-------- Original Message --------
Subject: my heart breaks!
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:43:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Katrina Victims Have To Move Free Houses
<http://sweetness-light.com/archive/katrina-victims-have-to-move-free-houses>
August 21st, 2010
From a tear soaked Associated Press
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100821/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill_katrina_cottages>:
Pete Yarborough speaks in the front yard of his 400
square-foot cottage in Lakeshore, Miss.
Oil spill adds to housing woes for Katrina victims
By Shelia Byrd, Associated Press Writer
August 21, 2010
LAKESHORE, Miss. – Pete Yarborough, a trucker who hauled seafood
until the BP oil spill hit, and about 800 other households are under
pressure to buy or get out of the state-owned cottages they’ve been
living in since Hurricane Katrina left them homeless.
*Yarborough’s 400-square-foot cottage sits on cinder blocks 13 feet
above sea level, 7 feet lower than post-Katrina standards require.
He can buy the cottage for $351, but it would cost about $23,000 to
raise it in the flood-prone area, and Yarborough can’t afford that*.
Would it be cynical to question this $23,000 estimate?
*If he doesn’t buy the cottage, the state will begin the process of
evicting him. State officials had hoped to end the cottage program
by Aug. 29, the fifth anniversary of the storm*, but they concede
the process of evicting the residents will take a couple of more
months.
*The oil spill’s economic fallout has added a cruel hurdle to the
effort to relocate the cottage dwellers,* *who live in the
structures for free, paying utilities and rent only for the lots
they live on — or paying no rent if they own the lots*.
*"I’m jobless and I might be homeless too," said Yarborough, 57, who
hasn’t had work since the spill sidelined some major fishing grounds
in the Gulf of Mexico*.
As far as we know, most the Gulf has been re-opened for fishing for
quite some time.
*Yarborough has refused to buy the petite dwellings for as little as
$351 and relocate them to "cottage parks," where residents would
lease a piece of land much like a mobile home park*…
No, we can’t have that.
*In addition to the cottages, about 200 more Katrina victims still
live in federally supplied trailers, down from a post-storm peak of
41,000. *
Mind you, Katrina was /five years ago/.
*Yarborough said he received and spent $3,000 from BP after he lost
his job as a trucker. He’s waiting to see if he’ll get monthly checks. *
*"My automobile is past due, my lights, my phone bills. Everything
is past due," he said*.
Stop it. We are just about to bust out crying.
*Lea Crager-Stokes, MEMA deputy director, said the agency is willing
to move the structures to mobile home parks or areas outside the
floodplain. But that forces some residents to leave their own
property and start paying rent*…
And we can’t make these poor victims have to pay any rent.
*Dozens of cottage dwellers meet every Thursday in Bay St. Louis
with the Mississippi Center for Justice, an advocacy group that’s
trying to negotiate with MEMA for more time to find permanent housing. *
*But Stokes said they can’t keep funding the program forever*…
Why not? These are ‘Katrina victims,’ after all.
They are to be given everything they want for free — and for the rest of
their lives.
3 Comments »
<http://sweetness-light.com/archive/katrina-victims-have-to-move-free-houses#comments>
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