US misses deadline on Katrina evacuees

WASHINGTON - The US government missed a mid-October deadline set by President George Bush to get all evacuees from Hurricane Katrina out of shelters, a senior Louisiana housing official said today.

Helena Cunningham, president of the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, told a Washington seminar on housing challenges arising from the disaster that as of last Friday there were still some 48,000 people made homeless by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita living in shelters, 14,000 of them in Louisiana.

"October 15 was the deadline set by the president to clear the shelters and that was not done," Cunningham said.

Her figure was more than double the number given last week by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the head of federal disaster relief efforts in areas affected by the disaster. He said some 22,000 people remained in shelters.

According to Allen, the number of people in shelters across the nation peaked at more than 270,000 on September 8. He said the plan to empty the shelters by mid-October was delayed in part because Hurricane Rita hit so soon after Katrina.

Other speakers at the conference said there was still confusion surrounding the number and status of people made homeless by the two disasters. Katrina struck on August 29 and Rita came ashore on September 24.

Cunningham said about 125,000 people displaced by the storms were living in hotels and more than 150,000 were living with friends and family across the nation.

The state had so far identified 200,000 housing units that had been destroyed or would need to be demolished but its assessment work of the housing stock was incomplete.

An adviser to the American Red Cross, Ira Peppercorn, told the conference that about 500,000 to 600,000 housing units in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama had suffered significant damage or been destroyed. A disproportionate number housed poor people.

Speakers urged Congress to expand the federal low-income housing credit programme as the most efficient way of encouraging the construction of affordable housing for evacuees.

The programme gives states the equivalent of nearly $5 billion in annual budget authority to issue tax credits for the acquisition, rehabilitation or construction of rental housing targeted to lower-income households.

Efforts are under way in Congress to pass legislation by early next month that would double or triple the amount of credit states affected by the disaster could draw on. But even that would barely make a dent in the problem, said James Miller, a lawyer with Washington firm Hunton and Williams.

"One problem is there are many competing agendas," he said, adding the Bush administration seemed lukewarm about expanding the low-income housing credit programme that creates rental housing and more intent on pursuing an "ownership society" agenda.

In his address to the nation from New Orleans on September 15, Bush proposed an 'urban homesteading act" that would give low-income families the chance to acquire surplus government property free of charge through a lottery in exchange for the promise to build homes.

"Home ownership is one of the great strengths of any community, and it must be a central part of our vision for the revival of this region," he said.

Miller said the success of urban homesteading remained unproven, while the credit programme had a track record of success of almost 20 years.

Bush has visited Louisiana and Mississippi eight times since Katrina. The administration has been slow, however, to introduce legislation to put flesh on his promises.

- REUTERS