Katrina: Six Months Later
SIX MONTHS AFTER KATRINA, OXFAM TACKLES TOUGH RECOVERY ISSUES
Half a year after Hurricane Katrina tore into the Gulf Coast, only one thing is clear. For many of the 750,000 households who remain displaced by that storm and Hurricane Rita that followed, home is a long way off. And not even billions of dollars in federal housing assistance promised for the region has brought it any closer.
Together, Louisiana and Mississippi are slated to receive at least $11 billion in Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)—funds traditionally used to rehabilitate affordable housing. But a plan put forth by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour threatens to make it hard for low-income families in his state to get that money, and could leave Mississippi renters out in the cold completely.
Ensuring a fair distribution of those housing dollars is just one of the many issues Oxfam America has tackled since September when, for the first time in its history, it launched an emergency relief effort in the United States. With the Gulf Coast reeling from the storms and help slow in coming, Oxfam, at the urging of its local partner organizations, mobilized a small team to send south.
“With more than 1,300 people dead, 300,000 homes rendered uninhabitable, a major metropolitan area devastated, an entire regional economy upended, and an environmental disaster of unknown proportions, the question facing Oxfam America was not whether to respond, but how, said Minor Sinclair, director of Oxfam’s US programs.
The agency has distributed 18 grants totaling $658,000 and raised nearly $3 million to support its ongoing work in the region.
With its partners, Oxfam has helped to establish or strengthen a series of community-based recovery and outreach centers in both states. These facilities are poised to become engines for community development projects in the coming years. For example, the East Biloxi Coordination and Relief Center is partnering with architects and consultants to plan, with plenty of involvement from local residents, for new housing and recreational facilities designed to improve the community’s quality of life.
Oxfam has also marshaled support for poor communities at risk of being overlooked in the rush to restore the region, it has asked the tough questions about the public health hazards of environmental degradation caused by the storms, and it has lobbied hard for government officials to pay attention to the massive housing needs of the region’s most vulnerable people.
At the heart of all these efforts is one key objective: to make sure that poor people, long excluded from the political process, find their voices and use them in the crucial months of planning that lie ahead.
“We saw what happened early on in places like New Orleans and East Biloxi when marginalized communities aren’t taken into account,” said Ashley Tsongas, Oxfam’s policy advisor. “That neglect will happen again in the rebuilding phase unless people have a chance to influence the process.”
Judging by the living and working conditions some people were still contending with in mid-January, it’s more critical than ever that their voices join into a chorus of outrage.
