It has been over a year since Hurricane Katrina. I’ll agree that it was a complete tragedy to have to move on short notice. But, FEMA is still paying rent for 107,000 families in Texas.
I’m sorry to sound cold. But, enough is enough. Time to get back to work and pay your rent just like I do.
Is there any reason to continue aiding over 100,000 evacuees in Texas over one year later?
I was going to put this in the Pit, but I thought there might be an interesting debate.
Do the evacuees have jobs? Do they have homes to go back to? If they returned to their homes, are there jobs to go to?
These might sound snarky questions, but having been involved in tsunami reconstruction, I note that in some circumstances it is impossible to stop helping people financially (if you have any humanity), and sometimes it is worthwhile giving them a boost to help them stand on their feet - micro-credit, setting up a store with its first week of stock, that kind of thing. If they were to be turfed out wholesale, where would they go and what would they do?
Most of these people were on welfare in NOLA , before Katrina. That is what is so wrong about welfare in the US-it seems to lead to dependency for life. i have a problem with this, because houston is a much more dynamic city that new Orleans-there are plenty of jobs (which was not the case in NOLA). So why are these people syill receiving welfare? Because they can! End the welfare and get a job!
Renob, with respect, none of your answers to my questions were actually answers to my questions. I extrapolate: No, no, and no.
Where are they living, rent-wise?
I’m guessing the state/federal government knows where they all are, because of the payment. Has the state/federal government sent reps out to approach these people and talk to them? Offer them job-finding resources? Offer incentives to go home?
As to your final non-answer, if you’re destitute and have a paid roof over your head, how on earth are you expected to uproot and travel to somewhere in the hope of getting work elsewhere?
They are living in buildings where the government pays the rent.
As noted, there are a ton of resources for people to use. They are not being ignored or neglected. However, even if there weren’t these plentiful resources, that does not mean their obligation to get a job is lessened. Being uprooted sucks, but you still need to work and support yourself. Houston has plenty of jobs for them. Buy a paper and start looking in the classifieds. Go to the local Dept. of Labor One Stop Career Center and find one.
I’m not saying be uprooted to find work, I’m saying find work in Houston.
Does anyone sincerely suggest that there have not been sufficient federal/state goverment, charitable/religious, and private programs to help evacuees get back on their feet.
I’m sure we can find examples of a blind amputee who isn’t able to work. But, 107,000 families in Texas alone are still getting FEMA rental assistance after all the money spent on them?
OK, if these people are welfare whores as presented (though I suspect there’s more to it than that), then just making resources available to them isn’t going to be enough. The resources have to be thrust at them; possibly with a disincentive to ignoring them. Is this being done?
What is the attendance rate to the resources being offered? What is the success rate for those attending?
Heck, after you’ve blown through your $2000 FEMA-supplier cash ard, and exhausted your local welfare, you might just think its time to look for a job?? As for going back to NOLA-why on earth would somebody do that? I’ve heard there is an actual labor shortage in NOLA-can anybody confirm this?
Are you saying they should move, or they shouldn’t?
By the way, my experience in Thailand, and my friend’s experience in Sri Lanka, revealed a lot of cheats, who I resented. But while I was resenting them, one of the micro-credit people said, “better than to help a few cheats than to help nobody at all”. She was right.
Have you tried googling “affordable housing available new orleans”? Sure there are jobs in New Orleans. The trouble is, there isn’t any place to live in order to work there.
I have no idea whether “enough” assistance has been provided, but I know that my parish has “adopted” a town in Mississippi and that those people are still pretty destitute.
As to the number of people who are not working: are you telling me that the Houston Chronicle has 107,000 employment listings each week (one per family), preferably for unskilled jobs near public transportation with provisions for day care? And of the 107,000 families receiving assistance, how many are actually doing nothing vs how many have done what they can to scare up work at minimum wages that will not actually pay rent in any part of Houston or its suburbs? Even the majestic sum of $7.50 an hour only brings in $1260 a month before taxes. Figure take-home at about 70% of that, we are down to $882 a month. What kind of housing is available (for 107,00 familes) near Houston for less that $300 a month (so that they could eat and buy clothes after paying the rent)?
There have been some pretty high visibility cases of displaced people from N’Olins gaming the system and those people should be smacked down, but I suspect that simply throwing out the horriffic figure of “107,000 families” does nothing to describe the actual situations for any of those families.
But what about start-up money? You can’t walk into a new city with empty pockets. Not only do you have to pay a deposit on an apartment, (and possibly utilities), but it’d take two weeks for them to get their first paychecks even if they found work that very day. And they have to buy clothes appropriate for their workplace. And they need a car. And daycare. And possibly elder care.
Yeah, they got the $2000 FEMA card, but they may have wanted to eat and use toilet paper in the meantime.
Make all the excuses you want for these folks, but they have had a year to get their shit together. I wouldn’t expect them to get jobs in the first few months after Katrina, but a year? C’mon. That’s plenty of time to get all the logistical problems figured out.
People who want to work get it together and get a job. People who don’t make excuses and complain that the government isn’t helping them enough.
Well, I don’t have a cite beyond my own eyes, but back in mid-August, the Wendy’s on St. Charles just west of Lee Circle had a banner out front proclaiming that they’d pay a $125 per week bonus for new hires.
Also, my firm had a pre-Katrina contract for manual laborers at something like $7/hr. When we tried to exercise this contract, the firm that was to supply the laborers said that they can’t find people for less than $10-15.
If those two things don’t point to a massive low-end labor shortage in New Orleans, nothing does.