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Skriven 2006-04-16 22:18:42 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av ED HULETT
Ärende: Incompetence in action
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Original post below...  The link is active, period.


From: BOB SAKOWSKI
To: ALL
Date: 2006-04-14 21:07:24
Subject: Incompetence in action

Note to Vern, the following is a REAL cite:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/13/AR2006041302159_pf.html



Waste in Katrina Response Is Cited
Housing Aid Called Inefficient in Audits

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 14, 2006; A01

Nearly eight months after Hurricane Katrina triggered the nation's largest
housing crisis since the Second World War, a hastily improvised $10 billion
effort by the federal government has produced vast sums of waste and
misspent funds, an array of government audits and outside analysts have
concluded.

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency wraps up the initial phase of
its temporary housing program -- ending reliance on cruise ships and hotels
for people sent fleeing by the Aug. 29 storm -- the toll of false starts
and missed opportunities appears likely to top $1 billion and perhaps much
more, according to a series of after-action studies and Department of
Homeland Security reports, including one due for release today.

The government's costliest initiative -- $6.4 billion allocated to place
storm survivors in temporary trailers and mobile homes -- has ground to a
halt around New Orleans this week, in part because of widespread racial and
class tensions. Residents of surrounding localities have refused to accept
the makeshift communities.

Only 71 percent of the 141,000 trailers that FEMA estimates are needed are
being occupied.

Meanwhile, the trailer program consumes more than 60 percent of funds FEMA
is spending on housing aid -- even though it benefits about 10 percent of
the approximately 1 million households getting help, according to agency
data and the Brookings Institution, which tracks recovery progress.

By contrast, a rental assistance program is serving 800,000 families, or 80
percent of households, at about one-third the total cost, or more than $3
billion. It was dramatically expanded four weeks after the storm -- a
sluggish start, critics said -- after intense pressure from Congress and
others who said the administration from the beginning should have taken
advantage of such proven programs as low-income Section 8 rental vouchers.

In a recent White House report, Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's
homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, reserved some of the
toughest criticism for FEMA's mass trailer initiative. She said that it
"foundered due to inadequate planning and poor coordination," and she
recommended that the Department of Housing and Urban Development take over
from Homeland Security in future disasters.

Citing lack of training, expertise and engagement with other agencies,
Townsend's "Lessons Learned" report stated, "The Federal government's
capability to provide housing solutions to the displaced Gulf Coast
population has proved to be far too slow, bureaucratic, and inefficient."

FEMA officials say that they could have done better, but that Hurricane
Katrina has displaced 1 million families outside their home Zip codes
nearly eight months after the storm -- a far greater impact than other
recent disasters.

Spokeswoman Natalie Rule said that although FEMA is learning from critical
reports, "they do not capture everything that was done well and right." She
added that "the innovative housing solutions put into place in the
aftermath of Katrina will now become ready solutions we can offer in future
catastrophes."

Still, the weight of judgments from White House, Congress and analysts is
that the housing effort is a failure with many causes, including
institutional neglect, lack of funding, and poor planning, decision making
and execution.

Neither FEMA nor its predecessors had ever housed hundreds of thousands of
disaster victims for a prolonged period, and the collapse of its initial
trailer strategy is part of what Dennis S. Mileti, former director of the
National Hazards Center in Colorado, called "the largest disaster-response
failure in the history of our country."

Mileti said the United States should focus on helping storm evacuees start
over wherever they are living. "You cannot build a temporary housing park
for a million people," Mileti said. "If you did, you couldn't call it a
trailer park. You'd need to call it a new city."

Arnold R. Hirsch, a University of New Orleans historian of race and
housing, called the effort a "shuffleboard" policy "of ad
hoc measures . .
. susceptible to last-second changes and political influences." He added:
"The primary lesson we may walk away from this incident would simply be the
negative one -- of what not to do."

According to a 218-page audit by the Department of Homeland Security's
inspector general that was obtained by The Washington Post in advance of
its scheduled release today, FEMA cited a New Orleans hurricane as a top
threat in 2001 but never completed plans because of a lack of funds.

Among other things, the report refers to rushed and inefficient decisions
in the first weeks after Katrina:

· FEMA spent $900 million to buy 25,000 manufactured homes and 1,300
modular homes, most of which cannot be used because agency rules say they
are too big or unsafe in flood zones.

· The agency spent $632 million to subsidize hotel rooms for tens of
thousands of families at an average cost of $2,400 a month, three times
what it later paid families to rent two-bedroom apartments.

· The agency spent $249 million to secure 8,136 cruise-ship cabins for six
months, at a cost that Inspector General Richard L. Skinner estimated at
$5,100 a month per passenger. That is six times the cost of renting
two-bedroom apartments.

Skinner's report cites a "basic lack of understanding" of FEMA regulations
for the $900 million manufactured- housing fiasco and a "fundamental lack
of planning" for a makeshift program under which FEMA is reimbursing
localities to lease 66,000 apartments for evacuees. It found the cruise
ship program "not necessarily efficient."

Among 38 recommendations, the report calls for FEMA to provide "funding
resources and institutional support" to complete catastrophic-disaster
plans, develop alternative and long-term housing plans, and tighten
contracting procedures.

On Tuesday, at the epicenter of the crisis, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin
carried out an election-season threat and formally suspended development of
new FEMA group trailer sites citywide. He asked the federal government to
find alternatives.

FEMA officials privately complain that Nagin has failed to move on 108
approved sites. In a letter last week to Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff, Nagin said FEMA has housed only 600 families on 84
approved sites, which could hold 4,200.

But the problem extends beyond the city. In Louisiana, only 32 of 64
parishes are accepting FEMA trailers, and about three-fourths of those
parishes permit them only for their own residents, a FEMA spokesman said.

In Baton Rouge, whose population swelled 50 percent after the storm, the
welcome mat is also gone. Mayor Melvin "Kip" Holden told reporters at a
Feb. 13 Press Club gathering: "We have taken in more FEMA trailers than any
county in the USA. We are out of the FEMA trailer business."

Although Baton Rouge is clearly straining from the burden of providing
services to newcomers, people across the region say that social conflicts
are feeding the hostility.

"It's the not-in-my-back-yard syndrome," said Jacqueline C. Jones, lead
organizer for the Jeremiah Group, a New Orleans community group affiliated
with the Industrial Areas Foundation.

At the same time, Jones said, evacuees are having second thoughts about
moving into 28-foot trailers. She said they are concerned that another
hurricane may strike and hope for more spacious FEMA apartments or modular
housing.

Congressional impatience has mounted. Chairman Susan M. Collins (R-Maine)
and ranking Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) of the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee wrote Chertoff last month,
characterizing the government's "inability to help thousands of Americans
who were forced from their homes" find housing "simply
unacceptable," and
called for improvements.

They were joined April 5 by the Senate Appropriations Committee, led by
Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), which approved a $27 billion Katrina
relief bill that would bar Chertoff from using housing funds until he
submits a comprehensive plan. It also expressed continued frustration "with
the lack of a housing policy for the Gulf Coast."

Amy Liu of the Brookings Institution said the administration underestimated
the scope of the disaster and tried to manage it piecemeal. "They did not
deploy all the resources they had," Liu said, referring to 12- or 18-month
rental vouchers. "Everyone should have known from Day One that people
didn't need two weeks' housing . . . or a month, or three months. It was
crazy."

Staff writer Linton Weeks in New Orleans contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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