by Chris Kromm

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck and floodwaters devastated New Orleans, President Bush declared our country's commitment to a full recovery in the Gulf Coast. “Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives,” he promised.

How is the recovery doing? To answer this question, the Institute for Southern Studies produced an in-depth report, Blueprint for Gulf Renewal: The Katrina Crisis and a Community Agenda for Action (August/September 2007). We analyzed reams of government reports, media coverage and statistical indicators. We also interviewed 40 community leaders, from New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi, about the challenges they face, and their message to the nation.

The statistics and voices of Gulf Coast leaders tell the same story. Two years after the storms, much of the Gulf Coast and its people still live in devastation. 60,000 people are still in “temporary” FEMA trailers because programs to help homeowners and renters haven't come through. From New Orleans to Biloxi, one sees miles of shuttered schools, hospitals and businesses. Suicides and homelessness are skyrocketing. Since Katrina, the death rate has risen 47% in New Orleans alone.

Over 60 percent of those still displaced across the country say they want to come home, but can't – mostly because they can't afford to. Thao Vu of Boat People SOS in Biloxi, Miss., a group working with the large Vietnamese community along the coast, speaks for many when she says, “We are very far from recovery.”

Sandra Taylor of the Biloxi, Mississippi-based Center for Environmental and Economic Justice agrees. “People are trying to rebuild. But the cost of stuff is going so high.” And while more money would help, that is not the only need Taylor identifies. “We need less politics, less paperwork, and less red tape,” she says.
After two long years of frustration and hardship, many are running out of time and hope. If there's one message that is clear, it's that our country has broken its promise to the people of the Gulf Coast.

When confronted with this reality, many leaders in Washington point to the "big check" that Congress and the President say they have written to fund Katrina relief and recovery – $116 billion, according to recent estimates. But as dozens of community leaders asked us: Where did the money go?

“$116 billion is not a useful number,” says Stanley Czerwinski of the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm. For starters, most federal money-about two-thirds-was quickly spent for emergency needs like debris removal and Coast Guard rescue. As Czerwinski explains, “There is a significant difference between responding to an emergency and rebuilding post-disaster.”

Once the first two-thirds is spent, that has left little money for long-term rebuilding projects: our best estimate based on agency data is that only $35 billion has been appropriated for such rebuilding, a fraction of the figure cited by the White House.

Even more shocking: more than half of the money set aside for rebuilding hasn't even been spent, much less gotten to those most in need. For example:

1. Washington set aside $16.7 billion for Community Development Block Grants, one of the two biggest sources of rebuilding funds. But as of March 2007, only $1 billion-just 6 percent-had been spent, almost all of it in Mississippi. Following bad publicity, another $3.8 billion was spent between March and July – but 70 percent of the funds remain unused.
2. The other major pot of money for rebuilding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Public Assistance Program, received $8.2 billion. But only $3.4 billion was meant for non-emergency projects like fixing up schools and hospitals, and only a fraction has been spent.
3. After the failure of federal levees flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers received $8.4 billion to restore storm defenses. But as of July 2007, less than 20 percent of the funds have been spent, even as the Corps admits that levee repair won't be completed until as late as 2011.

Even the money allocated will likely come nowhere near the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast. For example, the $3.4 billion FEMA has available to rebuild local public infrastructure would only cover about one-eighth of the damage suffered in Louisiana alone. But this money is spread across five states-Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas – and covers damage from three 2005 hurricanes, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

To its credit, this spring Congress has acted on some of the money hold-ups. It struck a requirement in the Stafford Act that mandates local governments pay a percentage of rebuilding projects up front before receiving federal aid. The Bush administration reduced the law's 25 percent match requirement to 10 percent post-Katrina-but it refused to waive the rule entirely, as it did for New York after 9/11, and Florida after Hurricane Andrew. The requirement grounded countless projects across the region, but was particularly devastating in places like Mississippi's Hancock County, where towns lost most of their tax base and could not come up with matching funds.

But overall the White House is still pushing a policy of “trickle-down” recovery, like the $3.5 billion in tax breaks for business in Gulf Opportunity or “GO” Zones. Many of the breaks have been of questionable benefit to Katrina survivors, such as the $1 million deal to build 10 luxury condos next to the University of Alabama football stadium – four hours from the Gulf Coast.

In our report we also found a gritty, grassroots movement organizing for a better future in the region. Dozens of grasroots groups are piecing together their neighborhoods, fighting off developments that would displace working class and poor communities, and pushing innovative projects for green rebuilding.

New Orleans is the central hub of ACORN, a national group organizing low – and moderate-income families. Beth Butler-ACORN's Southern regional director – believes the federal government's responsibility for Katrina's destruction starts with the failed levees. Improperly built and maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the system allowed 80 percent of the city to flood, causing most of the problems in New Orleans that linger to this day. “Our flooding was from the failed levees – federally designed levees,” Butler says. “The federal government owes the city. New Orleans should be completely restored with federal funding.”

Another group making a difference is the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. With more than 100 organizational and several thousand individual members, LEAN is dedicated to making the state a safer, healthier place to live. After witnessing the post-storm crisis and the governments failure to respond effectively, LEAN revamped its mission to become a supplier of the most basic human needs, collecting and distributing food and water, medical goods, baby supplies, toiletries, and cleaning supplies to hard-hit communities. The group even opened its Baton Rouge offices to the displaced, housing about a dozen people for several months.
“When LEAN is the first group to bring food and water into communities, the system has failed,” Says LEAN Executive Director Marylee Orr. But what else was there to do? “You can't do policy for dead people.” To date, LEAN has handed out more than $200,000 worth of respirators, disposable suits and other gear to people helping with the rebuilding effort. In fact, it's still distributing protection today, as the recovery in some neighborhoods like New Orleans’ devastated Lower Ninth Ward is just getting underway. “It scares me to think if we hadn't had the resources to help them what would have happened,” says Marylee.

These groups and many others also have a clear idea of the responsibility Washington holds to the region, and what policies federal leaders can embrace if they truly believe in the recovery. For example, several grassroots groups (including ACORN, All Congregations Together and the Jeremiah Project) are pushing the idea of a Gulf Civic Works Project – a WPA-style program that could hire and train 100,000 workers at $15 an hour to rebuild their communities, all for less than $4 billion (half the cost of what our country spends in Iraq each month). So far the program has gotten little traction in Washington, where lawmakers have opted to outrource the recovery to private contractors and a maze of fragmented agencies.

But the Katrina movement also has to be a national movement. The people of the Gulf Coast need people of good will across the country to pay attention and speak up. The nation has a responsibility to rebuild the Gulf Coast and make its people whole. It's also a vital testing ground for our commitment to confronting poverty, racism, privatization and other structural barriers to justice and democracy.

After two years of broken promises and failed leadership, it's time – past time – for a national movement for justice in the Gulf Coast and beyond.

---

Chris Kromm is executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and co-author of the recent Institute report, Blueprint for Gulf Renewal: The Katrina Crisis and a Community Agenda for Action (www.southernstudies.org/gulfwatch). This article is largely excerpted from that report.