Katrina Coverage

The AP article "Fresno mayor invites refugees to a town that doesn't want them" has been localized a bit, but it's actually more of a national story:

…Public assistance agencies in Fresno and many other urban areas were already struggling before hurricanes Katrina and Rita threatened to add hundreds of people to waiting lists for public housing, welfare payments, food stamps, health care and temporary assistance programs. Roughly 25 percent of Fresno County residents already live in poverty, and unemployment will soar into double digits after the fall harvest…

A Sept. 22 poll conducted by Ipsos, an international polling company, showed that 44 percent of Americans with hurricane refugees settling in their communities are concerned about the cost of providing education, housing and other services. About one in four respondents were worried about increased crime and the availability of jobs.

"Services are hard to come by to begin with," said Sharon Cossey, deputy executive director for the public housing authority in Oakland, where many residents have taken in family members fleeing from New Orleans and East Texas. "We're definitely not going to go out and recruit."

…"It would be very difficult to assist families coming from that area," said Manuel Rosario, deputy director of the housing authority in Richmond, a relatively poor city of about 100,000 across the bay from San Francisco. Richmond already had 300 families waiting for housing assistance before Katrina, and can only help about a dozen more families, Rosario said…

Cities and counties across the nation already lack the resources needed to offer affordable housing to their constituents, said Linda Couch, director of the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington, D.C.

The largest cities have tens of thousands on waiting lists for public housing assistance, including 30,000 in Washington, D.C., 250,000 in New York and 85,000 In Los Angeles, according to a survey the coalition did last year.

"Housing authorities have never been more broke," Couch said, explaining that federal funding for these services has been curtailed under the Bush administration. "Funds for public housing were not keeping pace with demand, even before Katrina."

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