Every few months, local media treat us to the latest story of how Hurricane Katrina victims will have their housing aid extended. Here’s KTRK-13:
Families that received federal housing assistance before getting displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita will get extensions of up to nine months on their disaster benefits, government officials said Monday.
About 11,400 families have been part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Disaster Voucher Program, which was scheduled to end Sept. 30. About 3,500 of the families are in the Houston area.
“What happened two years ago had a devastating affect on people’s lives,” HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson told a group of Katrina evacuees at an apartment complex for seniors that still has 80 relocated families. “We can’t change what God does, but we can make the best of it.”
Katrina hit Aug. 29, 2005, devastating a large swath of the Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana coasts and flooding 80 percent of New Orleans. Rita hit southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas less than a month later.
At its peak, 30,700 families were using the Disaster Voucher Program to cover their housing costs.
On Jan. 1, 7,600 of the remaining families will go back to HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, also known as Section 8, which they were on before the storm. Under this program, participants get help paying their rent to a private landlord.
“Extensions of up to nine months.” Please. We all know whatever “deadline” is given will be extended…and extended…and extended.
In effect, two years later nothing has changed, except how the housing assistance is coded. It’s still taxpayer dollars taken from hard-working folks in order to subsidize others.
