Housing Expedited for Storm Survivors

[Southpaw Bookworm]

When people are waiting FIVE YEARS to get into subsidized housing, how will they react to find that they've been bumped down the list? Is this another divide-and-conquer effort, even if accidental, that will keep the poor from banding together to rise up and demand change?



The D.C. Housing Authority has made plans to move about two dozen hurricane survivors from New Orleans into public or subsidized housing, putting them ahead of thousands of District residents who have been on a waiting list for as long as five years.

Several other jurisdictions, both in the Washington area and across the country, are making similar arrangements for Katrina evacuees in response to a request from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to waive normal procedures for housing assistance.

"This is a catastrophic disaster, and that supersedes everything," said Donna White, a HUD spokeswoman. "It's unfortunate, but a family on the waiting list has to put themselves in the shoes of a family at the armory -- and that's probably the only shoes they have right now."

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson appealed to mayors and county executives nationwide to comb their inventory of affordable housing, and HUD officials said offers of hundreds of homes have come from the mayors of Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago and Miami. In Baltimore, which has about 14,000 people on a waiting list for public housing or rental vouchers, Mayor Martin O'Malley pledged 236 public housing units and said he would appeal to city landlords for apartments.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091502279.html