Background

Late in 2005, a string of severe hurricanes hammered the US Gulf Coast. Their names—Katrina, Rita, and Wilma—will be forever linked with an ugly truth about our country: Poverty exists here in the US, and is particularly deep and persistent in the regions hit hardest by the hurricanes. The storms swept away the veil of pretense, revealing the face of a national shame.

In the absence of a vigorous official response to the disasters, Oxfam America launched its US first relief effort. Working through local partner organizations, we focused our efforts on Mississippi and Louisiana.,/p>

In the early weeks following the disasters, we provided emergency grants that helped our local partners to distribute relief supplies including food and medicine. We worked with leaders in Biloxi, MS to establish a critical coordination center in a poor section of the city, and we helped fund a local organizer to address immigrants’ rights issues. In Louisiana, we worked with partner organizations to distribute kits with protective gear so people could safely begin to clean up their homes. We also provided supplies in remote rural areas where severe losses received limited attention as the nation focused on New Orleans.

Even before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, Louisiana and Mississippi were the two poorest states in the nation. Nearly one in five residents lived below the national poverty line of about $20,000 in annual income for a family of four. Good schools, job opportunities, and decent housing were scarce.

Now the situation in the region has worsened. Of the more than 300,000 houses and apartments damaged or destroyed in the storms, 70 percent were affordable to low-income households. Today communities are struggling to rebuild schools, health facilities, and businesses—all while residents remain displaced or still live in trailers. In the midst of this recovery, the inequities that preceded the storm remain.

While the opportunity exists to build back better, that will only happen if the rights of the Gulf Coast’s most vulnerable citizens are recognized and respected. In fact, though, low-and middle-income people and people of color are being left behind in the long-term recovery:

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—a fraction of what was lost. In Mississippi, 19,200 rental homes suffered moderate to severe damage, but there are plans to replace only about 12,000 lower-priced private units—few of which will be affordable to the poorest residents.
Soon after Katrina, the Bush Administration temporarily suspended the enforcement of basic worker health and safety regulations, as well as the requirement that federal contractors pay prevailing wages. The result has been widespread worker abuse. As one indication, the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance announced in May 2007 that it had secured $1 million in unpaid wages and workers’ compensation claims for 585 immigrant laborers.
Immigrants helping to rebuild the Gulf Coast face extensive discrimination, as one case of 300 guest workers from the Decatur Hotel in New Orleans reveals. They won a landmark decision stating that guest workers with H-2B visas are entitled to the same protection as all other workers in the US.
Despite real need, more than 30,000 low-income homeowners are ineligible for rebuilding assistance and tens of thousands more have not received the level of assistance needed to rebuild their homes.

Simultaneously, the workers desperately needed to rebuild the region and jump-start its economy cannot find decent jobs and are not being paid enough to keep pace with the increased cost of living.