A New Start for Katrina's Displaced
Urban Institute
Gulf Coast residents began bracing for the start of hurricane season June 1.
At about the same time, thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees were dealt another serious blow: the Federal Emergency Management Agency informed them that they are no longer eligible for housing assistance.
HUD is on the right track, but for many cash-strapped evacuees, the incentives and discounts are not enough.
FEMA may be trying to recoup its enormous expenditures by selling these temporary dwellings to hurricane victims willing to move them to commercial trailer parks, lots that the occupants already own (perhaps in the flood plain where they lived before), or pieces of land they can acquire.
These agencies have designed and supported successful "demand side" housing programs in Armenia, Georgia, and other countries where natural disasters and civil wars have displaced large populations.
What the U.S. government's experience in assistance programs abroad tells us is that most displaced families quickly develop support systems in their adopted towns and may prefer to stay, particularly when there is no home or job to return to.
Even families cramped in trailer camps in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama should be offered housing vouchers to restart their lives elsewhere.
Steven Anlian, an urban planner and international-development expert, is the Washington-based Urban Institute's senior associate in Yerevan, Armenia, where he led international teams collaborating on the U.S. Agency for International Development's Armenia Earthquake Zone Recovery Program and U. S. State Department's Housing Voucher Program for Georgian Refugees.
