No Questions Asked

Every once in a while we hear about Katrina’s victims. Another shameful moment in American history.
Hurricane Katrina victims around the Gulf Coast who were told to vacate their temporary trailers by the end of May will instead be allowed to buy them for $5 or less, White House officials announced on Wednesday.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will also give the 3,450 families still in trailers or temporary housing — including many elderly, poor and disabled people — priority for $50 million in permanent housing vouchers. The money for the vouchers was appropriated by Congress last year.

Some of those living in trailers are destitute and have no other housing. Others, including many people in New Orleans, are living in trailers outside their damaged homes, while waiting to complete repairs that would allow them to move back. The May 31 deadline set off a panic among both kinds of residents and raised an outcry because so much of the housing destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has yet to be replaced.

Residents were overjoyed to hear that they would not be evicted. “Are you serious?” asked Belinda Jenkins, a disabled woman living in a trailer in front of her house in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans. “Oh, wow. That’s a blessing.”