrick Johnson, state president Mississippi NAACP. “It’s part of a larger effort to develop a policy agenda for the 2007 Mississippi legislative session.”
NAACP President Bruce Gordon, and Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, served as panelists along with Danny Glover in the discussion moderated by George E. Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service. Community advocates and state officials participated in the conversation, and Curry entertained questions and comments from the audience, drawn largely from Mississippi’s three coastal counties.
“A lot was promised, but a pattern of neglect, as deep-seated as the poverty it fosters, has shortchanged untold Gulf Coast families,” said Offenheiser. “Lip service doesn’t rebuild houses. It doesn’t create jobs. It’s time to turn all the talk into action.”
Connell Lewis, a 59-year-old Biloxi resident, whose house was flooded by Katrina lamented that nearly a year has passed and his home remains just a shell with exposed studs and plywood floors. At this rate, he believes it’s going take 10 or 15 years before the community will get back to where it was before Katrina hit.
“It makes me feel real bad that my government is not responding to the needs of the American people after we need it now,” said Lewis.
The town hall meeting also featured a photo exhibition and video documentary produced by Steve Liss, an award-winning photojournalist from Time magazine. Liss recently spent a month on the Mississippi and Louisiana coast photographing and interviewing people whose lives were drastically affected by Hurricane Katrina.
The photos, which are also featured in the Oxfam America report called “Forgotten Communities, Unmet Promises: An Unfolding Tragedy on the Gulf Coast” released this week, chronicle the day-to-day activities and emotions of residents who have waited too long for the help they desperately need. The NAACP has also released an independent but complementary report titled “Envisioning a Better Mississippi: Hurricane Katrina and Mississippi—One Year Later.”
“I think people have lost hope,” said Diana Naranjo, a Biloxi resident featured in the photographs. “When people don’t have any hopes, they don’t have anything to drive them to work, to do something good. Hope is long gone.”
]]>The Mississippi Regional Housing Authority VIII claims that a lack of funding from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for hurricane repairs is forcing it to remove at least three public housing projects from its roster in Gulfport and Pascagoula. The move could result in the loss of more than 400 public housing units for the lowest income families in the area. The housing authority plans to sell or transfer the buildings for redevelopment, which will likely result in the displacement of most of these families.
“Didn’t hurricanes Katrina and Rita rob enough poor people of their homes without the federal government taking away hundreds more?” asked Oxfam America’s Minor Sinclair, director of the agency’s US regional office. “HUD should be reinvesting in the Gulf Coast—not divesting from it.”
The regional housing authority has told many residents now housed in the three complexes that they may be eligible for Section 8 rental assistance vouchers which can be used on the open market if landlords participate in this federal program. But Oxfam America and local groups are gravely concerned these residents will be left with nowhere to go.
The rental market has grown increasingly tight since the storms hit nearly a year ago. In Mississippi’s three coastal counties, where 80 percent of the rental units were damaged and rents have climbed between 25 and 30 percent, affordable housing is nearly impossible to find. Additionally, time is running out for countless people still camped in FEMA trailers. That temporary housing assistance is offered for just 18 months, and many of those storm survivors soon may be hitting the rental market, pushing the demand and prices even higher. Local leaders are rallying to protect the homes and futures of their communities.
“The conversions make room for renters at market rates by squeezing out some poor tenants and resettling them. Cities may try to ‘purge the poor’ as these conversions spread,” said Reilly Morse of the Mississippi Center for Justice and a representative of Steps, an alliance of coastal Mississippi advocacy and volunteer groups that includes Oxfam America. “The emergency Katrina appropriation requires HUD to preserve pubic housing, but we foresee a net loss.”
Congress has approved billions of dollars in Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) to rebuild the coast, yet little has been designated for bringing back affordable rental housing—a critical resource for tens of thousands of households. Louisiana’s recovery plan calls for making 25,000 new or restored rental units available, but only 4,000 of them will be for extremely low-income families. This means only 3.75 percent of the $10.5 billion designated for rebuilding housing will go toward rental housing for the state’s very poorest residents. That’s an improvement, however, on the situation in Mississippi where the state currently has no plan to rebuild affordable private rental property.
“The need for rental housing is surging,” said Sinclair. “A Gulf Coast recovery that doesn’t include a sound plan—and a significant investment—for affordable rentals isn’t the recovery our government promised the region all those long months ago.”
Equitable reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, including access to decent housing, Sis the theme of a town-hall style meeting Oxfam America and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) will hold on August 26 in Gulfport. The session will take a candid and comprehensive look at where the region is one year after Katrina struck and explore why communities are being left behind in the reconstruction effort.
Oxfam is working in active partnership with the NAACP and other human rights groups in the Gulf Coast region to ensure fairness and equity for all the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
]]>While complaints about the fumes have circulated at least since the spring, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has decided only now to arrange for the US Environmental Protection Agency to conduct tests. That governmental foot-dragging—all too familiar since the first days after the disaster—does not inspire confidence in the results.
“We need to have independent testing to really determine what is going on,” said Miriam Aschkenasy, a public health specialist for Oxfam America. “If indeed there are elevated formaldehyde levels causing health troubles, then that’s a problem. This clearly needs to be further investigated.”
Last week, FEMA announced plans to analyze the trailers after receiving complaints from 46 people in Mississippi. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the fumes could be causing eye and nose irritations, breathing problems, and rashes.
Formaldehyde is a pungent gas used in the production of things such as particleboard and plywood. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified it as a known human carcinogen.
The reports of ill health from the trailer fumes add to the litany of troubles storm victims have had in securing decent shelter in the long months since hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged or destroyed nearly half a million homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. Though Congress has allocated $16.7 billion in Community Development Block Grants to help rebuild the coast, as of early August, not one house in either state had been rebuilt using that money.
Instead, families have remained squeezed in government-issued trailers fit for camping—not living.
“I’m real concerned that policy makers are not at all in tune with the quality of life storm victims are enduring, including these troubling reports about the formaldehyde,” said Derrick Johnson, state president Mississippi NAACP. “If our legislators had to live in these same conditions, could they survive?”
On Aug. 26, Oxfam America and the NAACP will hold a town-hall style meeting in Gulfport, Miss., to probe the implications behind the government’s inadequate response to so many people during the Gulf Coast recovery. The session will take a candid and comprehensive look at where the region is one year after Katrina struck and explore why communities are being left behind in the reconstruction effort. Panelists will include NAACP President Bruce Gordon; actor/activist Danny Glover; and Ray Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America.
Oxfam is working in active partnership with the NAACP and other human rights groups in the Gulf Coast region to ensure fairness and equity for all the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, especially those in poor and working class black, white, and Vietnamese communities.
]]>Miss Betty will be the first recipient of the Lift House, a hurricane-resistant home designed in collaboration with architecture students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Terrebonne Readiness and Assistance Coalition (TRAC), and Oxfam America. Lift House prototypes could soon dot each of the bayous of Terrebonne Parish—and maybe sprout beyond them, too.
A groundbreaking, held in mid-January, capped months of design work, student and staff visits to the parish, and the hard-earned permitting required to get any new idea off the ground. On that cold gray day, on the concrete foundation where her house once stood at the base of a levee, Miss Betty found herself laughing as Reinhard Goethert, the MIT professor leading the project, handed her a present.
"We thought we'd give you a kite "to take advantage of the altitude," he said.
They were flying high at last.
The design for the house reflects both the local style and the need for the structure to withstand the assault of howling winds and hurricane flooding.
"They look like they belong down here," said Peg Case, TRAC's executive director. "We took great care in making sure MIT understood that outside is important." People in the south do much of their living outdoors on their decks.
"I assume this house will be here and that won't," added local architect E.A. Angelloz, standing on the site of the new house and pointing at its neighbor, a low-to-the-ground bungalow of indeterminate age. "Another thing people don't take into account is shifting debris. By being up, you avoid the debris. The stuff will move underneath it as opposed to through it."
And the piling foundation, designed by local engineer Joseph Kowle, will ensure that the house stays put when all that water and debris does slop by.
Materials specified for the Lift House include a cladding of Hardie Board—a fiber board impregnated with cement that is water proof and won't dent when projectiles come hurtling at it. A broad deck that wraps around the house and a roof with a generous overhang provide plenty of outdoor living space and a comfortable amount of shade.
"We're very sensitive to making sure we don't waste energy," said Goethert, who directs MIT's Special Interest Group in Urban Settlement, or SIGUS. The house will be well-insulated, well-ventilated, and made from durable materials constructed in a way that will help them last, he said. That overhanging roof, for instance, not only protects people from the sun, but it will protect the exterior walls from heavy downpours.
Some of the ideas incorporated in the design are indigenous to the area, said student Zachary Lamb, such as the large volume of attic space. The cushion of air inside serves as a natural insulator helping to keep the house below it cool.
Elevating houses was once more commonly practiced in the region than it is now, Lamb added, noting that many of the area's older houses were built off the ground. When slab foundations became the new hot thing half a century ago, Louisianans started to build them, too, setting aside their more sensible traditions—and paying the price.
MIT's original idea was to build the Lift House on the ground where teams of volunteers could work on it easily, and then hoist the completed structure onto its pilings. Affordability is one of the key objectives of the design, and, to achieve that, construction will depend heavily on volunteer labor. Goethert also points out that building the house on the ground and lifting it later is safer for everyone who might work on it.
But with this first prototype, TRAC plans to hire professional builders who traditionally work from the pilings up. Volunteers will be recruited later to help finish the interiors.
The immediate goal for the partners in this enterprise is to get all the construction kinks worked out with this first house so that future ones can be built efficiently—with volunteer hands. MIT students will evaluate the cost differentials between building on the ground and building above it. Is it cheaper to carry many loads of materials up to the top of the pilings in numerous trips as you're building, or to pay a flat fee to have the structure hoisted when it's done?
Students will also complete a report that MIT plans to share with other aid groups interested in doing similar construction work in coastal areas. The report details the lessons MIT has learned in the course of this initiative.
And what's the most important one?
"Make sure you get a (local) architect and an engineer up front," said Goethert, adding they know what the local building requirements and issues are. "It helps you make decisions."
At a camp for volunteers in Houma, La., MIT students were still wrestling with some of those decisions on groundbreaking day—and getting feedback from Gordon Case, TRAC's construction manager who has intimate knowledge of what works and won't work among the independent breed of people who live along the bayous.
What would be the best way to offer more shade on the Lift House decks?
Plants were the solution one cluster of students was exploring. They were hard at work on a design for a trellis that would support a bower of confederate jasmine climbing from the ground to the deck.
"It's an evergreen,"" explained Marika Kobel. "It flowers in the summer and turns red in the fall. It's a way to give shading without creating a structure that will rip apart in high winds."
Case listened carefully, and offered a thought.
"You have to think, too, how many people are going to want vines growing up their house," he said, hinting at a cultural difference the students might not have been aware of.
Closed tight with a central bolt, a heavy set of shutters in another part of the camp had drawn a small crowd of students. They were evaluating their handiwork, which was good enough to win Gordon's praise.
"I like the design," he said. "The way it looks. The durability. They're going to last because of the material: cedar."
Undoubtedly, durability will be one of the features Miss Betty may prize most in a house perched at the edge of a bayou whose waters stretch off to the horizon. The storm surge from hurricane Rita totally swamped her previous house.
"We want to make sure we're building a house to last," said Peg Case.
]]>The work is part of Oxfam America's new public health initiative launched by the humanitarian response department. Its aim is to deepen the effectiveness of its emergency programs and to start building a bank of scientific data that the agency can use to advocate for changes that will improve the lives of poor people.
"Public health assessments provide true evidence of a problem, and they are a lot more effective than rhetoric in focusing attention on the issues," said Miriam Aschkenasy, an emergency medicine physician and Oxfam America's first public health specialist.
Hired in July to head the initiative, Aschkenasy will work on a variety of projects as the agency begins to map out its public health priorities and build a network of specialists who could respond in humanitarian emergencies when the need arises.
"Public health was going on, but no one was calling it public health," said Aschkenasy. "Some of the grants Oxfam awarded to partners were addressing problems such as diarrhea, HIV/AIDS, and access to care. All of these are public health issues, but they didn't fall into a particular person's portfolio. As the humanitarian response department did more of this work, it became apparent it needed someone who specialized in this area."
But Aschkenasy is not undertaking this task alone. A key component of the new program calls for collaboration between Oxfam and top medical facilities, many of which are located in Boston, the agency's headquarters. A formal partnership with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative is the first of these relationships. The initiative, or HHI, is a joint academic program involving multiple entities within Harvard's academic and medical community. It combines expertise in public health, medicine, social science, and humanities to advance research, practice, and policy in the field of humanitarian assistance.
"Here in Boston we have access to some of the most skilled public health specialists in the world," said Michael Delaney, Oxfam's director of humanitarian response. "We give them the history, the politics, and the culture of a situation--the key ingredients to an effective humanitarian response--and they give us the voice of authority on public health matters when we meet with government officials to push for change."
Twice since last summer, teams from HHI have been dispatched to Ethiopia to quickly study a problem and make recommendations on situations in which people's lives were at grave risk.
In the first instance, an outbreak of ethnic fighting in the southern part of the country had forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes and seek safety in the bush. Hunger, exposure to the elements, and extremely limited water supplies had begun to take a toll on many of those who had fled. Oxfam and HHI sent a small team?two doctors and a humanitarian response specialis--to conduct a rapid assessment of the situation and offer ideas for improving it.
"The humanitarian needs among the internally displaced people in both the Guji and Borena zones are significant," said Jennifer L. Chan, one of the Harvard doctors, after the visit. "At the time of the HHI/Oxfam assessment, immediate food, shelter, and non-food items were needed as well as establishment of long-term peace building activities." Oxfam had already provided some emergency assistance prior to the assessment.
Three months later, Oxfam and HHI sent a second team to Ethiopia to investigate and respond to the outbreak of cholera.
"The idea behind the assessments is to provide a superior response," said Aschkenasy. "Our affiliation with HHI does that. It provides us with a cadre of cutting edge public health professionals, academics, and their resources. And the evidence they help us gather strengthens our ability to call for change."
Aschkenasy will help lay the groundwork for some of that change when she travels to Ethiopia in mid-January on a prevention mission that may help stop a repeat of the widespread suffering that affected millions of people across East Africa last year. Their lives stood in the balance as a devastating drought gripped the region, killing the livestock on which they depended for food, drying up their water sources, and plunging countless families into debilitating hunger. By the time the extent of the drought became clear to the rest of the world, it had already caused profound damage.
In Moyale, a dusty border town between Ethiopia and Kenya, Aschkenasy and Chan will launch a drought early surveillance system developed by Oxfam America and HHI. Their goal is to help officials in the region track public health trends that will warn them in advance about which droughts could become killers. How much food do families have access to? Are they plagued by diarrhea? Do their children have respiratory problems? Do their goats, cows, and sheep have enough pasture? How much rain has fallen? Is the price of grain climbing?
They sound like simple questions, but their answers--plotted on a chart that can make trends frighteningly clear--could be key to getting people in this drought-prone region, many of whom are herders and extremely poor, the help they need before it's too late.
"If we can determine quickly what the effects of limited rainfall are, then we can start doing interventions long before things get so bad that severe malnutrition becomes widespread and feeding centers are our only recourse," said Aschkenasy.
A fellow at HHI, Aschkenasy keeps her medical skills honed by working four eight-hour shifts a month at the Boston Medical Center. But she knew long before arriving at Oxfam that public health was where her heart was.
"When I was in my second year of residency, I had a chance to go to Nepal and work in the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu. It doesn't take you long to realize that public health has a much greater impact on people than one-on-one patient care. I also realized how much I loved it," said Aschkenasy. "There's a role for one-on-one clinical care, and I enjoy it. But there's something much more satisfying about public health work. It has a broader impact. You're preventing something from happening."
And that's a central objective for Oxfam?s humanitarian response department: preventing events--natural or man-made--from cascading into disasters.
"Public health ties right in with our preparedness and livelihoods work. That triad is what development is all about," said Aschkenasy.
]]>Nowhere is that abdication more evident than in the critical shortage of affordable rental housing—often the only kind that poor people can afford—now gripping the Gulf Coast. Despite almost $17 billion that Congress has approved to rebuild homes and community infrastructure in Louisiana and Mississippi, neither state has allocated nearly enough of those funds to replace the affordable rental units lost in the storm. Further, as of early August, not one house in those two Gulf Coast states had been rebuilt with that money.
In a new report released today entitled “Forgotten Communities, Unmet Promises: An Unfolding Tragedy on the Gulf Coast,” Oxfam America catalogues the lack of political will, the bureaucratic bungling, and the poor policy decisions that have contributed to this housing crisis and left the region’s poor further behind than ever.
“Our government talked of its duty to rebuild the region, particularly for the most vulnerable people and those hit the hardest. Instead, poor communities have been pushed aside, pushed down, and pushed out,” said Minor Sinclair, director of Oxfam America’s grant-making program in the US. “The rental crisis, for which there are a range of available solutions, is just one example of the gross inequities now playing out in this recovery.”
The report explores the fate of three diverse places—East Biloxi, Mississippi, and rural communities in Louisiana’s Plaquemines and Vermilion parishes—and shows how neglect at all levels of government is robbing hard-working people of the brighter future the administration vowed it would provide.
“This is one of the largest reconstruction efforts in recent US history. All Americans expect the rebuilding to be fair and to help those who need help most,” continued Sinclair. “But so far, that’s not happening, and for some of the region’s poorest residents, things have only gotten worse during this recovery.”
Hundreds of Mississippi families in Gulfport and Pascagoula face the prospect of losing their homes because the regional housing authority plans to sell or transfer the buildings in which they live. Scores of other people, packed into government-issued trailers, have had to live with what they suspect are sickening levels of formaldehyde fumes while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has only recently decided to conduct tests.
Among the report’s recommendations for addressing the recovery’s inequities are:
Oxfam America’s report also features six profiles of individuals struggling to make order from the chaos—both physical and psychological—that hurricanes Katrina and Rita left. Portraits shot by Time magazine photographer Steve Liss illustrate these stories and capture the hardships other Gulf Coast residents have endured.
]]>This examination of three communities emblematic of longstanding poverty and exclusion— the urban neighborhoods of East Biloxi, Mississippi, and the rural communities of Vermilion and Plaquemines parishes in Louisiana—reveals that government neglect at all levels extends beyond the well-publicized failures in New Orleans to encompass an entire region in distress.
Access to opportunity remains unequal—and unfair. In Biloxi, government officials acted first to save the city’s battered casinos by convincing state lawmakers to allow gaming on land. Not ensuring that the low-income residents of East Biloxi shared in the economic benefits, however, has made them victims of an enormous land squeeze, forcing them out of their neighborhoods and homes.
False assurances undermine future visions—and current optimism. The self-reliant residents of Erath, a mostly Cajun community in rural Vermilion Parish, began rehabilitating their houses the moment they returned after Hurricane Rita’s flood waters receded. After confusing signals about new flood elevations, plans for the town’s future, and possible homeowner grants, their progress has slowed and in some cases has been reversed by the agencies meant to facilitate it. Institutional neglect leaves communities at risk of losing everything—even their way of life.
Few state or federal funds have assisted the recovery of independent commercial fishers, who for generations have made Plaquemines Parish the center of their trade. Their inability to continue is draining Louisiana’s usually robust commercial fisheries, normally second in the nation only to Alaska.
These communities, and many like them, teeter on the brink. They are being rendered invisible.
Left behind. Forgotten.
The pattern of inequity in receiving recovery assistance from the government has been well established by past disasters. Federal disaster assistance tends to favor people who have economic assets at risk—that is, the affluent. Though the pattern may be familiar, it need not be inevitable.
Making sure the billions designated for recovery benefit the region’s most vulnerable communities remains a matter of political will. Action can and must be taken immediately.
It is, after all, what the nation promised them. That they would be rendered whole. Get ahead. Thrive.
]]>June 1 marks the start of the new hurricane season, but throughout Mississippi and Louisiana, public officials have made little effort to include the region’s poorest families and struggling workers in plans to recover from last year’s back-to-back disasters.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the region’s most vulnerable people hardest. They had the fewest resources on which to fall back, yet they are benefiting the least from the billions of federal dollars being spent on the recovery. Without a solid investment in affordable housing for the coast’s working poor, the potential destruction from a new round of storms could undermine the entire recovery process.
To date, nearly half the Mississippi Gulf Coast residents slammed by the storm are excluded from the state’s plan for using $3 billion in community development block grants. Many of them are renters and uninsured homeowners whose dwellings were outside the flood plain. They include children, elderly people, and disabled residents.
Of the 204,000 housing units in Louisiana destroyed or severely damaged by Katrina and Rita, 41 percent of them were occupied by renters. The state’s Road Home plan for $10.4 billion in federal assistance proposes spending 61 percent of that on homeowner-related programs, or $6.3 billion. Affordable housing and rental-related programs, on the other hand, are slated to get just 15 percent of the total, or $1.5 billion.
“To protect people from disaster, you need to protect them from deepening poverty, too,” said Oxfam President Raymond C. Offenheiser. “If the Gulf Coast is serious about preventing future disasters, it should start by making sure there is affordable, safe housing for all its residents. Poor people need to be at the center of every recovery effort.”
Oxfam America is a non-profit organization that works to end global poverty through saving lives, strengthening communities, and campaigning for change. Active on the Gulf Coast for the last 13 years, the agency made a decision after Katrina to launch its first major humanitarian response within the United States.
Since September, Oxfam has provided close to $1 million in grant support to local leaders and community groups, including those in Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, and Plaquemines, Terrebonne, and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana. Oxfam has helped these local partners develop resources that will provide enduring improvements to the infrastructures of vulnerable and impoverished communities in both Mississippi and Louisiana.
]]>"We were given the commandment early on not to design anything that looks weird," said Jeffrey Fugate. "We have tried very hard to create something that is culturally appropriate."
In collaboration with Oxfam America, MIT graduate students in Reinhard Goethert's class have come up with a plan that does a whole lot more than meet that rural aesthetic. Goethert and his students worked closely with Oxfam partner organization TRAC, the Terrebonne Readiness and Assistance Coalition, to learn how their ideas could be matched with needs in the local community.
What sets the Lift House apart from other housing programs is that it attempts to combine a concern for affordability with hurricane-ready sturdiness, and ease of construction—easy enough to turn a crew of hammer-swinging volunteers loose on the project.
Volunteers serve another purpose besides making the Lift House affordable. Their energy and enthusiasm also help strengthen a community's foundation.
"You can make this a festival of rebuilding the community," said Reinhard Goethert, director of MIT's SIGUS, or the Special Interest Group in Urban Settlement. "It's not just a physical house. You're stabilizing and rebuilding the community. People want to help. I think this is a good way to do it."
With an above normal hurricane season forecast for this year, and weather patterns that could produce storms of increased frequency and intensity for years to come, the Lift House approach may offer a sustainable housing approach to communities throughout the Gulf Coast.
Last January, when Fugate visited Dulac, Louisiana, a poor bayou community in Terrebonne Parish, he was struck by how precarious the setting was for homes—low, muddy, and not far from the wind-whipped waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
"It's a beautiful but not a gentle landscape," said Fugate.
The students' objective was to design a bayou home that would neither flood nor get blown away. They had to take into account the corrosive salt water, soggy ground, and winds tearing across the flatlands at hurricane speed—all the while remembering the admonition that "weirdness" could sink even the best of ideas.
Coupled with that warning was the students' recognition that regardless of how hard they studied the place, they would never know it as well as the locals. When Fugate suggested that carpeting would make a good floor cover for a house lifted high above flood waters, he found himself corrected: In the muddy bayou, shoes caked with muck are a fact of life. Better to install easy-to-clean tiling than carpets.
"It's a two-way learning street," said Fugate.
Among the design features the SIGUS group did settle on was a hipped roof—"it's sloped on all four sides, like a pyramid, it's more aerodynamic and less prone to lift," said Fugate, "and it has a 'floating foundation,' meaning a concrete slab that can move with the shifting soils that are a reality in low-lying bayous." Pilings through the foundation anchor the home and are deep enough to support a house lashed by fierce winds and storm surges.
"If you're going to splurge a little, splurge on the roof and foundations," said Fugate. "If you can keep your house from floating away or leaking, that's half the battle."
The design calls for volunteers to build homes that eventually stand high above the ground—a place most workers are wary of going.
"Our idea is to build the house low and then lift it onto pilings when it's completed. Volunteers—and professionals—get nervous when they have to work on a platform," said Fugate. "To my knowledge, no one who uses volunteers has looked at stilt housing before. The big idea of building it on the ground and lifting it on stilts is our solution."
The students are still exploring the most efficient—and most affordable—means of lifting the house once it is built. One technique student Matt Hodge finds compelling is a chain hoist, which uses a pulley set on top of the pilings to hoist the house with chains.
"It's potentially safer because you don't have anyone under the house while you're lifting," said Hodge, whose background is in civil engineering.
With the design 98 percent complete, the next stage of the effort calls for the SIGUS group to work with local engineers to approve the concept and create a set of drawings that meet local building codes, said Goethert.
"When you talk about new ways of doing things, it takes a lot of talk," said Goethert. "You've got to change mindsets."
SIGUS and MIT are planning a two-week program in July for MIT volunteers interested in helping TRAC move forward in the realization of the first of these homes and to help repair damaged houses in the bayou. In the first house to test and design, contractors will set the pilings and build the bulk of the homes themselves, with volunteers being used to help with the finish work inside.
Once the design and construction kinks are ironed out, Oxfam and MIT hope to see other volunteers and local community groups pick up the design, enlist an army of helpers, and begin to build affordable, storm-resistant houses wherever people need them.
To help those crews avoid potential pitfalls in the process, SIGUS students are also developing a hands-on guide for the aid groups. Called "Going Up?" it will be chockfull of tips on smart ways to work with coastal communities and on coordinating all the different elements—supplies, engineering, design, construction, finance—needed to get the project accomplished.
"All too often, academics' great ideas never have the opportunity to be tested in the real world, while local community groups rarely have the resources to tap the best and the brightest or apply innovative concepts born in the classroom to their local realities," said Bernadette Orr, Oxfam's Gulf Coast emergency program manager.
"The Lift House project will be an opportunity for MIT and TRAC to bring those two worlds together in a way that will create tangible benefits all around. We know that the Lift House is going to attract a lot of attention and, we hope, replication once it goes up.
"We plan to help promote the manual with local groups working on affordable housing all along the Gulf Coast, so there could be many Lift Houses that eventually get constructed from Mississippi west to Lake Charles."
]]>But now Hanshaw, and a growing number of other women in the Gulf Coast community, have a new foundation from which to begin rebuilding part of their lives: Coastal Women for Change, or CWC, a fledgling group of newborn activists determined have a say in the recovery of their neighborhoods.
Whatever the 2006 hurricane season brings, CWC may serve as a buffer to additional hardship. It has taught many of the women that each of them has a voice, and those voices count—individually and collectively.
"Our mission is to empower these women with knowledge of what they can do," said Hanshaw, the group's new director. "It's unlimited. You can build. You can go back to school. You can call your local officials. You can talk to them. They're there for us."
Now numbering about 25 regular members, with a core group of 10, CWC was launched with the help of Safiya Daniels, a community development specialist for Oxfam America, who has been working chiefly in Biloxi and Gulfport.
"One big difference that I saw between these two cities was the existence of organized community groups," said Daniels. "I realized that outside of the churches, Biloxi had none. I also noticed there was very little institutionalized female leadership in Biloxi."
Daniels also worried that there seemed to be few community gatherings in Biloxi to discuss what direction the city was taking as it began recovering from Katrina. Long-range community planning was not on anyone's neighborhood radar screen.
"This was a dangerous situation," said Daniels. "Everyone else was making a plan: casino developers, condo developers, and the city, but there was very little evidence of broad community participation."
She knew the concern was there—"in every community there are lots of concerned women who want a vibrant, healthy, and safe community for their families to live in"—but how to turn that interest into action was the missing piece. So, Daniels called a meeting.
"I brought a group of women together to talk about what was happening in their community, what issues and problems they faced, and how these could be addressed," said Daniels.
That first meeting grew into a series of sessions which blossomed into action, spawned weekly gatherings, attracted new members, and finally gave birth to an official group with a name and stated mission. Its goal is this: "to make a difference in our communities through securing and revitalizing our neighborhoods." Information sharing is the critical tool in achieving that end.
"I don't want people to be left out," said Hanshaw. "I want to give them knowledge. Knowledge is power."
Knowledge starts with asking questions, and one of the first events CWC sponsored was a Biloxi community forum to which it invited the mayor, city councilors, and members of the city planning department. Questions abounded—about flood elevations mapped out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), about affordable housing, about displaced people. Nearly 200 residents showed up for the forum.
Attendees not only got some answers, some of them learned a deeper lesson as well.
"Democracy works only if people make it work," said Daniels. "And we do that by holding people accountable. There possibly has never been a time during the mayor's 13-year tenure that he found himself in such a position, being watched and held accountable by this particular community, and in such a public way."
Asking questions is the first step. Having a say in the answers is the next step. Right away, CWC members sought seats on a planning commission formed by Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway. Called Reviving the Renaissance Committee, it was given 90 days to come up with a plan for the city's recovery.
Five CWC members have been weighing in on matters of finance, education, land use, and affordable housing—the subcommittees for which they signed up. And people are beginning to listen to CWC's opinions.
"We are in the paper every week," said Hanshaw, adding that she gets the sense she is even making some of the powerbrokers nervous.
"They try to turn their heads when I come up," she said. "Especially the developers. They don't want to talk to me. They know where I stand."
For Cass Woods, working with CWC has given her a direct link to her community, and that link is allowing her to make things better all around.
"It makes me feel good to help someone," said Woods, who has been living in a government issue trailer—the size of a matchbox, she said—parked in her back yard for months. "That's what has helped me get through my loss."
With a $30,000 seed grant from the 21st Century Foundation, CWC will be able to pay Hanshaw a salary, purchase office supplies, and begin to look ahead at how to fund itself into the future.
Meanwhile, the organization is undertaking a new task: a survey of East Biloxi to find out the childcare needs of the community's residents. To renew its license, a local day care organization is being required to assess the need for its services in the area.
"This is our first project," said Hanshaw. "Another accomplishment under our belts."
And it's just the kind of project Daniels had a hunch a group like CWC could offer the community.
"The needs of the community will drive what CWC takes on," said Daniels. With those needs being constant—as they are in every community—Daniels expects the new organization to have a long and productive life.
"It's going to stand on its own. I am confident of that," she said. "I could see it truly growing into a coastwide organization."
]]>Drought-related risks are a primary concern throughout Ethiopia where 85% of the population is dependent on smallholder, rain-fed agriculture. Adi Ha is a drought-prone community that has expressed strong interest in incorporating insurance into its risk management strategy.
The pilot will adopt a holistic approach to risk management, examining the suitability of weather insurance and risk reduction measures such as seasonal forecasting and improved agricultural practices. All efforts will be undertaken in close collaboration with the local farming community with the overall objective of alleviating poverty.
The efforts will be funded by Swiss Re and Oxfam America, with primary technical support being provided by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. Ivo Menzinger, Head of Sustainability & Emerging Risk Management, commented, "Swiss Re is delighted to support Oxfam in implementing this fundamental and important work in the Tigray Province. In particular, we can combine our commitment to corporate citizenship with providing consulting support to the project on risk transfer issues."
Swiss Re has pioneered weather risk transfer instruments in developing countries, starting in India in 2004 with a program reaching over 350,000 smallholder farmers. In 2007, Swiss Re introduced the Climate Adaptation Development Programme (CADP). The goal of the CADP partnership is to develop and implement weather risk transfer solutions in non-OECD countries.
Oxfam America President Raymond C. Offenheiser said: "This pilot offers a chance for smallholder farmers to become more resilient to changing weather patterns. It's an opportunity to increase the impact of Oxfam's risk reduction programs and explore exciting innovations in weather-based microinsurance..."
Over the last 35+ years, Oxfam America has worked to bolster the capacity of poor communities around the world to reduce vulnerability. Nevertheless, climate change is dramatically increasing the level of risk faced by the poor across the planet. For this reason, Oxfam America is interested in developing new mechanisms to address risk for poor farmers.
]]>President Bush?s visit to Mississippi and Louisiana, days before the third anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, comes as a new report from Oxfam America reveals how little progress has been made and what still remains to be done to restore the region and repair the communities affected three years ago.
?If the history of the Katrina recovery were written today, it would be a tragedy. Far too little progress has been made despite the remarkable effort and ingenuity of the people of the region who are fighting to restore their homes and their lives,? said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America. ?Much of the progress has come at the hands of Gulf Coast residents - in spite of significant hurdles placed in front of them by the federal government. The next administration must act quickly to remove those hurdles so Gulf Coast residents can truly and finally recover from the storms.?
Oxfam?s report, Mirror on America, which will be released Tuesday, reveals just how much work remains to be done, and provides recommendations to speed an equitable recovery, including:
President Bush rightly commended many who have worked hard to rebuild their homes and their lives. Unfortunately, so many have done so on their own, with less help than they could have used from the federal government.
Rebuilding the region has proved to be difficult. Many living along the Gulf Coast have been hit by a double injustice. On one hand they can?t afford the rising costs of rent, housing, insurance and utilities. On the other, they can?t find the kind of jobs they need to offset those increased expenses. It is not too late, however, for the many thousands who still need help.
?A new administration will face the challenge of correcting the mistakes of its predecessor and a critical opportunity to rebuild the Gulf Coast better and stronger,? said Rhonda Jackson, Louisiana State Policy Specialist for Oxfam America. ?The time is now to renew our promise and commit to a full Gulf Coast recovery.?
]]>Oxfam?s report, "Mirror on America: How the state of Gulf Coast recovery reflects on us all," comes just days before the anniversary of one of the most devastating natural disasters in American history and a week before a September 5 deadline for Louisiana residents to apply to the state?s Road Home program for assistance. With the passing of this deadline, thousands of residents in that state will no longer be able to receive needed assistance so that they can return home.
?The uneven and inequitable state of recovery of the Gulf Coast is a national embarrassment,? said Oxfam America President Raymond C. Offenheiser. ?Although the force of the storms was an act of nature, the failures of the recovery are an act of our government. If we refuse to address this as a nation, it will go down in history not only as a failure of leadership, but also as a failure to hold our government accountable.?
The barriers to a complete recovery are most apparent in the housing and jobs sectors.. More than 35,000 individuals still living in FEMA trailers in the Gulf Coast, according to Oxfam?s report. In Louisiana, 82,000 apartments were damaged or destroyed by Katrina and Rita, but the highest official estimate proposes to replace only about 25,000 affordable units. In Mississippi, federal money that was mandated for use in rebuilding low income housing was, instead, diverted to improving the shipyards in Biloxi.
Workers living along the Gulf Coast have been hit by a double injustice. On one hand they can?t afford the rising costs of rent, housing, insurance and utilities. On the other, they can?t find the kind of jobs they need to offset those increased expenses. Only 12 percent of African-American evacuees who returned to New Orleans after the hurricanes were able to find work, compared with 45 percent of white evacuees, according to the report. Compliance with federal labor laws has been ignored with frequent occurrences of safety and health violations, wage theft and exploitative treatment of immigrant workers.
?It was the perfect storm of worker exploitation and wage suppression,? said Tracie L. Washington, president and CEO of the Louisiana Justice Institute in the report. ?We should have found ourselves in a situation where, because of the dearth of employees, workers could have found wages that equaled or exceeded those of workers in places like New York and New Jersey. But instead you had people brought in, trafficked in, through artificial government support.?
Oxfam?s is calling on national leadership to convert this national tragedy into an opportunity to ensure the security and prosperity of the Gulf Coast region, urging the next administration to create an Office for Gulf Coast Recovery headed by a federal coordinator; to make sure all federally subsidized housing destroyed in the storms is reopened or replaced; to require states Gulf Coast states that receive federal recovery dollars to provide regular reports on the use of those funds; and to ensure compliance with labor laws.
?The transition to a new administration is a critical opportunity to rebuild the Gulf Coast better and stronger,? said Offenheiser. ?Not only can we help the Gulf Coast recover, we can take the opportunity of the rebuilding effort to address the long-standing root causes of poverty and vulnerability that existed in these two states long before the storms of 2005.?
?This is our community, we want it back the way it was—or better,? said Sharon Hanshaw, Executive Director of Coastal Women for Change in Biloxi, MS. ?You take care of where you live.?
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