Katrina Coverage

Rep. Gary Smith's family owns a motorcycle shop near New Orleans, and they've received a contract for 6,400 housing trailers. The three contracts were no-bid and they're worth $108 million. And, the shop didn't get the license required to sell new trailers until after the first contract had been inked:
…Smith's uncle, Glen Smith, said he […]

More than a dozen Hurricane Katrina victims from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama filed a lawsuit Thursday [11/10] accusing the federal government of wrongfully denying them temporary housing assistance.
Attorneys said this is probably the first of a string of suits to be filed against the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies…
The lawsuit, which asks […]

From this:
Mayor Ray Nagin was back in the nation’s capital Thursday. This time he met with President George W. Bush about the lack of temporary housing in the Crescent City.
Nagin also discussed concerns over the levee protection system, who will pay for its reconstruction and how to create incentives to bring residents and businesses back […]

Oft-arrested far-left activist, co-founder of CodePink and Global Exchange, and Cuban tourist Susan "Medea" Benjamin offers this:
Two months after Katrina, the residents of New Orleans most traumatized by the hurricane and its aftermath are now traumatized by their battle to return home. And many of the city's poor, black "Katrina survivors" are losing this second […]

Bill Quigley, who "teaches at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law", offers this:
Fully armed National Guard troops refuse to allow over ten thousand people to even physically visit their property in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. Despite the fact that people cannot come back, tens of thousands of people face eviction from their homes. […]

From the NYT:
All over New Orleans, from brick apartment complexes in the east to crumbling stucco low-rises in the center, constables have been busy tacking eviction notices to often-empty apartments.
Landlords, many of them starved for rent and fearing foreclosure, have been trying to evict tenants who escaped New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And that has […]

From Hurricane Evacuees Face Eviction Threats at Both Their Old Homes and New:
Warned by angry Texas officials that thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees could soon face eviction from their new homes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is negotiating with officials in Dallas to set up a federally financed housing-voucher program, municipal officials said Thursday.
Gov. Rick […]

From this:
Louisiana religious leaders criticized Congress and the Bush administration Wednesday for failing to develop a coordinated plan to allow New Orleans residents to return home and reclaim their city.
Nearly two months after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of its residents, the ministers said the federal government […]

From 10/4's Eased out of the Big Easy from Jesse Jackson:
After his administration's incompetence and indifference had lethal consequences in Katrina's wake, President Bush has been scrambling to regain his footing. He's called for an "unprecedented response to an unprecedented crisis." In religious services at the National Cathedral, he called on America to "erase this […]

In New Orleans, landlords to begin evicting absent tenants
A flood of legal battles is set to be unleashed Tuesday [today] in New Orleans when Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco lifts a post-Hurricane Katrina ban on evictions and 8,000 to 10,000 absentee tenants face the losses of their homes and possessions.
Landlords are expected to begin filing eviction […]