Affordable Housing Institute : US

A tree dying of rot appears sturdy, even as its trunk hollows out … until one night there is a storm, and with a crack, it topples.  Similarly, when an agency is consistently hollowed out over a quarter-century, it trundles along doing its business, presiding over the appearance of normalcy, until something happens.

 

 

Does this remind you of any Cabinet departments?

 

Today’s New York Times chronicles the continuing migration of the New Orleans diaspora: no longer homeless or sleeping in cars, they have successfully moved out of shelters, and into … hotels:

 

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - Straining to meet President Bush’s mid-October deadline to clear out shelters, the federal government has moved hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina into hotel rooms at a cost of about $11 million a night, a strategy local officials and some members of Congress criticize as incoherent and wasteful.

 

The splash pattern continues to ripple outwards ….

 

The number of people in hotels has grown by 60% in the past two weeks as some shelters closed, reaching nearly 600,000 as of Tuesday.  Even so, relief officials say they cannot meet the deadline, as more than 22,000 people were still in shelters in 14 states on Wednesday.

 

The reliance on hotels has been necessary, housing advocates say, because the Federal Emergency and Management Agency has had problems installing mobile homes and travel trailers for evacuees and has been slow to place victims in apartments that real

estate executives say are available throughout the southeast.

 

Originally the Administration had imagined a fleet of homes on wheels, but it has since scaled back:

 

Instead of setting up as many as 30,000 trailers and mobile homes every two weeks, as of Tuesday, just 7,308 were occupied. 

 

FEMA, reacting to criticism that it might create super-concentrated slums, has scaled back plans to build so-called FEMAvilles with up to 25,000 trailers.

 

That was probably wise, but with several hundred thousand people becoming increasingly impatient, there’s a growing chorus of criticism of the Federal response:

 

“Deplorable. Disappointing. Outrageous. That is how I feel about it,” said the Atlanta mayor, Shirley Franklin, a Democrat, in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “The federal response has just been unacceptable. It is like talking to a brick wall.”

 

That’s a particularly telling quote, as Atlanta has one of the nation’s best and most innovative housing authorities.

 

Even conservative housing experts have criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the temporary housing response. “I am baffled,” said Ronald D. Utt, a former senior official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Reagan administration aide who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative research organization. “This is not incompetence. This is willful. That is the only way I can explain it.”

 

One should never presume evil intent when mere incompetence is a plausible explanation.  Here we need not even presume incompetence, just systemic breakdown, because the displacement is of a scale not seen since the Dust Bowl:

 

Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokeswoman, said the federal government was moving as quickly as it could to find temporary housing. But the scale of the catastrophe has made it difficult, she said.

 

“Clearly we have never encountered the size and scope of a disaster like Hurricane Katrina,” she said. “Housing half a million people is a challenge by any standard.”

 

Yes, it is, but one America can handle.  Indeed, the United States has the largest, most professional, most diversified supply of private rented housing in the world.  It’s a huge strength to our economy: it enables families rapidly to right-size their housing requirements, it allows them to move upward into home ownership when the time is right, and it facilitates tremendous labor mobility.  So why aren’t the people in the apartments?  They can afford it:

 

Late last month, FEMA began handing out $2,358 for three months so that families in shelters or hotels could rent apartments.

 

The figure is three months’ rent at $786, the national Fair Market Rent as set by HUD.  [Warning: Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire, HUD FMR’s are neither fair, nor market, nor rent.]

 

 

“Who are you to compare me with a subsidy, you scamp?”

 

To date, more than 415,000 households have been approved for that aid, totaling $979 million. But FEMA officials cannot say how many families have used the money for apartments, or simply spent it on expenses while also living in a government-financed hotel room.

 

Because markets always clear, people often consume more or less housing than a government administrator or economist thinks they should.  That’s their choice, but the New Orleanians have lost not only their homes, but also their immediate sources of income.  And just because you have a chit to rent an apartment does not mean you can find an apartment to rent:

 

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who sits on a House panel that helps oversee the housing effort, complained that it was unreasonable for the federal government to expect that a family led by jobless parents, with no car, little savings and little familiarity with a new city could independently find an apartment.

 

“The administration’s policy is incoherent and socially seriously flawed,” he said in an interview.

 

Some of this challenge relates to geography: the people have to come to the apartments:

 

Real estate officials say that although there are few available apartments in Louisiana, there are many vacancies in apartment buildings across the South, including perhaps 300,000 in Texas alone.

 

“We are wasting money hand over fist because we did not deploy the right policy tools,” said Bruce Katz, a vice president at the Brookings Institution, a liberal research group in Washington. “We could have thousands, if not tens of thousands of families, in stable permanent housing right now. And we would not have to turn to these costly measures, like hotels, motels and cruise ships.”

 

Some housing experts say the Bush administration should follow the approach taken after the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, when displaced residents were given prepaid housing vouchers instead of having to negotiate and pay a lease on their own.

 

As everyone remembers from those early days after graduating college, finding an apartment is a pain in the neck — worse if you’re from out of town, unfamiliar with the neighborhoods, and competing with hundreds if not thousands of folks just like you.  So the idea of having housing authorities or state agencies facilitate placement makes sense:

 

Ms. Andrews, the FEMA spokeswoman, defended the housing policy. “The program is designed to give those who it affects the most the control over their own lives,” she said.

 

There’s a difference between apparent choice and real control. 

  

I don’t feel in control with dark water seeping in through the walls ….

 

Choice can mean control, but only when the consumer is empowered, and the displaced New Orleanians are about as disempowered as it’s possible to be.  Putting money in their hands doesn’t correct that: it’s necessary but not sufficient.

 

Some cities, including Houston and San Antonio, have taken an active role in helping families find housing by creating their own voucher program, identifying vacant units, paying for six-month leases and then turning over the unit to the evacuees. FEMA has promised to reimburse the cities for the housing costs.

 

“You can’t just give people a check and say, ‘Good luck, we will see you,’ ” said San Antonio’s assistant city manager, Christopher J. Brady.  “It would not be a sufficient solution.”

 

Hurricane Katrina has demonstrated that the nation absolutely needs a Cabinet-level department to handle the nation’s housing.

 

Oh, wait.  We already do?

 

“That’s very different!  Never mind …”

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