Who says the evacuees in question don’t have jobs? I read the linked article, and AFAICT there’s no information in it about the employment status of the evacuees now receiving rent assistance in the Dallas area.
As others have pointed out, it’s very possible for a low-income worker to be working full-time but still not be able to swing the rent in the place they were evacuated to—especially if all their own possessions were destroyed.
Furthermore, even if they are making enough money to pay the rent and other expenses without assistance, if they’re still legally entitled to a final few months of housing assistance because of their evacuee status, wouldn’t they be fools not to take it? Should homeowners and parents, say, voluntarily refuse to take the mortgage deduction or dependent deduction on their federal income taxes? Compared to non-homeowners and non-parents, people who take those tax deductions are getting government handouts just as much as those receiving rent checks from FEMA, but I don’t see many of them refusing the deductions, even if they could perfectly well afford to pay for their homes and kids without Uncle Sam’s help.
Are all of these families single-parent, one-wage-earner families that are in need of daycare and require public transportation and can only work for $7.50/hr?
I havent done in job hunting in houston lately…or anywhere in fact sense I started my own company. but I spent over a year looking for a job a few years back, applying at every job I could physically do and still couldnt find a job. It used to piss me off to no end to hear this kind of nonsense.
I have no idea. On the other hand, I have seen no evidence that the Houston job market could easily absorb 750,000 (or more in the case of two parents, both trying to work) laborers. My guess would be that the people who had skilled trade backgrounds (and the few who might have been professionals) have found work. I don’t know whether they are still living on the FEMA housing budget, or not, but no one has provided evidence that the FEMA recipients are mostly employed people with $30,000+ incomes just taking money for the fun of it. Mostly I have seen the same old complaints (implicit and explicit) that they are just lazy, voiced by a couple of posters who appear to have little to no understanding of economics.
Really, how can you say that you should just ship them to another place with jobs when there are few to begin with? The Dallas/Houston area can’t possibly absorb all these people, even though (ideally) it should. Where do you send these people? Do you make them pay their own way? What jobs do they do? What kind of education do they get? Do they have to pay for it?
I kind of agree with the original poster, though. I’d like to see these people off of welfare and into sustainable jobs. That’s just not possible now. Is it? If you can find a way to solve this problem, may you collect your Nobel Peace prize, the cash associated with it, and start work on the Middle East’s problems.
The area devastated by Hurrican Katrina is the size of England! It is very hard for the South (mostly) to absorb that many people and provide jobs for all of them in only a year’s time! Jobs here have been out-sourced too and many jobs have gone to workers from Mexico.
BTW, recently I heard that only 60% of the electrical power has been restored in New Orleans.
Let’s have a reasonable set of expectation, and rational set of limits as a talking point.
Should the government pay the rent of anyone who was made homeless by Katrina for the rest of their lives?
For thirty years?
For ten years?
Just how long?
Does it matter if the person had a job before the disaster?
Is it important if the person is clinically depressed now? What if they were depressed before the storm?
How about people who were homeless in New Orleans, and are now getting rent paid because the storm made lots of other people homeless? What about people who were unemployed before the storm? If we are going to set up businesses, with a first month’s supplies as suggested up thread, can I have one? I don’t live in the Katrina disaster zone, but I don’t own a store, and could probably not pay for one.
Why do we want to send people back to a place that will absolutely for sure experience another flood during a human lifetime? Why do we want to subsidize it? Wouldn’t it be better to send them somewhere else? If they want to go back, should we pay for that?
Should Louisiana have to pay Texas the cost of Katrina Relief? No? Then should Virginia?
Despite your derision, this is what we did for the tsunami victims, and it worked very well. We would clear out the premises, repair, repaint, restock. No cash handouts. We also donated fishing boats, etc. We gave people back the means with which they could make their livelihood, but they were on their own after that - “a hand-up not a handout”, to reuse a cliché.
Well I hope you have better luck during the next overwhelming disaster, then.
I read that large parts of the city are still uninhabitable and likely to remain so for some years to come - doesn’t that point to a large number of people being physically unable to return “home”? Also, I think that if I’d lived there and both my home and neighbourhood had been destroyed so totally, I’d want to make a fresh start somewhere else. Must admit, I’d see it as a golden opportunity to move wherever my heart desired.
Why, exactly “should” we? Here’s a suggestion - how about instead of just giving them money, that money is used to relocate them throughout the country? That way, instead of one area having to absorb 200,000+ people, they can be absorbed over a much bigger area where it is more likely that they will be able to find jobs.
Now, I don’t have a cite, but I think it is logical to postulate that most of the people who haven’t found jobs by now are in the “unskilled labor” camp. There is no possible way that Houston, or any other area for that matter, can take that much unskilled labor into its local job market. I would be in favor of a program where assistance would continue for 6 months for anyone willing to relocate to another state. Those who are still in Texas at this point and not working should be cut off.
There was an article in a local (Boston) paper about a family that had relocated from NOLA. The father found a job 9as a landscape contractor), and they planned to stay. They gave plenty of good reasons:
-the standard of living was much better
-schools were much better
-opportunities were much better
-less crime and violence
Given all of that, why would anyone want to return to NOLA? the city didn’t seem to provide very much to its poorer inhabitants-and it seems that things aren’t getting much better.
I find it interesting that that is the entire criterion for your reply, and the only point of my post that you feel needs a reply. Even in that respect, your point is based on an assumption. I might be a victim. I might have lost everything in a disaster, and be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and still not meet the specific set of criteria that are required to earn your compassion. You despise my theoretical need because it is an individual need. If the flood that destroyed my life was a small flood, which didn’t even make the papers nationwide, You see no reason for me to be helped.
You know, there have been other people who lost everything in floods, or in other entirely personal tragedies. So, there is evidently something more deserving in the suffering of each when many are harmed, than in the suffering of one person alone. Should every person who suffers loss be compensated by the public? Should those who were very well off before their loss be compensated more than those who were just getting by before their individual tragedy? Is there a qualification other than being one of a large class of sufferers that would make you feel charity was indicated?
And you ignored the first few points, entirely.
Should the government support each victim of a disaster sufficiently large to earn your compassion for a lifetime, for a decade, for a year, or forever? Should that support be enough to bring them back to their former lifestyle, or a minimal lifestyle of a middle class person, or should they we just give them an income that is enough to satisfy our generosity, without even considering their individual state? Should those who were poor be left poor? Should those who were very rich be made very rich again?
You find my questions despicable. You assume that my questions deride the victims of Katrina. But you do not answer my questions. How many must be harmed to earn your compassion? Who should be required to pay to care for them, and how long, and to what extent is it reasonable to require this charity of the public? And do you think that putting people back into New Orleans, a city designed to be destroyed by storm, represents a compassionate and intelligent thing to do? Should the government have been required to rebuild the World Trade Center?
Triskademus, I misunderstood your post. I took “I don’t live in the Katrina disaster zone” to mean “I want Katrian compensation even though I’m not a Katrina victim”. A misunderstanding.
“You despise my theoretical need because it is an individual need.” - I certainly don’t despise anything.
"If the flood that destroyed my life was a small flood, which didn’t even make the papers nationwide, You see no reason for me to be helped. " - not especially.
The difference is that Katrina wiped out an entire city. Your question addresses much larger issues: why respond to a disaster, not smaller tragedies. I don’t know. It’s a philosophical question. Cities and communities being utterly destroyed are a way bigger problem, with many more ongoing obstacles to overcome for the survivors, than other smaller tragedies.
As to your other questions, I don’t know. I think cash handouts is a bad idea, and that people should be encouraged home, which means lots of rebuilding work in the affected community. Certainly the project I worked on was done with no government assistance at all. It would have been nice though, in order to buy tools and have enough money to feed and employ the people we were trying to help, so that they could help themselves - without having to divert resources into fund-raising. But the point was to get the communities and economies running again independently, not running on welfare.
“You find my questions despicable.” - no I don’t. As I say, I got the wrong end of the stick (you have to admit, your original statement was unclear).
Ok, I’ve had a think about it. Here’s why we respond differently to major tragedies rather than minor ones.
In a minor tragedy, one hopes that the community in which it happens is sufficiently resilient to assist the victims. Might not happen, of course, but that’s the thinking.
In a major tragedy, the people in the community to whom one would turn are themselves in a disastrous state and also in need of assistance. In these circumstances, the only thing that can happen is for a compassionate larger community to step in and assist.
It’s like asking oneself why one is giving money to relieve a famine when there are children without shoes in one’s own community? It probably doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but it’s the way humanity seems to work.
I sense you think that NO shouldn’t be rebuilt. That’s not something I have enough knowledge about to comment, but it does sound like parts of the city should be rezoned as uninhabitable and the levees rebuilt higher.
I’m sorry if I have upset you - I’m not sure if you were personally affected, or have suffered an unrelated personal tragedy recently. If so, accept my apologies; now I know what you meant, please also accept that I didn’t mean to offend.
Yeah, tell me about it. We just moved to Houston about 5 months ago, and I am still looking for a job. It took my wife almost 2 months to find a job, and she was busting her butt too. And I would consider both of us to have more experience than most of the Katrina refugees I’ve met.
I even went to a cattle call for University of Phoenix, and there were a bunch of Katrina refugees as well. 30+ applicants. Only 8 or so positions. It’s not like some of them aren’t trying.
Also there seems to be a lot of (hostility, contempt?) on the part of the Houstonians towards the Katrinas, which I imagine cant help them in their job search.
I don’t understand your analogy. If you take a mortgage deduction or a dependent deduction you are having to pay less in taxes. Your own money is coming back to you. If you are taking housing assistance without needing it, that is wrong, plain and simple. Just because you’re entitled to something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the pride to say, no, give it to someone who needs the help more than I.
My brother’s in-laws lost their home in Katrina. Terribly tragedy. They were given a FEMA trailer to live in and have been there ever since. The also have a check for 109,000 in their pockets for the settlement from the house. Yet, they still stay in the trailer. Why? Because they are not sure what they want to do so they are going to stay until they are “thrown out”. (Direct quote from them.)
Find places that want an influx of said people. Move them from family. Move them yet again after the disaster. What if they don’t WANT to go?
Seriously, I’d love to see all that stuff happen, too. I’d like to see life go on, but the problem is MUCH bigger than any simple solution can offer.