FEMA Needs a New Housing Strategy for Hurricane Victims Now

FEMA Needs a New Housing Strategy for Hurricane Victims Now

"FEMA Strategy Overlooks An Easy Solution, According to the
National Multi Housing Council

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The cost to house the more than
600,000 families still displaced by Hurricane Katrina could be cut nearly in
half by moving people out of hotels and into the nearly one million vacant
apartments in the surrounding area, according to the National Multi Housing
Council (NMHC).

As of Thursday, the Red Cross reports there were still 616,023 people
living in 198,717 hotel rooms. Currently, more than one million vacant rental
housing units in the Southeast could be put to use for displaced Katrina
families, according to the NMHC. Further, the NMHC believes that FEMA could
place families in these units in a matter of days. FEMA would need to work
with the local apartment associations and the public housing authorities
around the country to match evacuees to housing.

'FEMA needs a new housing strategy for Hurricane Katrina's victims,' said
NMHC's Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, Jim Arbury. 'These
families need to get on with their lives, and they can't do it in a cramped
hotel room or an isolated trailer park.

For less money than FEMA is spending
on hotels, the vast majority of these displaced people could be put into an
apartment and become part of the existing community.

They could enroll their children in school, find a job and return to some kind
of normal routine while the rebuilding effort begins.'

Housing policies that were implemented in Houston could and should be
replicated nationwide, according to the NMHC.


73 fer nw,
Bob N5IET

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