There Is Still Some UnSpent Katrina Money Out There!

It's a sad thing to have to report this but this is information that I feel people should know about since it is something that involves taxpayer money - meaning the money that you and I pay in taxes!



Did you know that more than a quarter of the $20 billion in Housing and Urban Development relief funds that were earmarked for Gulf Coast states after Hurricane Katrina remains unspent five years after the storm!

Hurricane Katrina Grants Going To The Wealthy But Not To The Poor!

According to some advocates, the effort to help Huricane Katrina victims with government grants seems to have benefited more affluent people than those who are low-incomed.

According to one organization, "The recovery is really the tale of two recoveries. For people who were well off before the storm, they are more likely to be back in their homes, back in their jobs and to have access to good health care. For those who were poor or struggling to get by before the storm, the opposite is true."

Louisiana's program to distribute grants to property owners whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Katrina was found by a federal judge this month to discriminate against black homeowners!

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, state officials refused to offer rebuilding grants to property owners who suffered wind damage, explaining that the property owners should have carried private insurance. That rule hit low-income and black homeowners particularly hard, advocates say, because many of them were uninsured, often because they owned property that was passed down through the generations.

The $143 billion federally funded effort, one of the largest reconstruction projects in the country's history, fortified vulnerable levees, rebuilt hundreds of public buildings, reconstructed miles of roads and bridges and provided tens of thousands of residents with money to help piece together their shattered lives.

But there is a sharp disparity in how residents view the pace of recovery. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that while seven in 10 New Orleans residents say the rebuilding process is "going in the right direction," a third say their lives are still disrupted by the storm.

African Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to say they have not yet recovered after Katrina, the survey found. And blacks in the city are 2 & 1/2 times more likely to be low-income than whites.

One disabled Vietnam veteran has said, "I just knew we had a rotten deal". He and his wife have been struggling to rebuild their duplex in New Orleans East. The storm propelled them on a years-long odyssey through Port Arthur, Tex., Houston and Arkansas. They did not return to their still-damaged home until 2008! Their home was valued at just $135,000, although repair costs were estimated by the state to be $308,000. They were awarded a grant of just $16,649 to supplement just over $100,000 they received in insurance payments.

The federally funded grant program offered homeowners grants of up to $150,000. But homeowners could not collect more than the pre-storm value of their homes, regardless of the cost of repairs.

A federal judge ruled that the program's formula for calculating grants discriminates against black homeowners, who tend to live in neighborhoods with lower home values.

A spokesperson for the grant program has said that they have already appealed the judge's decision and added that the grant program has modified the program to pay out an additional $2 billion to more than 45,000 low-income homeowners. So far the government grant program has paid $8.6 billion to more than 127,000 homeowners.

While the waterfront casinos are providing a large chunk of state revenue, the vast majority of residents are back in their rebuilt homes, although thousands are still struggling to find affordable housing as their recovery checks did not cover the cost of the damage.

Despite the improvements, many gaps remain.

In Mississippi, where Katrina severely damaged more than 101,000 housing units, many residents face what advocates call a similar inequity. Praised in the aftermath of Katrina for his can-do attitude, Gov. Haley Barbour received a series of waivers from the Bush administration that largely freed Mississippi from the requirement to spend at least half of his state's $5.5 billion in federal block grant money on low- and moderate-income residents. Barbour successfully argued that the waivers were necessary to give the state flexibility to deal effectively with the widespread devastation. That allowed the state to divert close to $1 billion to help devastated utilities rebuild, to subsidize residents' insurance premiums and the port and other economic development projects. Meanwhile, advocates say that more than 5,000 low-income Mississippi families have yet to settle in permanent housing since the storm. Advocates have said that more than $3 billion distributed by the state's housing recovery program went disproportionately to more affluent residents. The plan paid up to $150,000 to homeowners whose properties were damaged by the unprecedented storm surge spawned by Katrina, but nothing to those whose homes suffered wind damage.

To be eligible for the initial grants, families had to have homeowners insurance, although the state later devised a program that paid grants of up to $100,000 to low-income, uninsured homeowners whose properties were damaged by the storm surge.
The rationale, state officials said, was that responsible homeowners had no way to know that they should have flood insurance in areas that federal experts deemed to be outside of the flood plain.

source

Cleveland.com

Are You An Artist That Was Effected By Hurricane Katrina?

There have been a number of artists who have been able to continue their work with the help of some financial grant programs available for those artists who have been affected by hurrincane Katrina.

For instance one artist whose home was destroyed because of Katrina was able to escape the wreckage and continue to work because an art organization offered him a two-month residency that included a stipend, room and board, and studio space.

There is another arts organization that has established a fund to help artists living in the hurricane-damaged area, and the one university in Baton Rouge, collected art supplies for artist-evacuees. A New York City-based foundation has paid at least $450,000 in grants to more than 80 artists affected by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Every time a disaster happens, the process of creating or reviving relief funds starts again. One Recovery Fund, created by a New York Foundation has distributed $4,635,000 to organizations and individuals in New York City after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. There is a Washington, DC-based organization that has established an emergency relief fund which has given over $100,000 to different art organizations located in the Gulf Coast region. Over $400,000 has been provided to individual artists!

There is also an emergency relief fund for "Crafters" which has spearheaded the coalition, distributed between $200,000 and $300,000 to Gulf Coast craftspeople after Katrina. Additionally, the organization brokered free and discounted supplies and equipment, free booth space at craft shows, and free workshops for artisans in the region.

State unemployment insurance agencies provide disaster unemployment aid to the self-employed but only when future income is predictable.

Black Methodists Organization Receives An $80,000 Grant For Church Renewal!

This grant program is not just limited to African Americans!

To qualify for this grant program your non-profit organization or church / ministry must have a racial/ethnic minority leadership and goals of fostering justice, self-determination, inclusion and reconciliation among racial/ethnic groups and communities.

So far over 30 grant awards have been approved through the year 2009 totaling to $1 Million Dollars! Only 89 applications have been submitted so far!

All of the previous grant recipients are operated by racial/ethnic United Methodist churches or caucuses or by community organizations. Grants awarded include:

• a $30,000 2 Year grant to a 6-year-old ministry of a pan-Asian and historically Japanese-American congregation.
  
  
• $40,000 to a theater company, at a newly created Hispanic / Latino congregation of a United Methodist Church a new Hispanic/Latino congregation in N.J. The theatre group engages local youth and young adults in Christian music, dance and theater as avenues to positive self-expression, self-discipline and community evangelism.
  
  
• $40,000 to an outreach effort of a "Young Adults Ministry Group at another United Methodist Church located in Arkansa. The outreach program will help fifty at-risk girls, ages 12 to 18, who will be matched with mentors recruited from various professions to address four critical areas of the girls' lives: educational enrichment, cultural awareness and the arts, community services and character-building.
  
  
• $40,000 to a United Methodist Church which is in a predominantly black community in New Orleans that is still struggling to recover from 2005's Hurricane Katrina. (Click here for more information about Katrina-related grant programs). The church works with local partners to help young people create a more positive future through tutoring, mentoring, service-learning projects, community organizing and leadership development skills. (African-American-$40,000)

There are also a number of projects being refunded as well! Including:

• $30,000 which has been awarded to a project in Chicago that help organizes journaleros, or day laborers, who seek work daily on street corners in the Chicago area. These workers often must face theft of their pay by unscrupulous employers, unsafe working conditions, wrongful arrests by police, disruptive raids by immigration agents and other troubles. The project is trying to improve hiring and labor conditions, prevent anti-immigrant actions by police, and develop a workers' center where day laborers can gather to seek jobs and receive other assistance.

A number of smaller grants have also been awarded to:

• to explore ideas and models for overcoming racism and encouraging multicultural ministries.

The organization that sponsors these grants also awarded funds to help racial/ethnic conferences and organizations send members to General Conference in 2008 as observers to learn about the legislative assembly and to advocate on issues of concern to their constituents.

To find out more about this organization's grant program and whether or not YOUR organization is eligible to apply for this grant program you can visit their website to find out more about their grant program!

FEMA Gets Blasted Again!

There was a lot of financial assistance for those who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Assistance in the form of grants and loans were given to residents, businesses and students. However FEMA has been blasted by politicians for demanding payments from students that got financial aid.

Eligible students received $5,000 in "emergency" money that they could use for emergency purposes. Some students even received 2 checks! However FEMA wants their "emergency" money back and is going after the students to get their money back. Even those students who were able to provide documented proof of how they spent the money have been given the "runaround". Claims of incompetence have been given to FEMA and its processes and procedures. All the while the interest is still gathering on the money that FEMA says that it wants back!

However angry protests by students (and their parents) to their senators has resulted into criticism of FEMA and its methods. As a result under new rules, students who received compensation for damages suffered from hurricanes Katrina and Rita can keep the money if they can prove through written documentation that they lived in campus housing for at least six of the 12 months prior to the 2005 storms.