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34–675 PDF 2007

SOLVING THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING

CRISIS IN THE GULF COAST REGION

POST–KATRINA, PART I

FIELD HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

FEBRUARY 22, 2007

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services

Serial No. 110–5

(

(II)

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

DENNIS MOORE, Kansas 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN MCCARTHY, New York 

JOE BACA, California 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

MELISSA L. BEAN, Illinois 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin, 

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

RON KLEIN, Florida 

TIM MAHONEY, Florida 

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia 

DAN BOREN, Oklahoma 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

DEBORAH PRYCE, Ohio 

MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware 

PETER T. KING, New York 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RON PAUL, Texas 

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

RICK RENZI, Arizona 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

TOM PRICE, Georgia 

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

ADAM PUTNAM, Florida 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota 

PETER J. ROSKAM, Illinois

JEANNE M. ROSLANOWICK, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(III)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY

MAXINE WATERS, California, Chairwoman

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

AL GREEN, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin, 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

PETER T. KING, New York 

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

(IV)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

February 22, 2007 ............................................................................................ 1

Appendix: 

February 22, 2007 ............................................................................................ 83

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

Babers, C. Donald, Board Chairman, Housing Authority of New Orleans ......... 38

Blakely, Edward J., Director of Recovery, City of New Orleans ......................... 36

Blanco, Hon. Kathleen Babineaux, Governor, State of Louisiana ....................... 2

Blom, Dominique G., Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Public Housing 

Investments, Department of Housing and Urban Development ...................... 29

Bradberry, Stephen, Association of Community Organizations for Reform 

Now ....................................................................................................................... 57

Dupuy, Ben, Executive Director, Cypress Cottage Partners ................................ 63

Jamieson, Gil, Deputy Director for Gulf Coast Recovery, Federal Emergency 

Management Agency ............................................................................................ 32

Jefferson, Hon. William J., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Louisiana .......................................................................................................... 8

Johnigan, Donna, tenant ......................................................................................... 62

Kelly, James R., Chief Executive Officer, Catholic Charities .............................. 56

Leger, Walter J., Jr., Chairman, Housing and Development Task Force, Louisiana Recovery Authority ................................................................................... 34

Nagin, Hon. C. Ray, Mayor, City of New Orleans, Louisiana .............................. 13

Paul, Emelda, President, Lafitte Resident Council .............................................. 65

Perry, James H., Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center ................. 54

Reiff, Isabel, Senior Vice President, ICF International, Inc. ............................... 69

Rodi, Mark, President-elect, Louisiana Realtors Association .............................. 73

Taylor, Paul R., Jr., President, SRP Development ............................................... 74

Thomas, Hon. Oliver M.,Jr., President, New Orleans, Louisiana City Council . 15

Washington, Tracie L., Director, NAACP Gulf Coast Advocacy Center .............. 71

West, Dr. Sherece Y., CEO, Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation ............... 59

Williams, Gloria, tenant .......................................................................................... 61

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Blakely, Edward J. ........................................................................................... 84

Blom, Dominique G. ......................................................................................... 90

Bradberry, Stephen .......................................................................................... 95

Dupuy, Ben ....................................................................................................... 101

Jamieson, Gil .................................................................................................... 106

Leger, Walter J., Jr. ......................................................................................... 115

Nagin, Hon. C. Ray .......................................................................................... 149

Reiff, Isabel ....................................................................................................... 159

Rodi, Mark ........................................................................................................ 170

Taylor, Paul R., Jr. ........................................................................................... 177

Washington, Tracie L. ...................................................................................... 180

West, Dr. Sherece Y. ........................................................................................ 191

(1)

SOLVING THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING 

CRISIS IN THE GULF COAST REGION 

POST–KATRINA, PART I 

Thursday, February 22, 2007

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND

COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY, 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, 

Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:10 p.m., in the 

Lawless Memorial Chapel, Dillard University, 2601 Gentilly, New 

Orleans, Louisiana, Hon. Maxine Waters [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Waters, Green, Cleaver, Sires; Biggert, 

and Neugebauer 

Also present: Representative Jefferson. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Ladies and gentlemen, this hearing of the 

Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity will come 

to order. Thank you very, very much. 

Before we start, we would like to call on President Hughes for 

some remarks. President Hughes. 

Ms. HUGHES. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Marvalene Hughes, 

president of Dillard University, and it is indeed a pleasure for us 

to have you, Honorable Congresswoman Maxine Waters, here to 

chair this hearing. 

The Dillard University family considers this to be absolutely an 

appropriate event for us to host and we consider it so because we 

know the devastation that has occurred to many of the residents 

in this area and in New Orleans. 

We join you in wanting to provide the kind of service and housing that they need and we promise you that we will continue to be 

the best citizens that we know how to be in providing educational 

opportunities and in servicing our community. 

And so we thank you so very much for highlighting the needs 

here today and we look forward to the outcomes of this event and 

to participating even after you have gone. 

Thank you very much for coming. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, President Hughes. 

We are delighted to be here at Dillard and we thank you for your 

kindness and for hosting us today. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank all of the Members 

of Congress who are here today. First, I would like to thank Ranking Member Biggert for being here today. Second, I would like to 

2

thank Representative Green, who is with us today, as well as Representatives Neugebauer and Sires. They have all taken time from 

their busy schedules and changed their plans in order to be here. 

Also, Representative Jefferson is here; of course, we are in his district and hometown, so we certainly cannot forget that name. And 

finally, Representative Cleaver just joined us, having had to make 

a lot of changes in his schedule to be here. We are delighted that 

they are all here. 

I am now going to call on Governor Blanco. We thank you for 

coming today. We know that you have a busy schedule and we 

would like you to share with us in any way that you see fit your 

observations, your directions, and your advice about what is happening here, particularly with housing. This is the Subcommittee 

on Housing and Community Opportunity and that is what we will 

be focused on. So welcome, Governor Blanco. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE KATHLEEN BABINEAUX 

BLANCO, GOVERNOR, STATE OF LOUISIANA 

Governor BLANCO. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters, 

and distinguished Members of Congress. We are very pleased that 

you have taken this opportunity and taken the time out of your 

busy lives to join us here at this renowned and respected Dillard 

University, here in the City of New Orleans. 

The immediate recovery of the Gulf Coast region depends on solutions to affordable housing and there is definitely a crisis in trying to bring back housing, affordable and otherwise. So I want to 

thank you for providing a forum to help identify steps that we can 

all take to expedite this recovery. 

I traveled to Washington, D.C., earlier this month and I presented a Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Recovery Agenda to many 

Members of the new Congress. And although it was an unusually 

cold week in Washington, I received a warm welcome in the halls 

of Congress, so I thank you for that. Your hearing here today is 

definitely proof that the 110th Congress is committed to our recovery. 

Today, you are going to hear from a number of experts who are 

well-versed in the details that you may want to talk about. They 

will be well-versed in the program specifics. An example of someone who will testify before you is Mr. Walter Leger; he is a member 

of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. 

So my goal with you today is to provide an overview of the 

State’s actions to expedite the Road Home Program, to discuss our 

rental program and public housing, and to recommend Federal actions. 

Members of this committee are well aware that the full funding 

needed to run Louisiana’s Housing Program was delayed some 6 

months after Mississippi. But we are not here to debate, you know, 

all of the things that went on in the past. For the first 10 months 

after the storms, I fought alongside Congressman Jefferson here to 

secure adequate funding needed to put together a housing program, 

an equitable relief package that we are presenting to the citizens. 

So I want to thank you and I wand to thank the members of this 

committee who voted on securing that funding for us. We are extremely grateful for your actions. 

3

The Road Home Program offers homeowners up to $150,000 to 

repair, rebuild, or sell their homes. With over 200,000 homes and 

rental units destroyed in Louisiana, this is the largest housing program the Nation has ever seen, so the challenge is enormous. Did 

the fact that we did not receive our Federal housing money until 

almost a year after the hurricane delay our progress? Well, I would 

have to be honest and say of course, it did. But nonetheless, our 

focus has to be on solutions that we can do now, and that we need 

to be able to move forward. 

The Road Home Program has received over 109,000 applications; 

more than 78,000 families have received their appointments; nearly 

38,000 families know the amount of their award as of today; and 

over 17,000 families have selected their awards; but as of today, 

only 782 closings have been held, and this is unacceptable. 

It is maddening. I am on the phone every day pushing for solutions. When we have met obstacles at the State level, we have broken through them. 

For example, when mobile home owners were excluded, we found 

a way within Federal regulations to include them. When senior citizens were being penalized for moving away, we removed the penalty. When FEMA and insurance companies refused to release federally-required data, I intervened, and when appraisals for homes 

were grossly under-valued, I forced a change. Too many homeowners disagreed with the pre-storm value of their home. Our contractor was relying on an industry-accepted standard called an 

automated valuation method. This does not work in the City of 

New Orleans. This is a flawed methodology because our neighborhoods here are unique. It is not unusual to find a home worth 

$75,000 sitting next to a far, far more expensive home, in the hundreds of thousands. At my insistence, the contractor is now relying 

on trusted local appraisers and new Federal data to make sure that 

homeowners are treated fairly. As more people are comfortable 

with their pre-storm values, I believe that people will select their 

award options. 

In order to break through the closings bottleneck, I asked the 

contractor to ramp up the resolution team at the back end of the 

process. We believe they did not have enough people hired to do 

this volume of work. I have asked the clerks of court and the recorders of mortgages to extend their hours to do title work. We 

have also implemented a procedure to avoid the necessity of opening secessions on property that would have caused significant 

delays. 

This brings us to today. The company promises us that by the 

end of this month, we will see a rapid increase. I will be satisfied 

when I see the results and I am expecting some positive results. 

I hope they can perform. 

In addition to the homeowner program, we are leveraging Federal housing funds to restore affordable rental housing. Walter 

Leger will discuss this program in detail. I do want you to know 

that we have thousands of applications ready to move forward 

pending approval of a HUD waiver declaring this to be an incentive 

program. I discussed this waiver just yesterday with Secretary 

Jackson. 

4

Forgivable loans will be provided to landlords who own a small 

number of rental units if they keep the rentals at HUD-approved 

rates. We are leveraging Federal housing dollars with Federal tax 

credits to help developers build mixed-income communities. Our 

long-term goal is not to bring back substandard public housing, but 

to transition these units to mixed-income housing. 

However, as a temporary, interim measure, I have asked HUD 

and the Congress to bring back readily rehabilitated public housing 

units. Let us rehab as many as possible to allow immediate occupancy while we are proceeding with the long-term redevelopment 

plan. We must repatriate our citizens and this means affordable 

housing now, as quickly as we can do it. 

In closing, there are several steps the Federal Government can 

take to speed up our housing recovery. 

First, get rid of the red tape. Chairwoman Waters, thank you, 

and Chairman Frank, for agreeing to work with us to remove the 

obstacles holding up our hazard mitigation funding. Just this week, 

FEMA again claimed legal impediments to freeing up this $1.2 billion intended for the Road Home Program. The White House required Louisiana to use hazard mitigation funding as a part of our 

Road Home Program. Red tape is keeping us from being able to 

reach it. Please allow a FEMA waiver or a transfer of these funds 

to HUD dollars. 

Second, exempt the Road Home awards from Federal tax penalties so homeowners can use the grants as they are intended, to 

rebuild. We do not want our people taxed on this money. 

Third, extend the placed-in-service deadline for the Go-Zone tax 

credits. This will facilitate the development of affordable rental 

housing. 

Finally, I would like to thank Majority Whip Jim Clyburn for the 

legislation he introduced to authorize 100 percent Federal cost 

share. This will cut through the paperwork and financial setbacks 

slowing down our recovery. 

I know you are also working to reform the Stafford Act, and I 

thank you for that. And I also know that you are looking at potential Federal insurance solutions, because the insurance crisis will 

be the second crisis after the storm, if we do not have something 

sensible. 

This is just the beginning agenda of housing-related items that 

we deal with. 

I want to thank you for your assistance and I look forward to 

working with you to rebuild housing along the Gulf Coast. It is an 

investment that will more than pay off for this country. And we 

thank you for the fact that you are here, the fact that you care 

enough, and the fact that you are willing to work with us to try 

to make sense out of a situation that makes no sense to any of the 

citizens here experiencing it. Thank you so much. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Governor Blanco. 

Thank you. We are not going to keep you. We know that you have 

a very busy schedule and you advised us of that prior to coming. 

I would simply like to ask you whether you have set some goals 

for your expectations for the Road Home Program? How many completions would you like to have by what time, what would you consider progress and success? And if you do not get it, would you be 

5

willing to try and back out of that contract and find another way 

by which to implement the program? 

Governor BLANCO. Yes, we have goals. We expect by the end of 

this month, which is coming to an end very quickly, to see more 

than 2,300 completed applications, where people have their money. 

Next month, we expect 7,000 more, and in the ensuing months, we 

expect to see no less than 10,000 per month. That is what we are 

asking of the company. We have been told for months now that 

once it gets into the pipeline, it will be rushing through the pipeline. We want to see it rushing through the pipeline. 

If this cannot happen or does not happen, we are certainly going 

to take measures to put in a new operation. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right. Well, thank you very much, Governor Blanco. We appreciate you being here today, we look forward 

to working with you, and we, too, intend that the Road Home Program, which is Federal CDBG money, be spent in the way that we 

intended it to be spent. We would like to see that application process speeded up and we would like to see the applications completed. We are also concerned about the fact that even though the 

program could use up to $150,000 per applicant, it appears that the 

rules are such that nobody has received $150,000. 

We are going to talk in detail with the company that is responsible for the contract, and we would like for you also to keep a close 

eye on that, because we think that the program has been designed 

in such a way that it is so focused on trying to keep down fraud 

or reduce fraud, and that it is not allowing it to move as fast as 

it possibly can. 

I know, because you and I have talked about some other issues 

that you are paying attention to, that we are concerned about not 

only some of those things that you have mentioned that we will 

correct in the Federal Government, but also everything from the 

appraisals and how they are being done, to the fact that there are 

applications that are stuck because they cannot clear title. We 

think there are some creative ways to do that and so we are looking forward in a short period of time to you telling us whether or 

not these goals are being met, what you intend to do about it, and 

how we can straighten it all out. 

Governor BLANCO. Thank you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Governor BLANCO. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. 

Chairwoman WATERS. We would like to thank you very, very 

much, Governor, and we will stay in touch with you. 

Governor BLANCO. I appreciate it. Thank you again for being 

here, and we appreciate your time. 

Chairwoman WATERS. At this time, I would like to call the 

Mayor of the City of New Orleans, Mayor Nagin, and the president 

of the City Council, Mr. Thomas. Thank you for being here with us 

today. 

If I could get your attention. While the panel is being seated 

there, I will recognize myself for an opening statement and then I 

will recognize the other members for opening statements. 

First of all, again, we would like to thank President Hughes, and 

Dillard University, for their hospitality and for allowing us to be 

here today. 

6

As the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, I have the responsibility to provide leadership 

in the development of housing policy in America. 

The Gulf Coast was devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita 

with a severe loss of homes, rental properties, and public housing. 

Thousands of Americans have been displaced and 17 months later 

are living in trailers, sharing space with family members and 

friends and strangers, both in the Gulf Coast region and, still, in 

cities and towns all over America. There is indeed a housing crisis 

here in New Orleans and in the Gulf Coast. 

Whether it is public housing, rental housing, or homes that they 

own, people are desperate to return, to rebuild their lives. However, there is very little, if any, affordable housing to return to. 

Some public housing that had not been adequately maintained for 

years received additional damage. Also, we have been told that the 

infrastructure in the City is still inadequate to support all the 

housing that is needed. Homeowners who want to rebuild are being 

asked to do practically the impossible through the Road Home Program. Many homeowners have lost everything and have yet to receive a dime from the State of Louisiana for damaged or lost 

homes, although the funds for rebuilding their homes is being financed through Federal Community Development Block Grant Program funds that the Congress appropriated last year, $16.7 million 

in CDBG funds with $10.4 billion—I am sorry, $16.7 billion with 

CDBG funds with $10.4 billion to Louisiana. Unfortunately, much 

of the response of the Federal Government to the housing needs in 

the Gulf region can be best described as temporary. 

FEMA received the major portion of funds that were contained 

in two appropriations bills for the initial emergency response and 

repair, approximately $62.3 billion. And on June 15, 2006, Congress gave FEMA an additional $6 billion. We now question whether FEMA was the correct agency to address housing issues related 

to this disaster. 

The House passed legislation last year which would have removed responsibility for housing from FEMA and transferred it to 

HUD. As you know, FEMA was providing rental assistance to 

700,000 households. Currently, 33,000 households are receiving 

rental assistance. So does HUD have the infrastructure to better 

serve the housing needs of these 33,000 households? FEMA just recently extended housing assistance to households displaced by 

Katrina through February 2008. 

Part of the housing crisis in the Gulf region is linked to the state 

of public housing. This is an area that we are going to pay an awful 

lot of attention to and so today, we made a tour in the City and 

I think I can remember all of the places we stopped. We were at 

Iberville, Lafitte, C.J. Peete, and St. Bernard. We went through the 

Desiree redevelopment and we were in the 9th and the Lower 9th, 

and we were particularly paying attention to public housing because there are a lot of things to be resolved. There is a lawsuit 

that has been filed against HUD. There are people who are living 

in Dallas and Houston and other places who want to come home. 

They are desperate to come home. Some of these residents have 

said to us, as they have traveled to Washington, D.C. to talk with 

us, that they had every expectation that the units would be rehaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
7

bilitated and they would be returned to the units, only to find out 

that there is a proposal to dismantle all of these public housing 

units. 

And so, one of the things we must do in our work is to determine 

whether or not units should be rehabbed, whether or not they are 

habitable units, whether or not HUD has a responsibility because 

of the lease agreements to return people to the homes that they 

had a lease on, and we need to look at some of the HUD policies 

where there were units that were scheduled for development preKatrina that sat boarded up for years, or whether or not there 

should be wholesale dismantlement or whether or not there should 

be a moratorium or indeed whether or not there should be more 

planning between HUD, the City, and the residents to talk about 

the future of public housing. 

So these are some of the issues that we are concerned with. And 

you heard the testimony of the Governor and a general kind of 

statement that I shared with her about some of our concerns about 

the Road Home Program. We certainly intend to do everything that 

we can to straighten out that program so that implementation is 

faster and that people receive at least the subsidies that they deserve in order to get their homes started again, to start rebuilding, 

and to get back into some kind of regular form of life. 

With that, I thank you very much, and I am going to then go to 

our ranking member, the Honorable Judy Biggert. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. I 

want to thank you for putting together this afternoon’s hearing to 

focus on the housing needs of the Gulf Coast region. I would also 

like to thank you and HUD for arranging our visit to many of the 

devastated sites around the City so that we can better understand 

the task at hand and how we can best assist in this effort. 

I would like to also recognize and welcome today’s witnesses; my 

colleagues from the House; local, State, and Federal officials; the 

President and administration of Dillard University; volunteers and 

businessmen and businesswomen; and, most importantly, the residents of this wonderful City. Thank you for being here today to testify, for showing us your neighborhoods and homes, for sharing 

with us your difficulties in rebuilding, and for revealing to us your 

hopes for the future of New Orleans. 

By all accounts, to call Katrina a hurricane is an understatement; it was the most destructive and costly natural disaster in 

United States history. It led to the evacuation of a major city and 

the surrounding areas and it destroyed housing and infrastructure 

on an unprecedented scale. 

During the 109th Congress—that was last year and the year before—the Financial Services Committee was at the forefront of the 

hurricane relief efforts with three hearings and four briefings, with 

approximately 80 witnesses participating. In the months following 

the disaster, the committee shepherded needed relief legislation to 

the House Floor, helping not only families in the immediate hurricane-ravaged areas, but also those who suffered in the aftermath 

due to flooding. 

The task of recovery and rebuilding in this area continues to be 

a monumental one. We are more than 18 months removed from 

Hurricane Katrina, yet the challenges seem unending. To many of 

8

those affected, the recovery has seemed slow and uneven. Rebuilding has been hindered by the severity of the damage, the need to 

limit future flooding damage, and the need to coordinate the recovery among many levels of government. There are still too many 

people who are without permanent housing, jobs, and infrastructure. 

How best to go about the reconstruction of the region and the 

problems facing communities, public housing authorities, renters, 

homeowners, and the mortgage and financial services industry are 

certainly all issues that must be addressed. 

One thing is certain; disasters will continue to happen. We need 

only to look at the devastating tornado that went through New Orleans recently and the recent storms in Florida as reminders. 

We, in Congress, need to learn from our mistakes in the Gulf Coast. We must ask the difficult questions about how the $110 billion has been spent in these localities. Should it have been spent 

in a more efficient way and cost-effective manner? What accountability should there be? What Federal organization should be in 

charge of the national government’s response and what should be 

done about uninsured losses? These are difficult questions, but we 

must figure out how to get it right. 

As the new ranking minority member on the Financial Services 

Subcommittee on Housing, I certainly have an interest in this. 

Clearly, the availability of affordable housing is critical to the overall recovery after such a devastating storm. If there is no housing, 

there are no businesses; if there are no businesses, there are no 

jobs; and without jobs and businesses, residents will fail to return 

and provide the economic base that will spur the economy for the 

New Orleans metropolitan region. 

I hope that today’s hearing will shed light on specific issues that 

Congress should consider in order to better plan for future disasters and how to improve the capability of all levels of government 

to respond to disasters effectively. 

Again, I thank the chairwoman for this important hearing and 

I yield back. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Members, without objection, I would like to call on the Representative from this district. He does not serve on this committee, 

but we certainly want to afford him the opportunity to address us 

and give us his advice and his thinking on this. 

I would like to recognize Mr. Jefferson for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters. I want to express how extraordinarily lucky I think we all are in this country 

to have at a time like this—when we need so much in our City, 

particularly in the housing area—Maxine Waters chairing this important committee at this critical time. 

I prevailed on her early after the elections in November to, 

among the first things she would do as she assumed her chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Housing, come to New Orleans this 

time, not to visit in a normal way as we have before. We have all 

9

brought many Members of Congress down here, we have traipsed 

around and looked at things and all of that was wonderful and 

good and necessary. But this is to be a different visit. This one is 

to come away with something and to get something done about the 

problem. We are tired of talking and looking and seeing. We want 

to have some bills passed in Congress that are going to bring relief 

to our folks and bring our people home. 

That is what this committee is committed to do under her leadership, and I want to thank all the members who have taken the 

time to come to our district, to our City. I want to welcome you all 

in the warmest way. 

I want to just state as a predicate two things. The first is that 

Dr. Hughes, thank you very much—before I say that—for hosting 

this event at this wonderful, historic university. Dillard is a wonderful part of our community and you give so much to us and we 

thank you. This is another example of what Dillard does for New 

Orleans and for the region. 

I want to say two predicate things. First of all, it is important 

for this committee to remember, and for the Congress to remember, 

that the flooding of the City of New Orleans was not the result of 

a natural disaster. 

It was the result of the failure of our Federal Government, particularly the Army Corps of Engineers, to do its job. And it was because of its negligence in designing, constructing, and maintaining 

our levees that our City drowned. So that gives the Federal Government a special responsibility. It is more than a response to a 

humanitarian disaster, it is a response to a Federal Government 

responsibility for not having done its job that, I think, brings us 

here. So that is an important thing to note. The second thing is this—the second thing is that while $110 billion is a lot of money, it is important to understand how the money 

has been allocated, first of all. And second of all, to what the current money has been applied. Of the $110 billion, about $59 billion 

was allocated for Louisiana’s purposes. Of that, $18 billion or so 

was spent in the early stages of rescue and maintaining people in 

different places and FEMA workers coming here and all the other 

things. $14 billion of it was spent to shore up the flood insurance 

program that was not adequately capitalized to meet the needs of 

people who had flood insurance. That leaves about $26 billion for 

everything else to be done—for the homeowners program, which is 

the $10 billion just mentioned earlier, and the rest of it for public 

infrastructure for the rebuilding of police and fire stations and all 

the rest of those things. And the City itself—that is for all of Louisiana. The City itself has assessed that it needs about $14 billion 

for its own infrastructure needs, so if the City just applied it to 

New Orleans, it would not be enough. 

But here is what I really want to make the point about. If the 

figure for Mississippi is right, Mississippi got $5 billion out of the 

$16 billion. If it is right, then Louisiana’s figure is necessarily 

wrong, because Louisiana suffered 4 to 5 times the damage that 

Mississippi did and got twice the money. 

And so while I would agree with the committee observation on 

this, that the Road Home Program is not working right even with 

the money we have, it is important that we think about this in 

10

larger terms and somebody needs to figure out exactly what is 

needed to bring back this City as it should be brought back, because of what I said as a predicate—the Federal Government failed 

in its responsibility to keep us whole. 

So with that, I will let the others bring the details. I want to welcome our Mayor and the president of our City Council, and to 

thank them for appearing here. All of our local officials who are 

here, glad to see you here and thank you for the work you are 

doing to bring back our City. And for the people out here, most importantly who want to come back home, we are here to make sure 

that this can happen for you and happen for you soon. That is our 

responsibility and that is our job. 

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. 

We will now hear from the gentleman from Texas, Congressman 

Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I especially 

thank you for bringing this hearing to Louisiana. I have been here 

with you before and while you were not the chairwoman, I thought 

you were. 

And I want you to know, friends, that I am honored to be in New 

Orleans because I was born in New Orleans. I am a Charity baby, 

and now I represent the 9th Congressional District in Houston, 

Texas. 

This problem that we are facing, and it is a problem, it is a huge 

problem, is much larger than we have contemplated in some quarters, because we have approximately 20,000 persons in my district 

in Houston, Texas, many of whom still want to come home. 

And I want to do all that I can to make sure every person has 

an opportunity to come home. Whether you were born into riches, 

or whether you inherited a legacy of poverty, I think you should 

have the opportunity to come home. 

To do this, I am honored to be here with the chairwoman so that 

we can find out about the housing situation. We hear a lot of rumors, and we want to see for ourselves what the situation is. To 

do this, we have to hear not only from the persons who are going 

to be before us today, but we have also talked to people in the 

housing projects. And we have talked to people with ACORN, and 

we are going to talk to people who want to talk to us, so that we 

can get a clear vision of what is going on. 

Finally, let me say this, because time is of the essence and this 

is important—my desire is that we rebuild those levees, not to Category 3 standards, but to Category 5. 

I want businesses to feel comfortable here, but I want people who 

live here to feel equally as comfortable. 

My desire is that we work together—Federal, State, and municipality—to make sure that every dollar that we can get to the people will get to the people. We in this country had another catastrophe—9/11. It was horrible. And we did the right thing. We took 

care of a good many people and we gave cash to people. I want to 

make sure that we treat the people in New Orleans equally as well 

as we treated the people in New York. 

And I say this with love in my heart for the people who suffered 

and I believe that they were treated fairly and I want to do more 

11

for the people in New York, but I just want to make sure that the 

people in New Orleans are treated with the kind of compassion 

that they richly deserve. 

Madam Chairwoman, I thank you again for your dynamic leadership and I am honored to serve under you. 

For edification purposes, history has been made in Congress, and 

we need to talk about it sometimes, I think. This is the very first 

African-American to chair the Housing Subcommittee in the U.S. 

Congress. And I think that means something to people. It ought to 

mean something to you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Next, we will hear from a gentleman who paid a lot of attention 

this morning on the tour, and asked a lot of questions, the gentleman from Texas, Congressman Neugebauer. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters, and thank 

all of you for being here. I think this speaks volumes of your interest in your community. Last evening, I arrived in New Orleans and 

I was in the cab, and you know, you can find out a lot about a city 

just talking to the cab drivers, right? I think he recognized my 

voice, maybe I talk a little bit different than he did, I do not know, 

but he said you must be from Texas. I said yes, I am. And he said 

well, I spent 3 weeks in Texas after Katrina, and I just want to 

thank you on behalf of my family. He said, I have three children 

and my wife and we were over in Texas. And I said you do not 

have to thank us, because that is what neighbors are for, right? 

This was a disaster in historic proportions and we hope it is the 

only one of this proportion that this Nation will have to endure. 

And America has responded with historic resources, over $100 billion has been put forward and authorized for this effort. 

New Orleans has a long history. In just a few years, you are 

going to celebrate your 300th birthday. This is a community that 

has evolved over almost 290 years and it has suffered a major 

blow. But looking out across this audience, I know it is not a blow 

that you cannot come back from, but it is going to take time. You 

did not get to be the great city that you are overnight, and as some 

have said, Rome was not built in a day and neither was New Orleans built in a day, and it is going to take time. 

But you know what? It is time to get started. And as we get 

started, we have to make sure that we have the best plan in place. 

And I know your leaders have been working on that planning process. We need to make sure that we have a plan that will succeed, 

because we do not want to go down a road of failure for the people 

of New Orleans. You deserve a plan that will succeed and we are 

hopeful that plan is evolving and will be in place. 

And the second piece of that is when you say we are going to get 

started, is now that we have a plan or we finish up our plan, we 

have to make sure that it is a plan that we execute in the appropriate way. 

The American people have responded in a large way, putting for- ward $100 million of their hard-earned tax dollars to make sure 

that New Orleans and the communities along the coast are able to 

rebuild and families restored. We owe them a stewardship to make 

sure that the plan is good, that the people are in place to make the 

plan work, and that the plan, in the long term makes sense, not 

12

only for you, but makes sense for the American people, because 

that is what makes America great. Because as some of us go, all 

of us go. 

I look forward to spending the next few days with your leadership listening. We have already had a wonderful tour of this City 

today. I have seen the devastation. This is my second trip back to 

the region and I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today 

to begin to enlighten this committee on what is the plan, how we 

intend to implement it, and what are some of the stumbling blocks 

that are in the way that are keeping us from getting started. 

And so thank you for being here, and thank you, Chairwoman 

Waters, for bringing this very important hearing to the City of New 

Orleans, and I look forward to our time here. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Next, we will hear from the gentleman from Missouri, Representative Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

I do not have much of an opening statement, I would like to express appreciation to you for your leadership and your relentless 

push for the Federal Government to address the problems of what 

has been the greatest national disaster in the history of this republic. 

I would also like to say, Madam Chairwoman, that I am embarrassed that the United States of America, the world’s only super 

power, has been woefully inept in dealing with this problem. And 

I feel as if the government has let people down. 

I want to thank my hometown corporation, Black & Beach, representatives, they have come down and volunteered to work here 

in New Orleans. After all is said and done, there has been more 

said than done, and so I have nothing else to say. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

And now we will hear from the gentleman from New Jersey, Representative Sires. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I just want to say 

thank you for inviting me and thank you for your leadership. 

This is my first time in New Orleans ever. My district lies in 

New Jersey, across from the World Trade Center, and I saw that 

devastation; I lived it. I saw the plume of smoke all those weeks 

burning. And as I rode around this morning, I could not believe the 

devastation here. I had seen it on television, but until you see it 

for yourself—and I am sure that you have lived it—all I can tell 

you is that I am here to learn, I am here to work with the chairperson and the other Members of Congress, I am here to get all the 

facts and whatever I can do to help you with this horrible situation 

that you have here in New Orleans, I am here to help you. 

So thank you very much for having me here. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. 

Without objection, all members’ opening statements will be made 

a part of the record. 

Before I call on the Honorable Mayor, I would just like thank 

ACORN for the work that they did in helping to build two new 

houses that we had an opportunity to share in the ceremony at this 

morning. The Members of Congress were asked to present the keys 

to the residents who will be occupying those homes. So I would like 

13

to thank you, ACORN, and all of the groups that work with 

ACORN. You give us hope, you give us inspiration. Thank you very 

much. 

There are some legislators in the room. I recognize one whom I 

have worked with for many years, Senator Bajoie. Senator 

Sheppard is also in the room, and Mr. Danatus King, the local 

president of the NAACP. 

Thank you very much. With that, the Chair will now recognize 

our first panel and start with the Mayor of the great City of New 

Orleans for a 5-minute statement. 

Mayor Nagin. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE C. RAY NAGIN, MAYOR, CITY 

OF NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA 

Mayor NAGIN. I am C. Ray Nagin, Mayor of the City of New Orleans, one of America’s most beloved and culturally distinctive cities, and a city which is facing the challenge of recovery and rebuilding after the worst disaster to occur in United States of America. 

Chairwoman Waters, thank you for your leadership on this particular issue. Distinguished members and guests of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, I want to personally thank you for coming to New Orleans. 

You know, there is lots of information that is out there, lots of 

news reports. It is probably 50 percent right. It is not until you 

come to this City and actually see and experience somewhat what 

we are going through on a day-to-day basis that you can surely understand this. 

I hear the audience. There is lots of frustration out there and it 

is understandable. 

[Audience reaction] 

Mayor NAGIN. But I am going to— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Quiet it down for a moment. Mr. Mayor, 

I am so enthused about being here and I know that you are too, 

but we can really make better use of our time if we just kind of 

hold it down and let’s listen to the Mayor and our other witnesses. 

And I thank you very much. 

Mayor NAGIN. Madam Chairwoman, I am going to shoot straight 

with you. You know me, I have always done that. I believe in the 

spirit of truth. It prevails all the time, so I am going to do what 

I normally do. 

Let me first thank the American people, because there are lots 

of people around the country who have helped us out tremendously. 

As I start my testimony, I am not going to go over all my notes, 

but I am just going to cover a couple of the highlights. Pre-Katrina, 

this City had a population of 455,000 people, we had $3 billion 

worth of construction activity, 215,000 housing units, and a viable 

and growing central business district. We were setting back-to-back 

records relating to tourism; we topped off at about 10.1 million 

tourists in 2004, and we had something going on that was unique 

in this country. We were creating Hollywood South where we had 

lots of multimillion dollar films being filmed in our City. The economic landscape of this City was definitely improving prior to 

Katrina. We saw thousands of people move off the poverty rolls and 

14

we were starting to see our business community really start to pick 

up prior to Katrina. 

Then Katrina hit. And like Congressman Jefferson said, we in 

New Orleans did not do anything other than we normally do. We 

just live and breathe and work and try and have a good time and 

raise our children in this City. Then, the levees broke. The levees 

broke and all hell followed it. And it is not necessarily what happened when the levees broke, it is what is happening or has happened after the levees broke that is the story. 

Your committee deals with housing. We have talked a lot about 

the Road Home and I am going to touch upon that in a minute. 

But you need to understand that in this City, 54 percent of the people were renting. And right after Katrina happened, the rental 

stock went away for the most part, and when you have a supply 

and demand issue, where you do not have enough supply, demand 

goes up high, and prices follow it. 

So we are in a crisis at the moment. It is getting a little bit better but it is not much better than it was 16 to 17 months ago. Everything was impacted after Katrina. Schools, hospitals, infrastructure. You name it, it was impacted. You need to understand the 

devastation as far as the amount of water that sat in our City for 

over a month. It represented 480 billion pounds of water that totally devastated this City. Portions of our City literally collapsed 

under the weight of this water. Entire areas were pushed even further below sea level and hundreds of miles of underground utilities 

were damaged. 

We have patched it up. Every area of this City can get utilities, 

but it is with bubble gum and tape that that system is put together 

right now. We have not been able to see all the dollars that are 

promises via the Stafford Act to repair our public facilities. 

Let me move into what is the crux of this issue. Why, in America, would we be struggling 18 months later? 

You know, I have lived and breathed this 24 hours a day for the 

past 18 months and in my humble opinion, the slow pace and awkward bureaucratic regulations of how these Federal funds are flowing present a critical challenge to the recovery at the local level. 

All the dollars that you have been talking about, $110 billion, very 

little, almost none of it, has gotten to the local level, and that is 

the crux of the issue. 

If I had known in all my lobbying trips when I went to Washington, that I would have to sit here and borrow money to avoid 

bankruptcy in a great American city, I would have lobbied totally 

differently. But the money flows through the Federal system to the 

State system, and we are still waiting. And the money is not in 

New Orleans as we speak; it is a shame. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Mayor, could you wrap up your testimony? We do have it in writing and it will be an official part of 

the record. 

Mayor NAGIN. I will wrap it up, ma’am. 

Public housing, ladies and gentlemen. I have been very consistent in my position about public housing. I have gone in public 

housing units to inspect them after the event, I have talked and 

met with Secretary Jackson and his staff. I have been very consistent. Every citizen who was in public housing prior to Katrina 

15

deserves the right to move back into this City in a better unit than 

they had before. 

According to the Secretary and his staff, at least 60 percent of 

the public housing residents want to come back to the City of New 

Orleans. That means we need about 3,000 units immediately. All 

right, they have delivered 1,000 or 1,200 units and about another 

1,000 Section 8 certificates. So we are short, and that is what is 

causing all the stress that you are hearing behind me today. We 

need to ensure that as we move forward, there is a phased redevelopment of public housing, that we upgrade all the units and whatever units are available to be repopulated are immediately put 

back on line. 

[The prepared statement of Mayor Nagin can be found on page 

149 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. 

The Chair now recognizes Mr. Thomas, president of the City 

Council, for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE OLIVER M. THOMAS, JR., 

PRESIDENT, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA CITY COUNCIL 

Mr. THOMAS. First of all, let me thank President Hughes and the 

Dillard family. Let me also thank the person whom I call ‘‘Super 

Maxine’’, you are doing what you have always done for years, and 

that is fighting for the oppressed or depressed, whether it is in 

your district in L.A., or anywhere around the country. Let me 

thank our Congressman Jefferson for helping host this much needed hearing. Also, let me thank the other members of this panel. You know, let me say that we appreciate the $110 billion that 

have been committed to this region. We appreciate that even 

though every expert around the world says we have a $200- to 

$300 billion problem—we appreciate that. We appreciate the $110 

billion even though we provide 25 percent of the Nation with its 

oil and gas to the tune of trillions—we appreciate the $110 billion. 

We appreciate any and everything that people—we are the greatest survivors in the history of the world. In New Orleans, we are 

used to being messed over. 

And so we appreciate any and everything, we appreciate you, and 

we appreciate this committee. We thank you all for holding this 

hearing. I am going to hurry up and get through my remarks because my remarks are probably less important than the solutions 

that we are going to have to find. 

There is a housing crisis in New Orleans. This is beyond dispute. 

There is an affordable housing crisis in New Orleans; this, too, is 

beyond dispute. By best estimates of professionals and statistical 

analysts from all over the world, we had 188,000 units occupied before Katrina; 124,999 of those units had at least 2 feet of floodwater. By FEMA’s own estimates, 54.91 percent of all housing 

units in New Orleans received 75 percent to 100 percent damage. 

But numbers tend to be meaningless, particularly when you have 

heard as many different versions as we have heard down here—

and we have heard a lot. But let me say it the way we say it down 

here—if you did not lose your house, your mama probably lost hers. 

If your sister did not lose her house, then your brother probably 

lost his. And if you are a family struggling to get by, working poor 

16

by no fault of your own, the chances that you lived in the unaffected areas were remote, and the chances that your house is gone 

are almost implausibly high. 

There is a housing crisis in New Orleans and affordability is the 

key. If you would just think rationally about our situation—and 

that has been difficult for people all over, to think rationally, and 

we understand that—you would realize that every step that we 

have taken has been frustrated, the Mayor, the City Council, every 

step we have taken has been frustrated by the fact that we cannot 

bring our family members home, our friends back home. So you 

cannot separate us from everybody else. Some people may try, but 

we love our family members and we love our friends too. 

Businesses cannot hire employees who cannot afford an apartment. Schools cannot hire teachers who cannot find a house. And 

customers cannot shop in neighborhoods where no one can come 

home. 

We need affordable housing and we need it now. I am sure you are all aware of the Road Home Program, $7.5 billion designated 

to help homeowners repair their property. We heard the Governor, 

she is trying to step up and speed up that program. Well, if you 

do the math, less than 5.58 percent of the people have received assistance now. Less than three-quarters of one percent of applicants 

have received funds to rebuild their homes. And that just covers 

homeowners, not renters. Some of us wonder if we would have been 

better off waiting on the Second Coming. But what we have is what 

we have. 

In fairness, the Road Home Program has recently launched their 

rental assistance program which is designed to help rental property 

owners and their properties and bring them back into commerce. 

If it works, it will help. I am an optimist by nature, so I am always 

hopeful. But I am a politician by profession and so right now I am 

skeptical about everything. 

My final point, and I promise to be brief, is that we have thousands of units of public housing that are lying dormant. Some are 

damaged but some can be repaired. We have already received an 

agreement from HUD for rolling reconstruction rather than mass 

tear-downs that were initially proposed. 

And let me say there is another thing that HUD can do. We have 

qualified, competent professionals who live and work in this City. 

They do not have to keep bringing in these multimillion dollar professions from outside the City to keep telling competent professionals how incompetent we are when they have been doing a good 

job for years. 

Every step we make is a step in the right direction. Every effort 

to help is such a step. But now, having labeled all of the problems, 

hopefully we can work toward a solution and a common goal where 

we can bring all of New Orleans back. 

And Madam Chairwoman, as I close, let me use this song that 

is the Women’s Anthem right now, to tell you how we feel. We feel 

like the guy in the Beyonce song, ‘‘To the left, to the left.’’ 

All of our stuff is in a little box to the left. All that other stuff 

in the closet, all those oil and gas reserves, all of those trillions of 

dollars of taxpayer dollars we have donated over the years—I am 

a little boy who lived in a shelter after Hurricane Betsy, whose 

17

family lost everything. But we still, ‘‘to the left, to the left.’’ And 

then to cap it off, even when we get frustrated, you can keep talking that stuff, that’s fine, but they tell us keep walking and talking 

at the same time. 

We ain’t walking no more. It is time for everybody to stand up 

and listen to us. We do not want to be, ‘‘to the left, to the left’’ or 

‘‘to the right to the right’’, we want to be in the middle, in the middle. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right, okay. 

Thank you. If you will allow us now to raise some questions of 

our witnesses. I will recognize myself for 5 minutes, and let me 

start with the Mayor, if I may. 

Thank you again, Mr. Mayor, for being here and for sharing with 

us your honest opinion and your thoughts about everything. 

Obviously, the Road Home Program is a problem, and I do not 

think that you have any oversight or authority in dealing with this 

program, that the CDBG money did not come to the City. 

Mayor NAGIN. Right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. It ended up in the State, and I suppose it 

was organized out of the Governor’s Office. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And now having said that, and having 

watched the program at work, or not at work, what specific recommendations do you have to make it a more viable program? 

What would you do, based on your observations, that would move 

this program? 

Mayor NAGIN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

You know, back in February, after the event happened, I got all 

of the parish presidents together and we made a presentation to 

the State about a program that is similar to Road Home. 

To cut it short, there are a couple of things I need to—the Road 

Home Program in its current format will not work. I do not care 

what they do with that program right now, it is overwhelmed, 

undermanned, and technically flawed. 

It is technically flawed because they are starting with preKatrina values and that has nothing to do with today’s environment. They should start with replacement cost and then process 

from that point. That is the first problem. 

The second problem is they tried to start a big organization from 

scratch with this company called ICF. You just cannot do it, 

Madam Chairwoman. 

We recommended back February last year for them to use the financial institutions in the community to process these loans. 

I have taken $11 million of the City’s money and we really probably should have used, or could have used it in other ways, we leveraged it 5 times and we put together what we call a Fast Track 

Program. We have launched that, it has been in existence now 

about 3 weeks and we have already—we are pretty close to capacity on it. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What does the Fast Track Program do? 

Mayor NAGIN. It is a loan program, it is a no-interest loan pro- gram that is designed to give people money, up to $50,000, in anticipation of the Road Home grant. So if you are waiting for it, this 

is front money. 

18

Chairwoman WATERS. Well, excuse me, because I understand 

that in the Road Home Program, they deduct everything that someone has received, including insurance money, money from SBA. 

Mayor NAGIN. They do. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Now does that mean that they are going 

to deduct the loan money from the Fast Track Program when 

they— 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes, they will. This is designed to get people 

money who are waiting on their Road Home check. And then once 

they get their check, they are required to reimburse the fund so we 

can replenish it. We can only help 1,000 families at a time. So that 

is a program we have. 

But the other solution that I would suggest to you, is let us carve 

New Orleans out. Let us take New Orleans, all the people who 

have registered for the Road Home Program, whichever status 

phase they are in, and let us administer the program with the 

banking institutions and let us change the formula to start with replacement value. And I think we can get it done for you pretty 

quickly. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Honorable Oliver Thomas, you mentioned that you support residents being able to return to public housing that has been rehabilitated so that they can get back home. And you sand that HUD had 

talked with you about some kind of phased redevelopment. 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What I understand, having talked with 

many of the residents and some of the activists around the country 

is that people are fearful of dismantling public housing for several 

reasons. One is that many people think they will never get back 

in and they point to the Desiree project that took 10 years to get 

started and many people did not get back in. Also, they say that 

once you do the redevelopment, most of the configurations are such 

that you will never replace the number of units for public housing 

in these mixed use developments. 

That, as with the Hope VI Project with mixed use, you have 

homeownership, you have market rates, and you have two-thirds 

less in public housing, and they are afraid of that. 

And then the other thing that they say is that in New Orleans, 

there was a tremendous waiting list for housing, even though there 

was boarded-up housing. 

Have you heard these kinds of complaints? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, I have. But Madam Congresswoman, I think 

one of the answers—potentially one of the solutions to that is you 

place people while you are doing redevelopment or while you are 

working on new plans to make them better. You know, people have 

experienced that while they are waiting on a new unit, they do not 

get a unit. But if people are placed and people are in affordable 

housing while they are waiting on improved housing, then that is 

a solution to that. Not to have them wait while you say I promise 

you a unit, but to give them a unit while we are improving all of 

the housing stock in the City of New Orleans. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So you are talking about one-for-one replacement. 

Mr. THOMAS. Absolutely. 

19

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. 

Mr. THOMAS. Look, if we have an opportunity—and I wrote these 

down because, you know, we all come from different planets on this 

issue. Why can we not have better housing in New Orleans? Why 

can we not have better public housing in New Orleans? Why can 

we not have training? Why can we not have day care? Why can we 

not have more homeownership? Why can we not have more homeownership programs? Why can we not, even after Katrina, we hope 

for and pray for a better place than we had before? Why can we 

not? 

Chairwoman WATERS. Was the City involved in the HUD plans 

for redevelopment? 

Mr. THOMAS. I called a special hearing, the day after HUD released their plan on national television, I called a special hearing 

to bring them before Mr. Davis and his group before the City Council when they announced mass demolition, and said that was not 

going to happen. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. 

Mr. THOMAS. I also called for a commission on public housing. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, all right. 

Thank you very much. And now I will turn to Congresswoman 

Biggert. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, very much. 

Mayor Nagin, it sounds to me like you are not a big fan of bureaucracy, from your testimony. 

Mayor NAGIN. Right. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. And I am not a big fan of it either. Could you tell 

us, is it the bureaucracy of the Federal Government or the State 

government that seems to be standing in the way of New Orleans’ 

plan for rebuilding? Could you give me some specifics? 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. I think it is two-fold. It is two bureaucracies 

that are clashing right now. And as soon as we get the money or 

approvals from the Federal level, we have to go through pre-audits 

and post-audits before the money starts to flow from the State. 

In addition to that, we have a local law that basically says until 

we have the money in the bank, we cannot let the contract. And 

based upon the Stafford Act, everything that we do for infrastructure redevelopment is a reimbursement program. And we basically 

do not have the funds in the bank to start the process. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. When you are working out your plans and working with HUD and working with the State government, do you all 

sit down and discuss this? Or is this just kind of a— 

Mayor NAGIN. I have sat in so many meetings, Congresswoman, 

you know, you name it, we have done it. We make a little progress 

and then we go backwards. It is really a two step dance. 

To me, the solution is to try and get as many dollars as close to 

the people as possible. You know, I have been in office now a little 

over 41⁄2 years. I have had no major scandals, no scandals at all. 

We know how to handle the money, we can stretch it, and we can 

do a good job and get our citizens back and prove to the Nation 

that we can do this. 

Mr. THOMAS. Congresswoman, that is a good question. Let me 

say as someone who has dealt with Dr. Pajorno and Hyasse and 

others from around the world in trying to study disaster and recovVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
20

ery, there is a fundamental difference in how we deal with disaster 

in America. 

If you look at other countries, their central government, which is 

their Federal Government, their prefects, their State governments, 

and their local governments, there is no separation. In those other 

countries that have emerged from disasters, they do not say okay, 

we are the federal government, you are the State government, you 

are the local government, and here, we are going to give you this, 

you do this. All three of those heads stay in the same room and 

hold the same hands until you go from disaster to recovery. 

So the amount of separation that we have had here—and you 

say, okay, I am going to send you all this amount of money, but 

the expertise in many cases and the manpower and the additional 

resources that are needed are not accompanied the way they are 

in other countries that deal with disaster and recovery in a different way. So you are absolutely correct, the process has to be different. 

And then some of think and believe that what happens with a 

natural disaster is much different than what happens with a terrorist disaster. They are both unfortunate, but a lot of the policies 

and requirements how you would deal with and react to each are 

different. The U.N. has specific solutions, where other countries 

have offered expertise and helped where they deal with from 

around the world. So the principles about recovery and about dealing with disaster are there, we just choose to deal with it differently here in the United States. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. 

Just one other question. We had a continuing resolution to continue the government this year because we did not pass all of our 

appropriation bills last year. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. And there was a change in the formula for the 

Section 8 housing. Have you heard anything about that? I know 

that—I am from Illinois, right outside of Chicago, and in the suburban Illinois counties there was a definite loss of Section 8 housing 

money. And from what I have heard, this is also true of this area, 

New Orleans. I know there has been a loss in New York and a loss 

in Los Angeles. 

Mayor NAGIN. Well, we know that there is a change coming, we 

just do not have the specifics, not only to the Section 8 funding but 

also to the Community Block Development Grant money, the annual allocations that we get that we use for a whole host of different sources. That is being cut, and has been cut; every year I 

have been in office, that money has been dwindling. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Okay. I think that according to my numbers, estimates that St. Bernard Parish will lose $1.3 million, Jefferson Parish public housing will lose $12 million, and New Orleans will lose 

$70 million in funding. 

Mayor NAGIN. Those numbers are something that we are watch- ing very closely. But yet and still, we will spend $75,000 on a 

FEMA trailer. 

Mr. THOMAS. Congresswoman, you hit on something that is extremely important and I think is within the realm of Congress to 

deal with. 

21

All cities qualify for Federal funding in certain areas, period, 

based on your population, your demographics, and your income statistics. So in many cases, to assist us, you do not have to have Road 

Home, Road to Rome or Road to the Moon. To assist us, all they 

would have to do is increase our allocation based on our recovery 

for this period of time. Even if you would take a look at future allocations, which sometimes cities apply for future allocations based 

on their need right now. So there are several areas that you do not 

have to have a special appropriation. If you know there is a need, 

increase our allocation right now, this year, and next year and then 

deal with us in the future when we go back under the formula that 

all cities qualify for. That information is already there. 

Chairwoman WATERS. It would be great if Congress worked that 

way, it really would be. But it does not. However, I would like staff 

to make a note to review the formula. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. I am concerned and I think we would all be committed to work to make sure that— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Well, not only that, I mean when we reconcile the continuing resolution, if there is something that we can 

do to make up, we should do that. So I will focus on it and you 

will and we will see what we can do. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. With that, let me go to the gentleman 

from Louisiana, Mr. Jefferson. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. Mayor, I talk to you and Mr. Thomas all the time and other 

folks on the panel cannot do that, so I do want to take advantage 

of their time here. I just want to ask you about one thing. 

You have borrowed a lot of money, the City has, to fill in the 

gaps here. How much money is that, that the City has borrowed 

so far? 

Mayor NAGIN. The total, by the end of this year, we will be at 

$240 million in community disaster loans, and we have before Wall 

Street now another $150 million instrument— 

Mr. JEFFERSON. How much of your tax base is back in position? 

Mayor NAGIN. How much what? 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Tax base do you have now, 25 percent, 30 percent of what you had pre-Katrina? 

Mayor NAGIN. Probably about 65 to 70 percent. We are very 

tight; we barely avoided bankruptcy a couple of months ago. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. So if the Congress was to go back and forgive 

these loans, this would be a tremendous help to this City and to 

this region? 

Mayor NAGIN. It would be a tremendous, tremendous help. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. The community disaster loan is part of it. Some 

of it came from private banks as well. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. The Congressional history has been that after 

a disaster, communities that need these dollars would get them, 

but it would be forgiven. But just for us, we are special, so there 

is no forgiveness clause in the current legislation. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. 

Our job is to get back to Chairwoman Maxine Waters and get 

these loans forgiven for the City. We already have it in the works. 

22

We hope by Easter, we will have a bill out of the Congress, out of 

the House at least, to make sure that this problem goes away. 

Now the last thing is, did you say, with the money you have got- ten that you put together for advancing homeowners up to $50,000, 

you have all your money out already? 

Mayor NAGIN. We do not have it out, but we have enough people 

that have applied for the loans that we are going to probably oversubscribe pretty soon. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. And the last thing is, you emphasized local recovery, the local responsibility for recovery. If the Congress went 

back up there and changed the Stafford Act such that it does not 

always require everything to go to the State, if we could take some 

formula and say, if it is 60 percent of such and such damages, it 

could get control of getting itself fixed up and we then give money 

to Jefferson Parish, Plaquemines Parish, St. Bernard Parish, and 

Orleans Parish and let them get at their own recovery, would that 

be a help to this area? 

Mayor NAGIN. I think that would be an absolute home run for 

every community. I think the State is doing the best they can, but 

they were a bit overwhelmed by this disaster also. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. I am going to pass it. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Now I turn to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Neugebauer. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mayor, the housing issue is one of the primary reasons that I 

came down, although I am very interested in the economic development piece of it. I have been in the land development business, I 

have built homes, and I have been on the city council, so I have 

dealt with a lot of these issues. 

One of the things that was kind of interesting to me though 

today was we were in a project, one of the housing projects here 

and they have 90 units that are vacant that are ready for somebody to move into, but they do not have anybody moving into them. 

So while I know there are a lot of people who want to come back 

to New Orleans—but what we do know about economic development and how communities are built, they are built with, you 

know, two or three ingredients, but infrastructure is one of those. 

You have to have an infrastructure to support people to be there, 

but jobs is the primary reason that people come to communities. 

Opportunity is the reason people come to America, they come to 

America for opportunity. 

I think that one of the things that I want to hear from you and 

the President of the Council is should we be focusing equally as 

much on growing back this economy, because you were talking 

about a very vibrant economy pre-Katrina. I think we can keep up 

with the housing demand, I think there are things in place now—

we need to get some of the bureaucracy things out of the way, but 

I think—I hear people saying we can deliver the housing, we have 

housing under construction, but I do not see this pent up demand 

that everybody is talking about, that people are standing in line for 

houses when we have 90 vacancies in one project. 

Mayor NAGIN. Congressman, I think what you are—New Orleans 

is an interesting City, and it is a City where people are comfortable 

with their neighborhoods. So when you hear that there are vacant 

23

units, they are being offered in a neighborhood that the residents 

are not comfortable in, and have never lived in. So therefore, they 

are somewhat skeptical about going there and being stuck there for 

the rest of their lives. And one of the things—wait a minute. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Excuse me one moment. This is very, very 

important. And if in fact—just a moment—if the members are to 

learn, we must hear what is being said. This is very important. 

Please continue, Mr. Mayor. 

Mayor NAGIN. I am relaying to you what I have had discussions 

with many public housing residents, okay? They want to come back 

to the City, but their first choice is to come back into an area they 

are familiar with. And if there are units that are available, that is 

the only logical conclusion that I could come up with, other than 

HUD may not be communicating to the residents that these are 

available. 

Mr. THOMAS. Congressman, that is why I called for a commission 

of public housing almost a year ago. I think it is a perfect opportunity to get residents with developers, with activists, with housing 

experts, with HUD, with HANO, and with everybody in the same 

room at the same time to talk about the future of public housing. 

Because you get one story one place, and you get another story another place. And I think hopefully one of the things that will come 

out of this is a commission on public housing so that we can strategically analyze its condition right now and get everybody together 

in the same room to work it out right now. I think if we had done 

that some time ago, a lot of those units would be filled already. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. And you were reading my mind because— 

Mr. THOMAS. I have been a mind reader; we have to be mind 

readers down here. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I hear you. I think, as I was looking and touring so far, and obviously we are going to be doing some more, but 

one of the things that I think is a tremendous opportunity for New 

Orleans is you have a chance to start over and correct some things 

that maybe were not right. And some of these huge concentrations 

do not make sense any more. I think one of the things we have to 

be very careful about here is going back and creating environments 

that people are, as the Mayor said, reluctant to come back to. 

So I think what we want to do is do bring the private sector, do 

bring everybody to the table and talk about ways to create a legacy 

of opportunity and not necessarily repeating things just because we 

were comfortable with that. Because in many ways some of those 

were not positive things, but in some ways some of them were. 

Well, let us take the best part of it, but let us also use the opportunity. And I think the Mayor in his opening statement talked 

about—or maybe it was the president—about having better housing than we had pre-Katrina. And I think there is an opportunity 

for people to have, the residents of New Orleans, to have better 

housing post-Katrina but I think it is going to take all the factions 

working together. And so I think your idea—and I hope you will 

follow up with that—of bringing all of those folks to the table and 

keeping that dialogue open. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Will the gentleman yield? 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Yes, please. Thank you. 

24

Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Mayor, is it true that you need housing for workers, city workers, to do a lot of the jobs that are going 

to be needed to be complete projects, and that you would entertain 

some type of lease arrangement with public housing for maybe 

500,000, 600,000, or 700,000 units to put workers in; is that true? 

Mayor NAGIN. We have a need for housing, period, among all of 

our city workers, and absolutely we would entertain a lease with 

HUD or anybody else to put permanent housing—for example, 

Madam Chairwoman, we have police officers, we have clerical people who are living in FEMA trailers or doubling up with their families and they need housing. And we have these stocks that are 

available. Some of it can be restored pretty quickly and we would 

definitely be interested in that. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. I yield back to the gentleman 

from Texas. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you. Well, those were my comments 

and questions, and I thank the gentlewoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And I neglected to 

thank the ranking member and the minority members for being 

here with us. It means a lot to me that you came, thank you very 

much. 

Mr. Mayor, I know that for some time you were trying to get a 

list of the survivors and you wanted that list to include addresses, 

contact information. Were you able to secure the list? You came to 

Houston a number of times and you had to literally hold meetings 

in places and beg that people would come to you. Did you ever get 

a list of the survivors and their locations? 

Mayor NAGIN. We have never gotten a list of people. Every time 

we have asked for it, it is some privacy law or something that holds 

back us getting that information. 

Mr. GREEN. For my edification, because I would like to try to do 

what I can to help you with this, tell us how you would benefit, 

how the City would benefit from having the list, so that I can have 

that for edification purposes when I present it to other persons. 

Mayor NAGIN. Well, a list like that would allow us to communicate a little more directly with our citizens. Right now, we have 

some recovery centers that are in Houston and other cities that 

allow our residents to come in and find out information about what 

is going on and how they can get back. But most of these cities are 

spread out and out citizens do not really understand how to get to 

these particular centers. So a list would allow us to do direct mail, 

to target our radio and television or whatever advertising we have, 

to make sure that our citizens understand what is going on in New 

Orleans, how to get back, what assistance we can provide, and 

what job opportunities are available. 

Mr. GREEN. More specifically, would it allow you to target them 

with reference to housing information? There are many persons 

who are looking to come back and they are disconnected from the 

people who can tell them how to get back, it seems. Would that 

help? 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. It would help tremendously. We are working 

with a number of apartment complex owners, I think there are 

25

12,000 units that are coming online, but as those units come online, it is very difficult for us to get that information effectively out 

to the people who need the housing. 

Mr. GREEN. This is a good segue into the notion that we need an 

independent commission to find all of the people and to do a survey, if you will, so as to ascertain the number of persons who truly 

want to return, where they are, and whether they have decided 

that they are going to stay on. Because we continue to have guesstimates as to what their desires are. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. Would an independent commission established just 

to find out where they are, would that be of benefit to you? 

Mayor NAGIN. That would be a tremendous benefit to us. We 

have been going through a little duel, if you will, as far as how 

many people are actually back and how many are not back. The 

State has a number, we have a number, and there are probably 

two or three others out there. So an independent commission to 

really assess who is back, and the people who are not back, where 

are they, would be tremendously helpful. 

Mr. GREEN. And there is a lawsuit that is pending right now concerning the housing, public housing. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. Give me your impression as to how this can be best 

settled with the parties? What would your recommendation be if 

you had an opportunity to have input into that settlement negotiation? 

Mayor NAGIN. The settlement, in my opinion, hinges upon how 

quickly we can get the units or affordable housing in the community, to satisfy the residents who want to come back. We still are 

about 1,000 units short as far as what I can determine, based upon 

the surveys that we have looked at, as far as how many people 

want to come back, as far as families, and how many units are actually available. 

Mr. GREEN. And finally, the elections were quite a challenge for 

persons who were running for office here in Louisiana. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. You did have to campaign at least in one other city 

that I am aware of and my suspicion is that you went to more than 

Houston, Texas— 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. —to try to locate people. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. In these circumstances wherein we have these disasters that are just of mammoth proportions, would it be beneficial 

to have some sort of emergency means by which persons can vote 

away from the city, out of the State, as we have seen in other countries, Iraq, for example, where people could vote in various places 

around the world. 

If you would, give us some testimony as to how that might be 

helpful under these circumstances. 

Mayor NAGIN. Congressman, you know that question could take 

us a whole number of different directions, but I will tell you this, 

this past election was made harder than it should have been for 

an election in the United States. Our citizens had to come back to 

26

the State to vote or either to the City to vote. And where we allow 

Mexican-Americans or people from Mexico, we allow Iraqis, we 

allow soldiers, to vote where they are. but that was not—that did 

not happen in the City of New Orleans. So I would encourage Congress strongly to pass some legislation that in the event of a disaster, that process be allowed, where a voter, if they are registered 

in the disaster area, that they can vote where they are. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

And now the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. Mayor, I served as mayor of a city about the same size as 

New Orleans and I cannot imagine how crippled Kansas City, Missouri, would have been had the low-income citizens ended up in 

States all around us. Does not the economy of New Orleans also 

depend on low-income workers and what is the impact of low-income citizens being in Congressman Green’s district? Are there jobs 

that could be taken right now if they were here? 

Mayor NAGIN. Congressman, that is the tragedy of what we are 

doing with this housing crisis. Besides families being dispersed, 

there are significant numbers of jobs here, good paying jobs that 

people can take advantage of, but since they are not here, they cannot do it. Our economy is being hindered as a result of that. All 

the workers that we need, a lot of them were in the public housing 

units or in the communities surrounding that. So now, some of the 

restauranteurs—I can tell you, our service levels at the restaurants 

are not as good as they were pre-Katrina, because some of those 

skilled workers are not back. So absolutely that is a problem, and 

then the Road Home is basically hindering our middle class citizens from coming back to the City and participating in this recovery. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Well, what can we do, if you have some suggestions, either you or the president of the City Council, what can we 

do in order to try to help bring back to the City the workers and 

if we had a process by which to bring them back into the City, is 

there comparable housing? Would FEMA be able to accommodate 

workers if the call went out and said, you know, we have 10,000 

jobs available right now and we have temporary housing for those 

workers until they get back on their feet? 

Mayor NAGIN. My suggestion is that, first, we push for as many 

units in the housing developments that are safe and that can be 

rehabbed, we push for their redevelopment as quickly as possible. 

Second, we use whatever public land is available and we try and 

push for modular homes to come into this community to house 

workers. I think if we do those two things, we can jump start this 

economy. 

Mr. THOMAS. I think the Mayor is right on, but hopefully they 

will pay them better now that they miss them. And hopefully they 

will have some benefits, healthcare and others, when they eventually come back. There are a lot of people here who worked real 

hard for very little. So hopefully now that they are missed, when 

they come back, those good wages will be there and those benefit 

programs will be there. 

27

Yes, a lot of things could be done. Hopefully a lot of those units 

that are not re-occupied could be—a working preference could be 

given to people who are part of the traditional workforce. A lot of 

those apartment complexes will receive some type of subsidy, 

whether it’s the Road Home or Federal subsidy, there could be a 

cap on a lot of those units for a lot of our traditional working class 

citizens who were originally part of our economy. 

But those things, you could help us by mandating some of those 

things, especially with the disbursement or use of Federal funds 

whether it is homeownership, whether it is housing authority, or 

whether it is apartment complexes. But if you do not do that, just 

to allow the market to—the market is going to try to bleed you out 

of everything they can get. So if we can have some stipulations 

from Congress to deal with our traditional workforce, especially 

those that are part of the tourism community and our cultural 

economy, that would help tremendously. 

Mr. CLEAVER. One final question, Madam Chairwoman. Three of 

us were in a meeting with President Bush on this past Thursday, 

and he had at the meeting Secretary Jackson, and we raised the 

question with Secretary Jackson similar to what I just asked you. 

Here was the Secretary’s response, and I want to try to be fair with 

him. He said that the housing units needed to come down, that he 

would have new units up and running in 2 years. 

He further said that the units that, I think, some of my colleagues saw today, even though they are not in a condition to be 

torn down, that they need to come down and that in 2 years, if people are patient, we will have housing. I was just interested in your 

response. 

Mayor NAGIN. Well, I am not sure about the timeline, I have not 

seen a construction schedule. I think what we should ask of HUD 

is to give us an independent assessment of how quickly they can 

bring back certain units. Let us get a hard number on that. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Well, he also said—and I think my colleague was 

in this conversation, Congressman Green—that the people did not 

want to come back, which contradicts what you had said earlier. 

And I think I am being fair, aren’t I? He said that the people do 

not want to come back, Mr. Mayor. 

Mr. THOMAS. Well, we need two things. We need new units and 

we need now units. So new units and now units. So now units have 

nothing to do with the new units. If we can get some now units, 

then you can develop some new units. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Mr. Sires of New Jersey. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mayor, I used to be a mayor years ago and you have some job 

here. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Mr. SIRES. One of the things that has struck me being here, we 

talk about low-income affordable housing, we talk about all the 

things that we need. There seems to be a population that sometimes falls through the crack, and that is our senior citizens. What 

happened to the senior citizen population who lived in those places 

after Katrina and what is the Administration and FEMA and everybody that is supposed to be helping out doing to help those most 

28

vulnerable people in our society? What are we doing to assure that 

it is not just people who need housing, but also that senior citizens 

have a place to live in their last years? 

Mayor NAGIN. Right. You know, the senior population is one that 

we have tried to focus on from the beginning, whether it be working with HUD, some of the initial units that they opened up were 

specifically targeted for seniors. In addition to that, all of the other 

programs that we put in place, whether it be with apartment complexes or Section 8 certificates or our adjudicative process, all have 

a senior component to it, to try and get as many of our citizens, 

our seniors, back as possible. 

Mr. SIRES. Did a lot of the seniors that were here before Katrina, 

did a lot of them leave and have not come back? 

Mayor NAGIN. A lot of seniors are out there but looking to come 

back to our City. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Please, we have the testimony going on 

now. Let us hear the question. 

Mr. SIRES. I am sorry, Mayor, I did not hear that. 

Mayor NAGIN. Many of our senior citizens are trying to come 

back to New Orleans. We get communications from seniors all the 

time, whether they be homeowners or renters or whether they are 

in a public housing unit. So they definitely want to come back to 

this City. 

Mr. THOMAS. Congressman, this is extremely disturbing to all of 

us because if there is any population or any group that deserves 

special treatment, it should be our senior citizens. 

Let me say, one of the stark contrasts about a lot of our fact-finding with the mayor and some of the research we have done around 

the world, in Japan, they had 30,000 units for their senior citizens, 

their disabled and elderly, 6 months after one of the worst earthquakes in the world—6 months. So to have a population that has 

paid more tax dollars than some of us will ever pay just because 

of longevity, be in a situation that they are in right now—you 

know, they are American citizens and they fought harder for that 

label than any other group that exists today. 

But let us put it in real terms, let me give you a lady by the 

name of Ms. Mumford, I know her. She has been a homeowner for 

50 years in the Lower Ninth Ward, the area I grew up in. So for 

50 years, they have owned their property. Well, guess what, she 

has gone from homeowner to homeless. So now her house is not 

worth very much because houses just are not worth very much in 

that neighborhood. So insurance cannot build her a new house in 

today’s value. Well, Road Home cannot do it either. So how do you 

go from being a homeowner for 50 years, from being independent, 

to being dependent, hopeless and homeless? And if you do anything—a lot of us youngsters, we can fend for ourselves, but if anything comes out of this, our seniors ought to have special first-class 

fast track treatment. 

Mr. SIRES. Well, Mr. Mayor, and Council President Thomas, I 

certainly agree with you and anything that I can do, please. They 

certainly deserve that. Thank you. 

Mr. THOMAS. Just get a list. The Mayor has been trying to get 

a list of people for quite some time. You know how that list would 

help us, Congressman? That list would help us by saying where are 

29

you, what do you need, how much can you afford, here is what is 

available, how we put a package together. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very, very much. We really appreciate you being here. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Chairwoman Waters, may I just say one thing 

with respect to that question? 

Chairwoman WATERS. Yes. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. When we were in Houston, we found out that 

nobody is sharing data, that the senior population, the Social Security folks know who they are, where they are, and what they need, 

they receive checks from them every week—every month, whatever. 

They will not share the data with HUD so that HUD can do special 

things for them. That is one thing this committee ought to think 

about addressing too, so we can meet the housing needs of people 

by having these agencies share data so we can take care of our senior population. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right, we will take a look in the bill 

that we are putting together to see if we can waive what they say 

are the privacy laws about the sharing of information, so that we 

can make these databases available. 

Thank you very much for being here. 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you guys, very much. God bless you. 

Mayor NAGIN. Thank you, thank you for being here. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, so very much. 

Mr. THOMAS. We appreciate you all coming. 

Chairwoman WATERS. The Chair will now call the second panel 

and I would like to, while they are coming, recognize Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, who is here from the 9th Ward. 

We also have members of the Parish Council of St. Bernard’s 

Parish, Joey DiFatta, council chair and Judy Hoffmeister, member 

of the Council. Thank you for being here. 

For this panel, we have Dominique Blom, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Public Housing Investments at HUD. We 

also have Gil Jamieson, FEMA Deputy Director for Gulf Coast Recovery; Jerry LeBlanc, commissioner, Louisiana Department of Administration; Walter J. Leger, Jr., chairman, Housing and Redevelopment Task Force, Louisiana Recovery Authority; Dr. Edward 

Blakely, director of recovery; and C. Donald Babers, board chairman, Housing Authority of New Orleans. 

Each witness will be recognized for 5 minutes for an opening 

statement, which will be made part of the record. 

Thank you very much. Our first panelist is Dominique Blom. 

STATEMENT OF DOMINIQUE G. BLOM, DEPUTY ASSISTANT 

SECRETARY, OFFICE OF PUBLIC HOUSING INVESTMENTS, 

DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT 

Ms. BLOM. Chairwoman— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Could we get a little order, please, so that 

we can hear the Deputy Assistant Secretary of HUD. This is very 

important. Thank you. 

Ms. BLOM. Thank you very much. 

Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member Biggert, and distinguished members of the Committee on Financial Services, it is a 

30

privilege to appear before you today on behalf of the Department 

of Housing and Urban Development. 

I am Dominique Blom, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the 

Office of Public Housing Investments at HUD. My office administers the HOPE VI, the mixed financed, mixed income public housing development program. 

Since Hurricane Katrina, my staff and I have been directly involved in the recovery plans for New Orleans public housing. 

Today, I share with you HUD’s efforts to help the Housing Authority of New Orleans recover from the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. From assisting the relocation of low-income families 

to safe and decent housing to planning for and carrying out the repair and redevelopment of public housing to creating opportunities 

of public housing residents to return, HUD has marshalled significant resources to support the recovery effort. Notwithstanding the 

significant level of physical destruction, I believe we have made 

great strides in the recovery effort. 

Allow me to provide you a brief list of our efforts over the last 

18 months. HUD created and implemented the Katrina Disaster 

Housing Assistance Program (KDHAP), to assist poor families who 

were being assisted by HUD prior to the hurricane. 

HUD sought and received from Congress supplemental appropriations to continue assisting vulnerable families under the disaster voucher program (DVP). 

Immediately after the hurricane, HUD deployed its own staff to 

Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth to assist families in finding decent temporary housing. HUD increased the Section 8 payment 

standard so vouchers could be used for more private units. 

HUD inspected 100 percent of the public housing portfolio affected by the storm. HANO has made nearly 2,000 units ready for 

re-occupancy and through HUD approvals, HANO has dedicated 

$98 million to the redevelopment effort. 

HANO has secured tax credits and CDBG piggyback funds to redevelop four distressed public housing developments, and HANO is 

partnering with private developers to assist in the reconstruction 

to create mixed income affordable communities. Also, HUD deployed staff to New Orleans to relocate families willing to come 

home. 

Madam Chairwoman, this is merely a short list of HUD’s efforts 

to bring families home immediately while at the same time planning for meaningful reconstruction of affordable housing in New 

Orleans. 

We are also aware that there are many challenges that lie ahead. 

The Department, in particular my staff, remain committed to the 

principles outlined by Secretary Jackson in August 2006 when he 

visited New Orleans. That is, and I quote: ‘‘Every family who wants 

to come home should have the opportunity to come back. HUD’s 

goal is to bring back families to quality housing.’’ 

HUD is working with the local community the redevelop New Orleans’ public housing so families will have the opportunity to return to better, safer neighborhoods. We do not intend to waiver 

from this commitment. 

As you know, HANO is one of the Nation’s largest public housing 

authorities and also one of its most troubled. For decades, its housVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
31

ing stock was substandard and ridden with crime. At the time of 

the hurricane, HANO’s public housing inventory consisted of 7,000 

units, of which only 5,000 were occupied due to deplorable conditions. Of the 5,000 units that were occupied and affected by the disaster, nearly 2,000 have already been repaired and are habitable. 

As soon as possible after the hurricane, HANO began to repair and 

reoccupy 1,000 units at Iberville, Gust, River Gardens, and Fischer. 

And due to the critical housing shortage, HANO and HUD decided 

to repair and reoccupy another 1,000 units at those projects and 

portions of B.W. Cooper. Now over 1,200 families have already 

come back to New Orleans. 

At the same time, HUD and HANO determined that four of its 

largest public housing projects, consisting of approximately 3,900 

units in St. Bernard, Lafitte, B.W. Cooper, and C.J. Peete were not 

fit for human habitation. Where possible, these projects will be redeveloped in phases, allowing residents to return to repaired units 

while redevelopment begins. 

The redeveloped sites will have a mix of income to create low 

density communities that provide safe and decent environments for 

families to thrive. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Let us hear. 

Ms. BLOM. By the end of 2008, there will be over 3,000 public 

housing units and new vibrant neighborhoods. In addition to the 

3,000 units, there will be 1,000 affordable units and 800 market 

rate and homeownership units to be built. 

To implement this redevelopment plan, the Louisiana Housing 

Finance Agency awarded these four projects with $30 million in tax 

credit allocation, which will result in private equity commitments 

of approximately $300 million. The Louisiana Recovery Authority 

awarded the projects $108 million in CDBG piggyback funds. 

Combining these valuable State resources with $88 million of 

HANO funds, HANO was able to partner with nationally recognized affordable housing developers to create vibrant mixed income 

communities. 

But time is of the essence. These four projects, which will create 

744 public housing units, and over 2,000 units in total, must be 

built by December 30, 2008. This is the deadline associated with 

the tax credit award. To meet this deadline, construction must 

begin this summer. And to meet this construction deadline, demolition must begin this spring. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you wrap up your testimony, 

please. We have it in writing, it is in the record, we will review it, 

and we may have a few questions for you, but our time is a little 

bit limited here, and I would like to move on to our second panelist 

who will be presenting here today. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Blom can be found on page 90 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. So with that, I am going to call on next 

the FEMA Director for Gulf Coast Recovery, Mr. Gil Jamieson. 

32

STATEMENT OF GIL JAMIESON, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR GULF 

COAST RECOVERY, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

AGENCY 

Mr. JAMIESON. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman, Ranking 

Member Biggert, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. 

My name is Gil Jamieson and I am FEMA’s Deputy Director for 

Gulf Coast Recovery. I lead and coordinate FEMA’s Gulf Coast recovery efforts. I have been in the region since the early days of the 

disaster, previously serving as the Deputy Principal Federal Official during the response, as the principal Federal official during 

last year’s hurricane season. I am a long-time civil servant, having 

worked in the Agency since its inception. My current position was 

established in order to ensure that FEMA’s programs are consistently and effectively administered throughout the Gulf region. It is 

my pleasure to be with you here today. 

Katrina, in conjunction with other devastating storms in 2004 

and 2005, thoroughly tested the capabilities of FEMA, the Department, and the Nation. While these disasters tested our plans and 

our processes as never before, FEMA, working closely with our 

Federal and State partners, has provided more assistance than 

ever before. 44 States and the District of Columbia received emergency declarations and have been reimbursed for over $750 million 

in shelter expenses. Approximately $6.3 billion has been provided 

to over a million households through FEMA’s Individual and 

Households Program. More than 120,000 households have been 

provided travel trailers and mobile homes through FEMA’s Direct 

Housing Mission. And over $7 billion of public assistance funds, 

money for roads, bridges, buildings, and utilities has been provided 

to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. 

We have worked diligently to balance expediency and accountability and support the efforts of our State and local counterparts. 

This collaboration has resulted in significant progress, though 

clearly challenges remain. 

Under Section 8 of the Stafford Act, FEMA is authorized to provide temporary housing assistance to include rental assistance, 

home repair assistance, home replacement assistance, and direct 

housing. I will discuss each briefly but it is important to note that 

FEMA’s temporary housing assistance programs and authorities 

were not designed to provide long-term housing solutions but rather to provide eligible victims with temporary accommodations while 

they work with State and local governments and other Federal 

agencies to find permanent housing solutions. 

Under our financial assistance program, $2.1 billion of rental assistance has been distributed to over 700,000 households; 35,000 

households continue to receive this form of rental assistance. 

Under the home repair program, to date, FEMA has provided 

$318 million, making over 129,000 homes habitable in the Gulf. 

Under FEMA’s home replacement assistance, FEMA is authorized to provide up to $10,500 in home repair costs. To date, $300 

million has been provided to over 30,000 households across the 

Gulf. 

Under direct housing assistance, FEMA is providing leases to secure housing for evacuees outside the impacted area and manufacVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
33

tured housing was provided within the most heavily damaged areas 

of Louisiana. 

Over the course of the last 17 months, FEMA has housed more 

than 120,000 households in travel trailers and mobile homes. The 

total number of households currently living in temporary housing 

assistance has decreased to 91,000. 83 percent of these temporary 

housing units are on private sites where individuals are living in 

those units while they are rebuilding their homes. 

Direct housing is authorized under the Stafford Act for up to 18 

months, but as you well know, that deadline has just recently been 

extended 6 months. This extension gives us an additional opportunity to continue our work with disaster victims, HUD, and our 

State and local partners. 

Clearly, FEMA and our Federal and State partners face a challenge in transitioning individuals back to permanent housing. 

While the National Flood Insurance Program and the Small Business Administration and the State Homeowner Grant Programs 

help address the needs of homeowners and renters, renters are experiencing difficulties in finding solutions to their long-term housing requirements. This population is significant, as the proportion 

of renters in pre-Katrina New Orleans was approximately 53 percent of its residents. 

While the housing challenge is significant, we must also ensure 

that the community builds back, and as it does so, it does in a way 

that makes it stronger and less susceptible to future damages. 

FEMA’s mitigation efforts have focused on working with local 

communities to rebuild. FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program 

is available to States following a disaster to fund cost-effective mitigation projects. Funds may be used to do such things as floodproofing properties as well as elevating and acquiring homes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you wrap up, please? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes, ma’am. 

In Louisiana, over $1.7 billion is expected to be available under 

the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. FEMA continues to work 

with Louisiana to facilitate the implementation of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program in a manner that meets both the objectives 

of the Road Home and the statutory, regulatory requirements of 

HMGP. But barriers do remain concerning equitable treatment in 

the distribution of Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds. Specifically, the State has established a 40 percent penalty for funds 

going to homeowners leaving the State, or staying in the State but 

not committing to owning property for 3 years. Recently, the State 

exempted seniors from this 40 percent penalty if they choose to 

leave the State. 

Chairwoman WATERS. The gentleman’s time is up, please. Your 

statement will be made a part of the record. Let me remind you 

that the members here do not have a copy of your testimony. 

Mr. JAMIESON. Madam Chairwoman, I understand that they do 

not, and we are working to get that provided to you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. It is very important; we need to have that. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jamieson can be found on page 

106 of the appendix.] 

34

Chairwoman WATERS. Now, Mr. Walter J. Leger, Jr., chairman, 

Housing and Redevelopment Task Force, Louisiana Recovery Authority. 

STATEMENT OF WALTER J. LEGER, JR., CHAIRMAN, HOUSING 

AND DEVELOPMENT TASK FORCE, LOUISIANA RECOVERY 

AUTHORITY 

Mr. LEGER. Chairwoman Waters, it is a pleasure to be with you. 

Congresswoman Biggert, Congressman Jefferson, and members of 

the subcommittee, I have submitted about 16 pages of presentation 

similar to what we did in Washington a few weeks ago when I appeared before you. I have prepared oral remarks but I am going to 

toss them aside and attempt to address a few of the things that 

you brought up a little bit earlier. 

My name is Walter Leger, and I lived in St. Bernard Parish most 

of my life, on the other side of the Lower Ninth Ward, down river. 

I, like so many others in this room, and nearly 200,000 

Louisianans, lost my home. I want to just give you one little 

glimpse into what the loss of a home means to us. 

When a house burns down in a neighborhood, it is a horrible 

tragedy. What we have experienced, all of us in this room, has not 

been the loss of our house. We have lost our homes. We have lost 

our barbers, as you can tell by looking at me. We have lost our dry 

cleaners, we have lost our pharmacist, our dentist, our schools, and 

our neighbors. We have lost our family valuables and when we 

find, in digging through that rubbish and wreckage a photograph 

of family that we thought we had lost, we have captured one of the 

greatest treasures that we can. 

We have had great and significant loss here in Louisiana. I was 

asked to serve as a volunteer—I guess I was drafted by the Governor—on the Louisiana Recovery Authority, crafted after the 

Lower Manhattan Recovery Authority. 

We have developed a number of policies attempting to utilize the $10.4 billion in CDBG monies, including the Road Home plan. Let 

me tell you a little bit about the Road Home plan. Our responsibility is development of the policy, implementation of the policy. It 

was enacted actually before we got the full amount of money in the 

hopes of the additional $4.2 billion that we fought for and you so 

graciously allowed us to have in anticipation of rebuilding the 

homes in south Louisiana. 

I was told as a rookie in government a year ago that CDBG 

money is the best Federal dollars you can get. It has the least 

strings attached, you can just get it out and you can spend it. If 

that is true, I do not know how the Federal Government ever 

spends any money. Because what we have been a victim of here in 

Louisiana is what I call federalism with strings. We have been directed by Washington and, thankfully, here is some money, you 

guys go fix it. But the money is sent and it is actually not even 

really sent, but it is wrapped in red tape with strings leading back 

to Washington. 

Congresswoman Waters, you asked about the regulations, the 

red tape, what can you do. Let me tell you just a few of those 

things. HUD has been wonderful actually in helping us try to get 

around the rules and regulations. But the rules and regulations are 

35

there, they exist, and they tie our hands and make it more difficult 

to get the money to the people. You talked about, and we have all 

complained about, the fact that in computing the grants, we have 

to deduct what HUD calls, the Federal Government calls, duplication of benefits—insurance payments, FEMA payments and all of 

those things— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Will the gentleman yield for a moment? 

Are you saying these are CDBG rules or are these rules that were 

developed by the State to implement CDBG? 

Mr. LEGER. Oh, no, ma’am. The only real rule—and Congresswoman, you pointed out something that, you know, we are so concerned with preventing fraud that we are tying our own hands. It 

is not the fraud prevention that is the problem. It is the CDBG regulations that have tied our hands so much, the Federal regulations. 

We have to verify everything that the homeowners tell us and 

ICF has to verify everything they tell us by third party verification. 

That means we have to get data from SBA/FEMA, we have to get 

it from insurance companies who are not being paid to give us this 

information, and we know how insurance companies are when they 

do not get paid. Those things have to be done in order for the monies to be released. Otherwise, the State may lose the money. So 

there is a lot of regulations, I could go into detail. 

There are a couple of things—several things, that you can do for 

us immediately. One of the things the Mayor addressed so very eloquently, and that is we are required—FEMA monies that are spent 

for assistance and public assistance, we are required to make a 10 

percent match. State and local governments have to make the 10 

percent match. You have probably heard about it. What is difficult 

about making the match is not only do we have to use a billion dollars of the money you so graciously gave us, and send it right back 

to you, but basically we have to comply with both FEMA regulations and HUD regulations on all of 20,000 projects. Many times 

the regulations are conflicting. You—the White House could do it 

with the stroke of a pen. We ask that you do it by Congressional 

Act. Waive the 10 percent match. It was waived on 9/11, and 

waived in almost every major disaster—Hurricanes Andrew, Hugo, 

and Nikki in recent history of this country. 

Secondly, FEMA has indicated—Mr. Jamieson talked about $1.7 

billion in FEMA dollars that have been dedicated toward the use 

with the Road Home Program. That money is still tied up. FEMA 

has not released it, is either unable or unwilling to release it, 

claiming that we are discriminating in the program in favor of seniors, who you so graciously and eloquently heard from Mr. Thomas, 

you know, this cherished group of our citizens. 

HUD, on the other hand, has agreed with the program as it 

stands, that it is not discriminatory. It is my understanding—and 

again, I am a rookie in government, I am not a regular government 

guy—HUD is in charge of determining if housing policy is discriminatory. But FEMA is holding the dollars up. We ask you, move the 

money away from FEMA, give it to HUD, put it in CDBG money, 

and we will get the money to the people faster. 

Another thing you can do for us immediately is teach the SBA 

that there is a difference between a loan and a grant. We have had 

enough trouble getting money from the SBA. You talk about the 

36

slowness of the Road Home Program, it is 18 months out, all of the 

SBA money is not out, all of those loans are not out and they were 

a bureaucracy in place long before this hurricane took place. But 

SBA is requiring that if a homeowner gets a grant, they have to 

take that money and use the money to pay off SBA dollars. That 

is another $2.3 billion. So you gave us $10.4 billion, we are already 

giving you a billion back in that 10 percent match. Now we are 

supposed to give you $2.3 billion right back. So we are only at $7 

billion. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right. Thank you very, very much. We 

appreciate that. 

Mr. LEGER. There are a number of other things, a lot of things 

in my written testimony. 

Chairwoman WATERS. We have your testimony, we will refer to 

that. Thank you. 

Mr. LEGER. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Leger can be found on page 115 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Let me move on to Dr. Edward Blakely, 

Director of Recovery. 

STATEMENT OF EDWARD BLAKELY, DIRECTOR OF RECOVERY, 

CITY OF NEW ORLEANS 

Mr. BLAKELY. Chairwoman, I am delighted to be here. As you 

know, since we are fellow Californians, I have been in more than 

one disaster and had the responsibility for recovering major cities. 

In each disaster I have been in, speed is very important. 

As you know, we got the Santa Monica Freeway up in days, not 

months. The Oakland Hills fire recovery was the fastest in the history of the United States. All insurance settlements were done and 

everyone returned to their homes within 3 years. So it is very important, now that we are 18 months out, we have to make up for 

a lot of lost time. 

It has already been pointed out by Mr. Leger, that we are not 

building houses, we are building total communities. And by building total communities, it requires that we work together effectively 

with schools, with hospitals, and with all the social infrastructure 

that is required to build a community. That includes working with 

the Housing Authority since the Housing Authority makes up so 

much of the housing in this City and is strategically located. It is 

absolutely necessary that we enter into agreements with the Housing Authority so that we build on time the same kind of products 

in the same places. And I think we can effectively do that. 

This recovery is guided by five principles. The first is containing 

the healing and the consultation process. We have been involved 

for 18 months with planning community level plans. Those plans 

are now reaching their fruition and we will be working with the 

communities to implement those plans. 

The second is we have to put in the infrastructure required for 

a modern economy, and we will be doing that. We are not just putting back the infrastructure that was. Although my colleagues at 

FEMA will pay for certain things, we are going to have to go well 

beyond that. The Mayor addressed that. We are going to issue 

37

bonds to pay for new and improved infrastructure. We will be doing 

that very quickly. 

The third thing that we are trying to do is to ensure that every 

neighborhood is safe, and has hospitals, schools, and all the other 

infrastructure. 

And fourth, we are trying to make sure we have a diversified 

economy. And that is very important because people need to come 

back to jobs. So we have to build jobs while we are building the 

rest of the economy. And we are doing that neighborhood by neighborhood. We want to have job centers in every neighborhood and 

job creation opportunities in every neighborhood. 

And finally, a modern settlement system, which I discussed with 

you earlier today. That means putting people out of harm’s way, 

elevating entire neighborhoods and not just one house at a time, 

building those houses on platforms so that they will be safe in the 

future. You saw some of that today. We can do this all over the 

City. 

How do we do it? We are picking strategic and targeted neighborhoods to begin this process so we can build the entire neighborhood 

at one time. We are putting all of our resources into these neighborhoods in order to be trigger points to attract private investment 

and to attract other investments. We are making sure that we coordinate this by having a council across the parish of all agencies—

Sewage and Water Board, electricity, all those agencies will be sitting at the same table with me as the Chair. I will be coordinating 

all the FEMA programs that come in here so that we work together 

to get to the right results and the right places at the same time. 

We will be making a master schedule for this work so that neighbors and community members know when things are going to happen. 

Let me finish with what I think we need to do to make these 

things work. 

First, we need the CDBG flexibility that was alluded to earlier. 

Second, we need to know who is coming back, where they are 

coming back from, and when they are coming back. This is a job 

that is usually done by the United States Census. And having sat 

on census committees, I know it can be done. It’s called a special 

census. It is possible to do, we have the resources to do it already 

within the United States Census. The only thing they have to do 

is give us the data. It would not violate anyone’s privacy. You can 

get it off the Web. 

And third, we have to be very creative about how we re-establish 

public housing. Much has been said about this already. It has to 

be a phased program that includes all the ingredients, including 

the social programming, and not just the housing programming. 

We talked about that earlier today. That includes job training programs for the people out-of-State and people in-State, so they are 

eligible in taking the jobs. And we have to have some jobs for workers, for police officers, and for other people within these same housing settlements, so that we provide the security I mentioned earlier. 

Those are the things that we need to do and we need to do immediately. Thank you. 

38

[The prepared statement of Mr. Blakely can be found on page 84 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Next, we are going to move to a gentleman I have gotten to know 

very well, as he has escorted me on every visit to New Orleans 

public housing, C. Donald Babers, board chairman, Housing Authority of New Orleans. 

STATEMENT OF C. DONALD BABERS, BOARD CHAIRMAN, 

HOUSING AUTHORITY OF NEW ORLEANS 

Mr. BABERS. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member Biggert, and 

distinguished members of the Committee on Financial Services, it 

is a privilege to appear before you today on behalf of the Housing 

Authority of New Orleans. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Let us hear what Mr. Babers has to say. 

Mr. BABERS. I am Don Babers, chairman of the board for the 

Housing Authority of New Orleans, and I have been directly involved in the recovery plans of New Orleans housing since last 

spring. 

The demolition and rebuilding of public housing in New Orleans 

did not start with Hurricane Katrina. The discussion on how to 

offer a better public housing alternative in New Orleans started in 

the late 1990’s when the majority of HANO’s public housing units 

continuously failed HUD’s physical inspection standards. 

Despite millions of dollars appropriated for extensive rehab and 

modernization, only 5,000 of the 7,000 units were habitable prior 

to Hurricane Katrina. Of those 5,000 units, many needed extensive 

work to bring them up to acceptable levels. 

In 2002, HUD took over the Housing Authority of New Orleans, cleaned up its books, and embarked on an ambitious $700 million 

rebuilding plan. HUD envisioned the creation of new safe neighborhoods with homeownership opportunities for anyone who wished to 

pursue the American dream, including public housing residents. 

Since HUD took over, 1,000 affordable housing units have been 

built and are being built at Fischer, Gus, Florida and St. Thomas 

and another 300 are underway at Gus, Fischer, and St. Thomas. 

Let me just say, litigation and public debate about new construction certainly has slowed the rebuilding progress. We have had 

every form of architectural expert here assessing the bricks and 

mortar of public housing. However, those experts have not addressed the toll of the crime plagued, racially segregated public 

housing units. Both factors in HUD’s evaluation of the densely 

built decayed old public housing, and our decision to rebuild. 

Hurricane Katrina struck the City while HUD’s receivership 

team was in the midst of redeveloping New Orleans worst developments. Outwardly, the homes appear to have survived the storm. 

It is when you evaluate the insides of the homes, the electrical wiring, the plumbing, the power receptacles, the roof structure, the 

mold, and the overall infrastructure damage, that one comes to realize the time for change is now. 

We believe now is the time, for a variety of reasons. The cost of 

renovating public housing is not cost-effective. Our engineering 

firm estimated it would cost $129 million to make only Katrina-related repairs to St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete, and Lafitte. 

39

Extensive modernization of these same four would cost approximately $745.2 million. On the other hand, demolition and the redevelopment of similarly configured units would cost $597 million. It 

would be an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ dollars to follow any 

other path, which is why we came to the conclusion that redevelopment was the best option on so many levels. 

Economically, HANO is poised to rebuild affordable housing by December 2008. We were awarded approximately $300 million in 

tax credit equity to redevelop the big four. The projects include the 

development of nearly 2,100 affordable units that collectively have 

a total development cost of approximately $540 million, including 

approximately $300 million in tax credit equity. This funding could 

be lost due to the December 31, 2008, deadline. 

Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member Biggert, and distinguished members of the Committee on Financial Services, whether 

you agree with our plan or not, you should know we are in this 

fight solely to provide a better tomorrow for our New Orleans public housing residents. 

Repairs may be cheaper and more expedient in the short run 

where costs are measured in dollars, but in the long run where 

costs are measured in lives, they are too great. While HANO has 

been charting the course ahead, we have also worked hard to ensure all former residents of New Orleans public housing are receiving a rent subsidy. We are also working, where possible, to bring 

residents back to safe environments. Thus far, we have 1,200 families residing in public housing. We are calling other families and 

advertising for all others to keep us apprised of their situation on 

the anticipation of return. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Babers, would you wrap up? We have 

your testimony in writing and would you wrap up, please. 

Mr. BABERS. We realize that the mistrusts of HANO have left 

many doubters. As proof that such a revitalization plan can work, 

we would ask that you look to a neighbor to the east, Atlanta. Atlanta last week announced plans to raze most of their distressed 

public housing. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, your time is up. Thank you 

very much. We do have your testimony in writing. Thank you. 

All right, if I could have your attention, please. We are going to 

ask some questions. And maybe some of the questions we ask will 

help you to maybe understand or to gather some thoughts for some 

recommendations through some of the representatives who will be 

in the next panel. 

With that, I will recognize myself for 5 minutes. Let me start 

with not so much a question, but a statement relative to CDBG. 

We are going to have an omnibus bill that will correct the need 

for the 10 percent match and we are going to do some waivers and 

all of that. 

But I want to be clear that we are going to correct the $1.2 billion that FEMA has in the Hazards Mitigation Program, but that 

$1.2 billion has nothing to do with the slowness of the project at 

this time. The fact of the matter is, you have all of that other 

money that has not been spent. So I just want to—and also I want 

you to be clear about the difference between CDBG requirements 

and the requirements that were created by the Road Home ProVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
40

gram rather than CDBG. So put a pin in that while I go directly 

to public housing and Mr. Babers. 

I want to ask about your numbers. First of all, is there a problem 

in contacting the public housing residents who are living in other 

States? How good is your database? And what can you tell us about 

how many have been actually contacted, what did they say and 

how can the Congress, how can this committee get from you the 

complete information on the numbers that are out there, the numbers that have been contacted, the numbers that said they did not 

want to come back, the numbers who said I need some money for 

relocation to come back, the numbers who said I will be back as 

soon as school closes because I do not want to take my kid out of 

school—help us to understand this. 

Mr. BABERS. Yes. We have a team of 15 individuals calling daily 

that we have brought in who are actually making calls. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Let us hear. Yes? 

Mr. BABERS. Just our recent calls, we have made 978 calls in the 

last couple of weeks and we have been unable to reach 736 of 

those. We have heard that within 30 days, 79— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I really do need to hear him. 978 calls and 

what was your next sentence? 

Mr. BABERS. We are hearing that in 30 days, 79 would be able 

to come back; in 90 days, 50 would be able to come back; and in 

90-plus days, 34 would be able to come back. We are hearing different reasons in terms of leases, doctors, the infrastructure, and 

many reasons, school—68 percent of our families have children in 

school. Many of these are saying that it would have to be after 

school is out. So we are hearing numerous things. 

On the other side of the coin, one thing that would certainly be 

helpful is us getting current information from FEMA. We are having a problem. We are getting a lot of wrong numbers— 

Chairwoman WATERS. What percentage of telephone numbers do 

you have of residents who are living— 

Mr. BABERS. Out of the 978 calls, we were unable to reach 736 

for various reasons. 

Mr. BABERS. Many of them we were leaving messages. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Wait just a minute. 

Mr. BABERS. Bad information. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Excuse me, one moment, one moment, one 

moment. 

This is very important, very important. Out of 978 calls, how 

many people did you reach? 

Mr. BABERS. Again, 900, and we were able to get a total of 237 

that we made contact with. And I can get you definitive numbers 

on this and the various reasons. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, so you were able to reach, out of the 

978, you were able to reach 237? 

Mr. BABERS. Right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. As I understand it, for those people 

who have signed leases, HUD is making a commitment to take care 

of those leases so that they will not be stuck and not be able to 

return; is that correct? 

Mr. BABERS. We are making provisions to deal with the leases, 

to buy out the leases. 

41

Chairwoman WATERS. I am sorry. Do you have—have you developed a policy that is applicable to everybody about how you will 

handle the lease responsibility at this time? 

Mr. BABERS. We are still working on that. We did hearings in 

five cities and met with the various residents in the cities and we 

are in the process of pulling that process together. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right, okay. So there is no consistent 

lease policy at this time? 

Mr. BABERS. No, not at this time. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, what is HUD’s position on relocation costs? 

Mr. BABERS. We are negotiating and working with our families 

in terms of trying to do the relocation costs. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Do you have a policy that is applicable to 

everyone on relocation? 

Mr. BABERS. We pay relocation costs. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Just a moment. Let me ask you, do you 

have a policy that I could put my hands on right now that describes how you handle relocation? 

Mr. BABERS. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Is that known? Has that somehow been 

communicated to the public housing residents who are in other 

States? 

Mr. BABERS. I would say so, yes. Many of them have already received relocation checks. 

Chairwoman WATERS. HUD—excuse me, I need you to give me 

your attention now. Can someone get for me the HUD policy on relocation by tomorrow morning or tonight or sometime? 

Mr. BABERS. Yes, ma’am. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you get me that policy in writing? 

Okay, so also, I know that many of our residents did not leave with 

their household goods, because I saw them in the housing development. 

Mr. BABERS. Right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Does HUD have a policy on replacement 

of household goods or assistance with replacement of household 

goods in any way? 

Mr. BABERS. Not at this time, no. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right. And just a minute. For those 

families who have children in school, is there a policy developed by 

HUD about how many months you will wait for them to return, 

based on the fact that their children are in school and they do not 

want to take them out, what is your policy? 

Mr. BABERS. We have a policy. We make a call and you have an 

opportunity to come. If you do not come at a certain point, then you 

drop down, not to the bottom of the list, but there is a policy in 

place. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Just a minute. 

When they are contacted, how much time are they given before 

they drop down on the list? 

Mr. BABERS. How many days—30 days. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, so there is a 30-day policy. So if you 

call Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Jones says, ‘‘I have three kids in school 

and I do not want to take them out, but I do want to come back, 

42

but I cannot come back until June.’’ What happens to Mrs. Jones’ 

family? 

Mr. BABERS. At some point, then they would drop down on the 

list. They are still on the list, but we go to the next person. We 

offer the first right of refusal. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, all right. My time is actually expired and I was just trying to find out what the policies are because if you do not have clearly defined policies and rules so that 

people can understand them, it causes a lot of confusion. 

Mr. BABERS. We have a clear policy. 

Chairwoman WATERS. But I am going to move on so that our 

ranking member can raise her questions now. Ranking Member 

Biggert. Thank you very much. 

Mr. BABERS. Yes, ma’am. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. 

I would like to ask all of the panelists one question. Is there anything that we, in Congress, have not done? In other words, have 

we provided any barriers to what you are trying to accomplish 

here? Dr. Blakely. 

Mr. BLAKELY. The rules that Mr. Leger talked about are sometimes barriers and I think they can be waived administratively, but 

apparently the Congress is going to have to weigh in on these. I 

think that we need some guidance from the Congress as to exactly 

how we handle our housing infrastructure as a whole, not just public housing. That would be very helpful because the money has to 

arrive for both at the same time. If we are discoordinated there, 

then that means the schools will not work, it means I cannot put 

the sewer in, and the water systems, etc. 

Clearly we can do some of this at the local level, but if the money 

does not come at the same time, we are hamstrung. So I think 

these things are very important. And as the Mayor said, here in 

New Orleans, we would like handle those infrastructures ourselves, 

including the Road Home Program. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Well, you know, we went and visited so many of 

the public housing complexes, and they were really hard hit, there 

is no doubt about it. 

Mr. BLAKELY. They were. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. And need so much repair. But it seems like then 

we talk about the services, the infrastructure, the schools are not 

there, the kids cannot go to school. But it still seems to be this 

cycle, this circle. How do we break that circle and where would you 

start? We see that the housing is still there; it has not been 

cleaned up or torn down. What would you recommend doing first? 

What would be the first thing, let us say you would say okay, we 

are going to start this now, what would you do tomorrow? 

Mr. BLAKELY. Tomorrow I would select a zone and that zone 

would be a concentrated zone in which we put all of our infrastructure and things in and we would go from area to area doing that 

and within 3 years, like I did in Oakland, we would be finished. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Jamieson. 

Mr. JAMIESON. Congresswoman, from an appropriations standpoint, with what Congress has done through the disaster relief 

fund, that provides funding assistance for us for temporary housing 

assistance, public assistance. If it was anything, I think both the 

43

Mayor and the president of the Council mentioned that community 

disaster loan program; in the specific appropriation for that, Congress was removing the payback option that had historically been 

associated with that. But certainly from a funding perspective, we 

have the resources that we need. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Leger, what would you do first and what is 

an impediment that you find from Congress? 

Mr. LEGER. What would be the first thing we would do? In terms 

of Road Home, we would eliminate some of the restrictions and regulations. And by the way, the restrictions and regulations that I 

discussed before, you asked were they CDBG? Staff corrected me, 

they are not HUD regulations, they were regulations in the appropriations bill that HUD cannot waive certain restrictions including 

duplication of benefits and others. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Can you give me those specifics? 

Mr. LEGER. Yes. Specifically—as a matter of fact, correcting 

something I said a little bit earlier, the reason there is a $150,000 

cap, the reason there is a pre-storm value cap, is because in December 2005, in the original appropriation, we were given $6.2 billion. It was insufficient for our needs. We came back and got an 

additional $4.2 billion, but we needed $8 billion. So we have had 

to, with the budget available, deal with infrastructure, and we have 

had to deal with economic development issues, and $7.5 billion allocated to housing including rental housing development and homeowners’ assistance. So what I would do first is to give us more 

money, give us more money to fully compensate people who have 

sustained losses. 

You know, Congressman Jefferson has been good to point out 

that there is an exemption or an immunity in the Flood Control Act 

with respect to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. If a private 

party were responsible for the damage that was done in Louisiana, 

then the homeowners could be compensated by the course of civil 

litigation. Accordingly, we are capped, so we cannot fully compensate them. We are restricted by HUD regulations and appropriations regulations from compensating for loss of goods and property and contents and otherwise. We would remove those specific 

restrictions, and my written comments provides some very specific 

aspects. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. All right, thank you. 

Mr. Babers. 

Mr. BABERS. We would ask for social service monies as well as 

job training. We have a tremendous need for job training, job placement, and counseling. So certainly there is a tremendous need for 

that. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Okay, and what would you do first here as far as 

the circle of the house and the jobs and the services? How do we 

really start where you can come and say we are on our way? 

Mr. BABERS. Right. We are in the process of entering into an 

agreement with Odyssey House to do case management, which will 

actually, as each family comes back, get a defined idea of what 

their needs are and from that we would then be able to make the 

referrals to the necessary social service agencies. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Ms. Blom. 

44

Ms. BLOM. I think there are three major items that we would 

seek Congress’ assistance on to be able to allow for phased redevelopment. 

The first is an extension of the placed-in-service date. Currently 

that placed-in-service date for all the tax credit projects is December 2008, and in order to accommodate phased redevelopment, we 

will be doing repairs first and having families come back and then 

doing development in phases, would really require at least a 2010 

deadline for the placed-in-service date. 

Second, we would seek for additional flexibility under the 901 

provisions that were provided under the emergency supplemental 

that was passed in December of 2005. It allowed housing authorities in the Gulf region to commingle their funds from HUD and use 

it for development efforts. And in this case, if that were extended 

for another year, that would give HANO additional funding to be 

able to carry out the redevelopment effort. 

Third, as you mentioned earlier, the reduction in Section 8 funding for Gulf States housing authorities as a result of the continuing 

resolution, we would ask for restoration of those fundings to be 

able to allow persons on Section 8 to be able to continue without 

assistance. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right, Congressman Jefferson, 5 minutes for questioning. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Yes, ma’am. 

Mr. Jamieson, I do not think that anyone expected this recovery 

to take so long and the storm to be so devastating. None of the 

laws we had contemplated this sort of disaster. You have a $26,200 

cap on assistance. How many folks are bumping up against that 

cap now, how big a problem is that, and what does the Congress 

need to do to fix the problem, if anything? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Forgive me, but I am not sure I heard all of your 

question. I think you were dealing with the $26,000 cap? 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Yes, the $26,200 cap. My question is how big a 

problem is that now for individuals and families and what do you 

think—does the Congress need to address that now? Because a lot 

of folks must be bumping up against that cap now. 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes, what we have done, sir, is we are not bound 

by that cap. What we are doing is continuing to provide direct financial assistance and as opposed to it bumping against an individual’s cap, for those folks who are in rental assistance, what we are 

doing is providing direct assistance to the landlord of that rental 

unit. So that we are not bound and will continue to provide rental 

assistance as long as they are in those rental units. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. How long can that work, using this method, because there is enough money in the pipeline to do that sort of thing 

without getting a release on the cap? So we do not run out of 

money and tell people they have to get out their places because 

they do not have any more cap available to them? You mean you 

can carry out this program without a cap increase? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Congressman, I am terribly sorry, but with the 

acoustics in here, I am not getting all of your question. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. I just want to know whether or not the cap—we 

will never have to address this cap increase issue, you can always 

45

get around that and there is enough money in the pipeline to do 

that? That is what I am asking. 

Mr. JAMIESON. As long as—with the extension of housing assistance for that 6 months, we will— 

Chairwoman WATERS. It is very difficult to hear. So if you would 

keep the noise down. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. We are down here to fix things. So the issue is 

on the $26,200 cap on assisting individuals, families. 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. And the question is whether we need to do anything about that or not. Do you have a way to work around it that 

will take us through the whole process here? Because we do not 

want to have to run out of money and you say now we are out of 

money and therefore we cannot assist families any more. So just 

want to know today whether that is—we need to raise that cap or 

not. 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes, sir, sorry for taking you the long way around 

there. But I think that is something that the committee should look 

at in terms of that cap. It is not going to affect disaster victims 

down here because of the work-around that we have done. But I 

think that it is an issue in today’s rental markets, because not only 

is it dealing with rental assistance, but it is dealing with other 

needs such as medicines and clothing for the folks who left without 

anything. They are getting up to $10,000. That is all running up 

against that cap. So I think it makes sense to have a cap, but I 

think it should be expanded and I think there should be discretion 

at the director’s level to waive that and adjust it to the circumstance. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Will you make recommendations to the committee or someone in your organization as to how we get at this 

problem because it is— 

Mr. JAMIESON. I am sorry, I will get with the chief of staff and 

do that; yes, sir. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. The next is, the Mayor tells me that there is a 

whole lot of controversy over valuations of what the losses are for 

various public infrastructure needs. For instance, the Mayor says 

for the sewage and water recovery, $400 million, some number like 

that. 

Mr. JAMIESON. Right. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. And FEMA looks at it and says no, no, it’s $100 

million. 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Then the Mayor is criticized for not submitting 

work orders when he says, ‘‘God, if I do that, we will never get the 

place fixed back again.’’ How can we fix this issue of valuation? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Sir, I think we have a fix there and let me just 

say that the total estimated public assistance costs down here are 

some $5 billion. We have obligated almost 75 percent of that funding, but the Sewer and Water Board is a very, very complicated 

project. I am dealing with Dr. Blakely, the members of the Sewer 

and Water Board, the Mayor, and the State. And what we have 

agreed to is putting in place an MOU between all of us that says 

we are going to get an independent contractor in here to do a baseVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
46

line assessment of that, we are going to determine what is disasterrelated damage. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. A contractor that you and the Mayor would 

agree on to come in here? You called this person independent. 

Someone—the two of you would agree on some independent appraisal of this thing and then go with the numbers, that is how you 

would do it? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes, sir, it is. And the contracting process allows 

us to not have it be strictly a Federal activity, but to bring the City 

in so that we are all in agreement that this is the right contractor 

to use for this particular job and we are going to live with the results. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Mr. Blakely—Dr. Blakely, I am sorry, you described a process, a very extensive process. In the short term, because the Congress is trying to address the short term and long 

term needs down here—in the short term, what are the most important things that—three most important things that Congress 

ought to go and address right now to help you through the short 

term part of this recovery for the City? 

Mr. BLAKELY. The three are pretty simple. First, we need to 

know who is coming back. That data is vital to us. The second is— 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Now how can we help you to find that out? 

Mr. BLAKELY. The U.S. Census is pretty good at that and there 

are other devices that we can use, but we do need—and some of 

that data is with FEMA, and some of that data is with ICF. It is 

all over the place, so it would be helpful if we could bring it together in a coherent fashion. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. All right, that is one thing. 

Mr. BLAKELY. All right. That might require the U.S. Census to 

help us, but they have the expertise. 

The second thing that we have to do is to focus very clearly on 

the fact that we do not have enough housing for our workers. If we 

do not have workers here, we cannot build anything. So we need 

a carve-out through a lease or something to lease some of the existing structures, rehab those structures, and then have them for 

workers and then have those workers phased-out and have the 

residents phased-in. That is essential. And we need Congressional 

approval to do that, because we do not have that kind of approval 

now. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. The gentleman’s 

time has expired. 

I will now call on Mr. Neugebauer. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

I want to kind of go down the road here just a little bit of managed expectations, because I think a lot of people here are here out 

of frustration because of the expectations that they have. 

You know, one of the things that a lot of commercials do today 

is they take an object apart over a long period of time and then 

in a 30-second commercial, we get to see them run it in reverse and 

it is all back together again. And what the people in New Orleans, 

I think, want to see, is New Orleans back together again. 

But Dr. Blakely, you have a distinguished career of looking at 

these rebuilding programs. What is a reasonable expectation, if we 

could hit the rewind switch and put everything back together the 

47

way it was pre-Katrina, what kind of time frame are we talking 

about? 

Mr. BLAKELY. Well, at the outside, we would be talking about a 

rebuild of this City to about 600,000 or 700,000 people—it would 

take between 15 and 20 years, at the outside. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Okay. 

Mr. BLAKELY. But within that, I think we can get back to around 

400,000 citizens in 5 to 7 years, using the existing infrastructure 

cleverly. And I think the citizens, as long as we are moving, will 

be with us. We have lost almost 2 years in that kind of a program. 

But I think we have now the capacity to do that with the monies 

that we can receive, with the leverage we can generate and the 

flexibilities that I have asked for. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. And really what I heard you say awhile ago 

is that we really do not even—today if we could bring everybody 

back, we do not have the capacity to do that, nor the economy probably to do that. 

Mr. BLAKELY. No, we do not. Just for schools, we do not have 

enough hospitals available, and we do not have the social infrastructure Mr. Babers talked about, so it is very important to bring 

this about in a phased way. And this is about my sixth time around 

on this, so you learn a few things by doing it. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. And speaking of learning something, I want to 

go somewhere with Mr. Jamieson. What do you think FEMA’s role 

is in a national disaster of this magnitude as far as it relates to 

housing? What do you think FEMA’s role should be? 

Mr. JAMIESON. I think, first of all, sir, there does need to be clarification there. I think what FEMA does, and does pretty well, is 

to get interim emergency housing to folks. But we are clearly not 

resource authorized or appropriated to deal with the long term permanent housing issues. And I think because FEMA is so present 

down here, we are associated with a lot of those issues—we were 

not as quick as we could be in terms of even providing emergency 

housing with the 120,000 travel trailers that were here. 

One of the things that Congress has recently done is authorized 

$400 million for us to explore alternative emergency housing measures and I think there is a clear distinction that needs to be made 

between emergency housing and what FEMA does, and what our 

partners at HUD do, in terms of permanent housing assistance. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I guess the question then I have is have we 

learned some things in this situation where we manage those expectations of what FEMA’s role really is, and that is to get as many 

people housed as soon as possible, and then moving more quickly 

to the permanent solution. Are there some structural things that 

Members of Congress, my colleagues who are sitting up here, need 

to be looking at so that if, God forbid, we have another Katrina, 

we know what to expect from FEMA, and we know what action 

items need to begin to take place? Because I think the Congress 

was very generous. I mean every time somebody brought a request 

to the President, the President sent it over to the Congress, and 

we appropriated the money. But I am not sure we were—that the 

systematic transfer of what was FEMA and what was HUD and 

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48

ties. So did we learn something to make that transition? I just kind 

of open that up to the panel really. 

Mr. LEGER. Congressman, if I may, I think that there is a psyche 

in the post-disaster south Louisiana and the psyche is, and particularly if you look at New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish which was 

so severely devastated, and a question gets to be once the immediate disaster is over and actually Senator Lieberman said that 

there ought to be a new category of event, a catastrophe. You 

know, FEMA was designed to deal with a disaster, we have something of that proportion here. And the psyche is that some things 

become self-fulfilling prophecies. 

As Dr. Blakely pointed out, we have lost 11 hospitals here—11 

hospitals here in New Orleans. St. Bernard Parish lost its only hospital. We were in a meeting with Councilman DiFatta just the 

other day about the need a hospital for people to come back. Sixty 

percent of the people are questioning whether they are going to go 

back. They need to know they are going to have levee protection 

and coastal restoration. And then people individually are looking at 

their neighborhoods and saying, ‘‘Well, do I want to go back and 

rebuild my home, what are my neighbors going to do?’’ 

So in our transition—infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and 

roads. The roads are full of potholes developed by the longstanding 

water. Those things have to come before there is a feeling of confidence that the community is coming back. And then, of course, we 

have to get the funds, the insurance monies, the grant monies, and 

that type of thing. 

Chairwoman WATERS. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

We are going to move on now to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. 

Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, very much. 

Mr. Leger, would you be so kind as to submit a letter requesting 

relief with all of your concerns in it? And this way, with that codified document, we can give you an intelligent response. 

Mr. LEGER. Yes, sir. In fact, a lot of those are listed in my written testimony, which we have submitted, but we will make it much 

more pointed. 

Mr. GREEN. There is some question as to where your written testimony is right now. 

Mr. LEGER. Oh, I apologize. We have it, and we submitted it to 

the Financial Services Committee 2 weeks ago. 

Mr. GREEN. If you would, just codify the requests for relief as opposed to giving me and the committee the entire testimony. And we 

will sift through that and look through it, but I think that would 

be beneficial. 

Mr. LEGER. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GREEN. Mr. Babers, sir, the people seem to want to come 

back to what they had. The Mayor, while he did not use that language, seems to want to get as many people back as he can to what 

they had. 

Now let me ask this, because there seems to be an assumption 

that this is a great time to improve upon public housing. I have no 

argument with you; I would like to see it improved too. I think the 

people who want to come back to what they had would like to see 

49

things improved, but there seems to be the assumption that people 

are doing better where they are. 

Now I have people who are living from deadline to extension and 

many of these deadlines will end right around Christmas or some 

holiday and many of them are not comfortable where they are and 

they really want to return. 

So I am asking you to factor in, when we factor that into the 

equation, the money that we are going to have to spend, hopefully 

that we will spend to continue to house people where they are, how 

do you reconcile that with a desire to do a really good job, but at 

the same time you are keeping people away from the house and the 

home that they know and they want to return to? 

And friends, I am going to ask, if you would, do not applaud because I only have 5 minutes and I have some more questions. 

Mr. BABERS. I am trying to get exactly what you are asking me. 

Come again in the sense of being satisfied where they are. Let 

me—first of all, we want to bring our families back. We have identified up to this point 2,000 units that we have identified as low 

lying fruit that had the least number of trouble in terms of fixing 

these units up for habitation. Again, 67 percent of our units were 

uninhabitable prior to Katrina, so we have identified the 2,000 

units. 

One of the things that Dr. Blakely and I— 

Mr. GREEN. Permit me to intercede for just a moment, I do not 

mean to be rude. But let us not talk about those that were not habitable, let us just talk about the people who want to come back to 

what they had. 

And I have to add one more element to the equation. If you are 

only contacting one-fourth of the people that you try to reach, can 

you truthfully say that you have an efficacious effort to contact people in place? 

Mr. BABERS. That is a good point. Our initial tallies gave us 60 

percent of the families wanted to come back, which would equate 

to about 3,000 units, which is what we are proposing to put on the 

ground. But again, if we are talking about bringing the families 

about, what we are talking about total, just Katrina-related cost, 

$130 million to fix up just Katrina-related costs. If we are talking 

about extensive mod, our figures are saying $746 million. 

So that is what we are grappling with, the numbers. And so, you 

know— 

Mr. GREEN. Excuse me, Mr. Jamieson, my time is about up, so 

let me quickly ask, the 403 to 408 transition, why is that transition 

so nebulous that people seem to just drop through the cracks and 

courts have to be involved? 

Chairwoman WATERS. Quickly. The gentleman’s time has expired. Would you quickly wrap it up, please? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes, I would. Congressman, 403 was what FEMA 

could do under emergency assistance, it was the quickest way that 

we could get our hands on the money for folks and housing assistance. 408 of the Act is what actually allows us to provide temporary housing assistance. 

I do not think we were as clear as we could have been, but I do 

not think anyone has fallen through the cracks. I think we have 

been over in Texas, the 16,000 folks from Louisiana who are still 

50

over there, we have case managed every one of those cases. Those 

who are eligible for assistance are receiving it, sir. 

Chairwoman WATERS. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Next we have the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. If you would be economical in your response, so I 

can get through. Mr. Jamieson, I am familiar with this school, my 

son graduated just prior to the flood; he was still here when the 

flood hit. And are you familiar with the letters that have gone out 

to students from Dillard University and other universities telling 

them to send $2,000 back that they received after the flood? 

Mr. JAMIESON. I am. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you for the economy. 

Mr. JAMIESON. I would be happy to address it. I have a daughter 

in high school and a daughter in college as well, so I am sensitive 

to those concerns and I have, in anticipation, quite frankly, of this 

hearing, we have set up a separate call number for those students 

so that we can work through each one of their cases on an independent basis, not only here, but also at Tulane University, the 

University of New Orleans, and other schools. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Yes. Okay, and I am glad you are doing that. I 

think it would have been better if there had been, you know, a little more effort put into deciding whom to send the checks to in the 

first place. If you are 19 years old and you get a letter and you are 

up in Tennessee, you just left here and you are in another school, 

and it starts talking about prosecution, the FBI and Rin Tin Tin 

and the Lone Ranger all coming after you, you know, I mean these 

are kids and I am personally involved with two young ladies who 

are in colleges elsewhere and I just think that was a terrible public 

relations blunder. 

Mr. JAMIESON. I agree. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Secondly, Ms. Blom and Mr. Babers, do you agree 

with Secretary Jackson that the people who have left do not want 

to come back? 

Mr. BABERS. We are hearing 60 percent say they would like to 

come back and so that is the figure that we have been dealing 

with. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right, Mr. Cleaver needs time to raise 

his questions. 

Mr. CLEAVER. The Secretary said to me and some of my colleagues, he said he would take 3 days off, come down to point out 

door to door that people didn’t want to come back, if we went to 

Houston. So I am just asking, since you are on the ground here, 

the two of you are on the ground, is that your— 

Mr. BABERS. Let me say this, we have 338 key-ready units right 

now. I said we have 338 key-ready that we could give to a family 

today. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Okay. That is not the number that the Secretary 

gave us. 

Mr. BABERS. And we gave the Congresswoman the addresses, I 

think Scott Keller gave you some information last night on some 

units. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Okay, well if she has that, I am satisfied if she has 

the information. 

Mr. BABERS. Right. 

51

Mr. CLEAVER. Final question. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Let me, if I may, if the gentleman will 

yield, so that everybody will understand. I requested information 

from HUD about where these units are, they did send it to me last 

night, and I am going to spend as many days as I can visiting and 

finding out about the units, and also Dr. Blakely is looking at some 

of this, and I will share it with the members. Thank you. 

Mr. CLEAVER. My final question, we have $10 billion missing in 

Iraq and I am wondering what the situation is here. We get information that there are no bid contracts being let, that the local contractors are being excluded, that there is preferential treatment for 

contractors who are being brought in to do the work here. Do you 

have a Reader’s Digest version of an answer? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Sir, I do. I am very proud to say that there are 

no contracts down here in the Gulf now, no new contracts, that are 

no bid contracts. And all of those contracts are heavily—I will give 

you the statistics, but 8(a) contractors, locally based contractors. 

That did happen in the early days of this response, it was well-documented, but I am very proud of what we have been able to do 

since that time. And I would be happy to provide you the exact statistics. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Yes, I would really like to have information on 

that, because the elected officials here do not seem to have that information. They are saying otherwise, as well as local business people. 

Mr. JAMIESON. Congressman, I would be happy to provide it to 

you. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Jamieson, do you have a rough estimate of the 

number of people who are still in trailers? 

Mr. JAMIESON. In Louisiana, sir, there are some 60,000 folks who 

are still in travel trailers. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Did you say sixty? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes, sir. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What did he say? What was the number? 

Mr. CLEAVER. 60,000. 

Chairwoman WATERS. In trailers? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes, ma’am. 

Chairwoman WATERS. We need to hear this. 

Mr. CLEAVER. What will happen to those individuals and families 

who are living in trailers, what is the plan? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Well, sir, the plan is to try to get them into permanent housing as quickly as we can. 

Mr. CLEAVER. I know, but what is the plan? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Well, part— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, all right, okay. We are going to give 

him an opportunity as soon as we complete the questions of our 

next member and before we go to the next panel, we will give him 

an opportunity. 

With that, I would like to ask Representative Sires. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. Babers, is that how you pronounce your name? 

Mr. BABERS. Yes. I would just like to offer an observation. It 

seems to me that there is a lot of insensitivity from the Authority 

in trying to reach these people who want to come back. I do not 

52

sense an urgency, I do not sense the human hurt that people have 

gone through. So I would plead with you that this 25 percent of the 

people in these phone calls, there has to be a stronger effort. You 

know, I would implore you, because what I have seen here—and 

this is my first time in New Orleans—you know, I will never forget. 

So I just offer you that observation. 

I want to say that certainly, we are taking that very seriously. 

We were doing the calling and the surveying internally. We have 

brought in 15 people from around the country who are doing these 

calls all day. We are trying to improve on that system, but I do 

agree with you. 

Mr. SIRES. But there seems to be almost a cavalier attitude when 

you address some of these things, and I do not think that helps the 

situation. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Excuse me, one second, Congressman. 

This is very, very serious and we need to hear the response from 

HUD and the question is being raised in a very serious way. So 

please give us your undivided attention. Okay. 

Mr. SIRES. Have you worked with the Mayor’s office in trying to 

put together a plan to reach these people? You know, is there any 

work with the Housing Authority and the Mayor’s office and the 

Council people and the Council president? 

Mr. BABERS. I have met with the Mayor’s office, I have met 

with— 

Mr. SIRES. Or a tenants’ council that you have or, you know. 

Mr. BABERS. I beg your pardon? 

Mr. SIRES. A tenants’ council? 

Mr. BABERS. Yes. As a matter of fact, we work very closely with 

the resident council. We have board meetings, we have a resident 

board relationship with two members of the resident council that 

we meet with monthly. So we are trying to do—and certainly I 

agree, we can improve on our efforts, but it is not a lack of not 

making communication or contact with the council, with the City. 

I have met with the Mayor in Houston, we have yet to go out to 

the various other cities. We had planned a tour and we had mentioned it to the chairwoman about going to Atlanta, Baton Rouge, 

Dallas, and Houston, and that meeting has not taken place yet, but 

certainly that is something that we have been planning to do, to 

do just what you are talking about. 

Mr. SIRES. But this is precisely the point. The chairwoman asked 

you if there was a plan or there was a policy. Here we are 18 

months later, you are still developing a policy. 

Mr. BABERS. Sir— 

Mr. SIRES. This is just an observation of a freshman Congressman. 

Mr. BABERS. Sure. The thing is we just started our plan—the 

Secretary made the announcement in June and we have been continuously trying to fine-tune our efforts, but I applaud what you 

are saying and certainly have no problem in terms of putting a 

plan together. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you. Do I have time for one more question? 

Chairwoman WATERS. Yes. 

Mr. SIRES. Mr. Leger, you testified before the full committee on 

February 6th and you discussed the problem your organization had 

53

in getting full funding for the Road Home Program. You explained 

how the difficulty resulted in delays in implementation. And you 

testified that 500 homeowners had received their awards the week 

of February 6th. Can you tell me how many more families have received their awards since then? 

Mr. LEGER. Yes, sir. The latest numbers are as of today probably 

about 800 now. The commitment, the Governor spoke about the 

commitment of ICF, the contractor. Again, we are the policymaking 

entity, Louisiana Recovery Authority. You will have ICF before 

you. The commitment that they made was delivery of a total of 

2600 by the end of this month, by the end of February, that is next 

Wednesday. 

Mr. SIRES. So how many do you have total today? 

Mr. LEGER. Eight hundred, approximately 800 or possibly more 

by today. So they have 1,500 or so to do. 

Mr. SIRES. And how did you decide who gets first? You know, 

how did you decide— 

Mr. LEGER. Who decides who gets— 

Mr. SIRES. Yes, how do you award it first, who gets the award 

first? 

Mr. LEGER. That is a process that is performed by ICF, the contractor. They have taken 100,000 applications, scheduled 72,000 

appointments, and they are working their way through the process. 

They claim that there have been a lot of administrative hold-ups 

including the verifications. And they have awarded—they have 

made awards to about 17,000 homeowners who are now going 

through closings. 

Chairwoman WATERS. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

We are going to call up our third panel. I would like to make two 

deviations from our normal way of doing this. One is I am going 

to ask Mr. Jamieson to remain while the other panel is coming up 

because the question of how many people are still in trailers and 

what do you plan to do with them has not been answered and it 

is key to everything. 

And let me say to Mr. Leger that we really do respect you as a 

volunteer and the work that you are doing and the way that you 

have spent your time on this program. But the numbers about how 

many actually have been completed and how many have gotten—

keeps changing on us and so we are going to put it on Ms. Isabel 

Reiff when she comes up and if I get a different number, then I 

am going to put somebody under oath on this one because we keep 

getting a different number. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. Thank you all, so very much. 

Mr. Jamieson, if you can answer Mr. Cleaver’s question while the 

other panel is coming up. Mr. Jamieson, please. 

I need your attention. Mr. Jamieson is getting ready to tell us 

how many people are in FEMA trailers and what they are going 

to do about it. It is very important. 

Mr. JAMIESON. And Congressman Cleaver, your question was 

about the folks who are in travel trailers. There are some 60,000 

travel trailers out there, and I do not want to underestimate that 

number. In an average family size of three folks, that is a lot of 

54

folks. Those are units, not families and people, so that number is 

significantly larger than that. 

We have had 23,000 units that have already been deactivated. Of 

the 60,000 units that are still there, 83 percent of that number are 

on private sites. That means an individual homeowner is living in 

that unit while they are repairing their home. In addition to that— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you please hold your response until 

we can get some quiet. This is very important. What is going to 

happen to the 60,000 people in the trailers? Okay, would you start 

again, Mr. Jamieson? 

Mr. JAMIESON. Yes, Madam Chairwoman, I would be happy to. 

Of the 60,000 units, you know, that is units, not family members, 

it is a larger number than that. But 83 percent of that number are 

on private sites. That means they are rolled into a driveway while 

those folks are either with a friend or they are rebuilding their 

home. So the good news there is that because that percentage is 

so high on private sites versus a group site, they are going to be 

rebuilding their home. That other residual number that is there 

are the folks who were renting before the disaster. And in fact, and 

indeed the purpose of this hearing is, how are we going to provide 

permanent housing assistance for those folks who were renting before? And until we get landlords rebuilding, until the Road Home 

money starts to flow through, those folks will be in those travel 

units until permanent housing is available to them. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right, thank you, very, very much. 

I thank all of our last panel. Now we will start with our next 

panel: Mr. James H. Perry, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center; Mr. James R. Kelly, chief executive officer, Catholic 

Charities; Mr. Steve Bradberry, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now; Dr. Sherece West, executive director, Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation; Ms. Gloria Williams, tenant; 

Ms. Donna Johnigan, tenant; Mr. Ben Dupuy, The Cypress Group; 

and Ms. Emelda Paul, president of Lafitte Resident Council. 

Okay, we will start with Mr. Perry. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES H. PERRY, GREATER NEW ORLEANS 

FAIR HOUSING ACTION CENTER 

Mr. PERRY. Good afternoon. I was lucky enough to speak with 

you only a few weeks ago about many of the fair housing issues 

that the Gulf Coast has been facing. In particular today, I want to 

focus on two issues. 

The first that I want to make clear is some of the difficulties that 

citizens have had with the Housing Authority of New Orleans in 

the past, and this will make clear, I think, the reason that so many 

residents are so distrustful of the Housing Authority and of HUD. 

Second, I want to discuss CDBG funding and the requirement to 

affirmatively further under the CDBG funding program. 

With regard to HUD handling the public housing, I think it is 

very important to consider one particular case, and that is the case 

of the St. Thomas public housing development. St. Thomas was 

pitched as an opportunity to redevelop public housing and to make 

mixed income housing that would give opportunity to public housing residents in New Orleans. Public housing residents were told 

that 50 percent of the units would be reserved for public housing 

55

residents and another 30 percent would be reserved for low-income 

residents. So 80 percent of the units were supposed to be set aside 

for low-income and public housing residents. Instead, at the end of 

the day, 80 percent of those units have gone to market rate residents. Only about 20 percent of those units have gone to low-income residents, 9 percent were set aside for public housing residents. Particularly, 122 units were set aside for public housing 

residents. Of those 122 units, 59, as of today, have been occupied 

by public housing residents. The remaining 63 have yet to be occupied by public housing residents even though they are set aside for 

public housing residents. 

In fact, as I mentioned in my last testimony, after the storm, instead of public housing residents being able to move into these remaining units, regular citizens were moved into the units, citizens 

who did not have the public housing preference at St. Thomas. It 

has been extremely troublesome. This is the story of public housing 

in New Orleans. 

So when HUD or HANO comes in and says that they are going 

to redevelop housing and that we are going to get people back in 

public housing in only 2 years, it is very difficult, if not impossible, 

for us to believe it. There was a switcheroo. We were told 80 percent of the housing would be for low-income residents and instead 

only 20 percent or less have been reserved for public housing residents—a switcheroo. 

So I think that members should really consider each statement 

that HUD and HANO makes because I can tell you that citizens 

do not trust HUD or HANO and do not trust their positions. 

The second issue is about Community Development Block Grant 

funding. There have been a lot of calls in today’s testimony about 

lessening the rules, and I had specific conversations with members 

of this very subcommittee where you said that you specifically 

made sure that the affirmatively furthering for housing components were not taken out of the Community Development Block 

Grant funding program. 

Well, I want to give you two examples. In one case, St. Bernard 

Parish, a parish that does receive Community Development Block 

Grant money, passed an ordinance. Its ordinance said that in order 

to rent a single family home in St. Bernard Parish, you had to be 

related to the owner of the property. In St. Bernard Parish, 93 percent of the people in the parish are white, which means that nonwhites could not rent single family homes in the Parish. 

Our organization filed a lawsuit against the Parish and since 

then we have forced them to repeal the ordinance. But I would say 

that any parish or any county or any municipality that would pass 

such a heinous ordinance should not be able to receive Community 

Development Block Grant money in the future. 

I will give a second example, and that example is Jefferson Parish. Jefferson Parish has gone out of its way to make it nearly impossible for developers to use low-income tax credits for development within its borders, particularly in Terrytown in Jefferson Parish. They have even attempted to get the legislature to pass a law 

that would require their specific authority in order to use tax credits within their borders. 

56

This is an action that would specifically limit housing for low-income residents. In particular, Councilman Roberts, who has pushed 

this ordinance said— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you wrap it up, please, your time 

has expired. 

Mr. PERRY. Sure. I submitted my written comments and they go 

into these issues in great detail and I would urge that members 

consider strengthening the Community Development Block Grant 

terms for affirmatively furthering fair housing. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Next, we have Mr. Kelly, chief executive officer, Catholic Charities. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES R. KELLY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

CATHOLIC CHARITIES 

Mr. KELLY. I would like to thank Chairwoman Waters, Ranking 

Member Biggert, and the other members of the committee. I am 

Jim Kelly, CEO of Catholic Charities and CEO of a new nonprofit, 

Providence Community Housing. 

In the past 17 months, Catholic Charities has reached out and 

served over 700,000 people. We have delivered 70 million pounds 

of food and water, provided counseling and information to over half 

a million people, and through our emergency centers distributed 

millions of dollars in direct assistance to families in need. 

Shortly after the storm, a group of Catholic organizations, charities, and CDC’s came together to see how we might use our joint 

talents, experience, and resources to help bring people of all races, 

income, and backgrounds home. Last April, Providence was formed 

with the mission of bringing home 20,000 victims of Katrina by repairing, rebuilding, or developing 7,000 homes and apartments. In 

partnership with Catholic Charities, we have recently—with the 

assistance of 9,000 volunteers—gutted and cleaned out 800 homes 

and 800 apartments. Now we are working to help repair the homes 

of these elderly. 

In partnership with Ujama CDC, Tulane Canal CDC, Mary 

Queen of Vietnam CDC, and a soon-to-be-formed Hispanic CDC, we 

are exploring any and all options to rebuild our housing stock, our 

homes, and our neighborhoods for our friends and our neighbors. 

We soon hope to refinance 902 apartments for elderly seniors. Insurance costs are 400 to 600 percent over pre-Katrina. We are 

hopeful that some type of special insurance reserve or some type 

of new income can be afforded us so that we can reach out and 

open these facilities for these seniors. 

Providence, with our partner Enterprise, is anxious to have all 

residents of public housing come home as soon as possible. We concur with today’s elected officials about a phased redevelopment of 

public housing, and in particular Lafitte. I attended a pubic meeting recently where the historic value of these buildings was under 

discussion. Ms. Johnson, a member of the resident council, asked 

me who all the people were. I explained that most of them were 

preservationists. She said they did not represent her. Yes, she 

wanted to come home as soon as possible, but she also wanted new 

homes and apartments for her family and friends like the ones they 

had voted on in October at our week-long planning meeting. No 

57

large apartment buildings, but instead singles and shotgun doubles 

that were both apartments and homes. She wanted new apartments that were larger and had more bedrooms for the children. 

I explained that we had been advocating for a phased redevelopment where apartments would be reopened for all those who wanted to come home right now. Redevelopment of the new homes 

would then begin on the other unoccupied blocks. I reminded her 

that when complete, there would be a one-to-one replacement of all 

900 units plus 600 new homes for working families and first time 

homeowners. 

I asked Ms. Johnson, based on her knowledge, how many families wanted to come home today. She thought between 300 and 400. 

This is the same number that our resident outreach staff have estimated. In December, we raised $2.5 million to help former residents, both here and in other States, and will soon initiate counseling, direct assistance, job placement, and healthcare. 

A successful community will also need good schools, Head Start, 

senior centers, playgrounds, and parks, as well as literacy, job 

training, and women and minority small business development programs. 

We pray each day for a resolution to the public housing debate. 

We do not believe that it is an either/or proposition. We believe a 

phased redevelopment is not the middle ground, but rather the 

right ground. It allows all residents, who have suffered greatly in 

these 17 months, to come home today while also allowing the building of healthy, diverse vibrant communities where families and 

children’s lives are filled with plenty of opportunities and a host of 

dreams. 

I will close by saying that Katrina has taught us many lessons, 

that to be successful will take a spirit of humility and collaboration. We have to focus on the victims of Katrina, and then God, 

who loves these families infinitely more than we do, will bless our 

efforts together. 

I do want to point out that you, Ms. Waters, have come from the 

beginning and have come time and time again. And we thank you 

for that. My prayers of gratitude to this committee for all you have 

done and will do for the good and great people of Louisiana. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Mr. Bradberry. 

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN BRADBERRY, ASSOCIATION OF 

COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS FOR REFORM NOW 

Mr. BRADBERRY. Good afternoon. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Good afternoon. 

Mr. BRADBERRY. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member Biggert, 

and members of the committee, I would like thank you all for the 

opportunity to testify here today. My name is Stephen Bradberry 

and I am the head organizer for Louisiana ACORN, the largest 

grassroots community based organization in the City of New Orleans, and the State of Louisiana, as well the United States of America. I am not only the only American individual to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, but I am also a graduate of 

fair Dillard. 

58

I would like to point to two things that helped to set the stage, 

at least for everyone in the City of New Orleans, that occurred very 

shortly after the storm as we watched the recovery process unfold 

before our eyes. 

In the September 8th Wall Street Journal, Jim Reese, who was 

later appointed to the Bring New Orleans Back Commission to be 

the Chair of the Infrastructure Committee, was quoted as saying, 

coming out of a meeting in Dallas with the power elite, which included our Mayor, that the City of New Orleans would have to 

change demographically and economically or these families would 

be pulling their money out of the City of New Orleans. New Orleans, prior to the storm, was demographically primarily AfricanAmerican and economically working class. 

On September 28th, in the Houston Chronicle, Alphonso Jackson, 

Secretary of HUD said that New Orleans will not be returning as 

black as it was before the storm and that HUD would not be putting monies into public housing the way it had prior to the storm. 

These two statements by these two gentlemen who are decisionmakers non-par, have set the stage for all the confusion, the heartache, and the trauma that we have been dealing with ever since. 

In spite of that, days after the storm, ACORN found myself and 

two other people sending text messages to get people off of the road 

into homes in Texas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In December, with a threat for us to march across the bridge into the Lower 

Ninth Ward, on December 1st, the Mayor finally opened up the 

Lower Ninth Ward, the only neighborhood that people were not allowed to go into up to that time. We began our ‘‘No Bulldozing’’ 

Campaign, which became known nationwide and others followed 

with their ‘‘We’re Back’’ signs. We also initiated the first gutting 

program in the City, wrapping up about 2,000 homes to date. 

In February 2006, President Bush said he would not be sending 

any more money to the Gulf region for recovery—that the Community Development Block Grant monies he had sent were enough. A 

week later, 500 people in red shirts like this one here chanting 

‘‘ACORN’’ showed up on his doorstep. The week after that, $19 billion more was allocated to the Gulf region. 

In May of that same year, the City Council passed an ordinance 

that said that the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, August 

29th, would be the deadline by which people would have to gut 

their homes or risk losing them. They had not put up a single 

penny to assist any of the gutting organizations, not the ones by 

ACORN, not the ones by Catholic Charities, not the ones by Common Ground, not the ones by any organization in the City of New 

Orleans. And just so that you know, the Mayor just gave out $15 

million to private corporations to gut houses, although all of us 

used volunteers to leverage the private funds that we have been receiving. 

Immediately following August 29th, people had to get in the 

streets again to fight to have water certified in the Lower Ninth 

Ward because people were not able to get FEMA trailers or clean 

out their properties because water was being afforded them. And 

you all came down today to see the first two houses that were constructed in that very same neighborhood. 

I would like to wrap up with a few recommendations: 

59

Place a moratorium on imminent domain; 

Preserve the existing housing stock; 

Restore HUD’s public housing; 

Ensure affordability of replacement housing; 

Rein in the insurance companies; 

Provide more CDBG funds; 

Provide adequate oversight of State disbursement of the Road 

Home funds; and 

Include community groups in emergency preparedness plans and 

mitigation. 

Thank you, very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bradberry can be found on page 

95 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Dr. Sherece West. 

STATEMENT OF DR. SHERECE Y. WEST, CEO LOUISIANA 

DISASTER RECOVERY FOUNDATION 

Ms. WEST. Chairwoman Waters, distinguished members, and 

staff and guests of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community 

Opportunity, thank you for coming to Louisiana and for your continued interest in the families and communities damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. 

I am Sherece West, CEO of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery 

Foundation, Louisiana’s fund for Louisiana’s people. By way of 

background, the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation was established in the aftermath of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. We provide resources for relief, recovery, and betterment to nonprofit organizations throughout the State that provide services and support 

to displaced individuals, families, and organizations that work in 

hurricane-damaged communities. 

Our support comes from the generosity of individuals, corporations, and foundations, including the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, 

and others from across the United States and around the world. To 

date, we have awarded $14.7 million to nonprofit organizations 

working Louisiana’s recovery. I am proud to say that ACORN and 

ACORN Housing Corporation are among our grantees. 

We are not just a grant-making organization. We are a vital resource in the State’s recovery effort. 

My written testimony speaks to, and previous witnesses spoke 

about, why there is little to no progress in restoring affordable 

housing and the obstacles to the success of restoring affordable 

housing. I will discuss how the affordable housing dilemma can be 

resolved and the role of LDRF in addressing the affordable housing 

crisis. 

At the Federal level, the housing dilemma can be resolved 

through Congressional intervention. We appreciate and support 

Representative Waters’ proposed Memorandum of Understanding 

with HUD to guarantee the right of return of displaced persons 

and one-to-one housing replacement—very important to us. 

We appreciate and support Representative Jefferson’s proposed 

rehabilitation and reoccupancy of public housing developments, not 

in major disrepair and Section 8 voucher portability. 

60

We appreciate and support Representative Frank’s proposed National Affordable Housing Trust Fund and Representative 

Clyburn’s amendment of the Stafford Act. 

At the State level, the housing dilemma can be resolved through 

the Governor and the State legislature’s promotion of innovative 

housing policy and funding through enactment of a State housing 

trust fund with sizable funding from the State surplus, enactment 

of a low-income tax credit, enactment of additional piggyback funds 

for affordable housing and enactment of provision of soft second 

loans for any household below 80 percent of median income. 

At the local level, municipal government has an opportunity to 

advance creative land assemblage and resettlement of homeowners 

and renters. 

LDRF supports the New Orleans Road Home Fast Track Program as described earlier by the Mayor, expansion of the City’s 

programs for disposition of property, gutting, remediation, and adjudicated properties, and we especially support flexible use policies 

that promote inclusionary zoning and land trust authority. 

These opportunities will need and require flexible Federal funding streams from HUD and we support the City’s efforts. 

What is the role of LDRF in addressing the affordable housing 

crisis? The role or the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation and 

our philanthropic partners is to promote and fund affordable housing strategies. 

We are embarking on a Housing Recovery and Development Initiative and Equity and Inclusion Campaign. The Housing Recovery 

and Development Initiative is a place-based strategy to adopt a 

number of neighborhoods in New Orleans and invest $7- to $11 

million dollars in that Initiative. We will leverage additional resources and partner with nonprofit housing developers, housing 

intermediaries, community development corporations and local 

residents. 

Second, with my testimony today, the Foundation is embarking 

on an Equity and Inclusion Campaign that will build a coalition of 

elected and appointed officials, policymakers, community activists, 

faith-based leaders, and others to promote affordable housing and 

community development. 

As part of our leadership through social section, we are sponsoring a statewide legislative affordable housing convening for our 

grantees and the Louisiana Housing Alliance on March 22nd and 

23rd in Baton Rouge. 

On March 30th, we will serve as co-sponsor and host of a right 

of return forum convened by the Congressional Black Caucus and 

the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, also in Baton Rouge. 

We will convene a forum on policies of equity and inclusion 

hosted by the Brookings Institute in June, and in September we 

will conduct an equity and inclusion issues forum as part of the 

Congressional Black Caucus legislative conference. 

We invite all of you in the subcommittee and those here to participate and work with us on those convenings. 

In the spirit of non-partisanship, we have met with the White 

House to promote our Louisiana faith-based leaders who remain 

champions of the recovery. 

61

As part of my testimony for the record, I submit to you a set of 

housing policy papers and other papers prepared in partnership 

with Rutgers University’s Initiative for Regional and Community 

Transformation. We lead with policy and we follow with social action. 

I am proud to represent the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation and I thank you for providing me with the opportunity to 

speak today. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. West can be found on page 191 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Now we will hear from Ms. Gloria Williams, who is a tenant. 

STATEMENT OF GLORIA WILLIAMS, TENANT 

Ms. WILLIAMS. Chairwoman Waters, and members of the committee, you will hear me say ‘‘our’’ because I am a twin and everything we do, we do it together. My name is Gloria Williams, her 

name is Bobbie Jennings, and we are twin sisters. 

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, we were residents of public housing 

in C.J. Peete. I lived there for 24 years, and she lived there for 37 

years. Respectfully, we are here today asking all of you to help us 

come back home. 

Since Hurricane Katrina, we have been displaced six times. We 

have vouchers for over $1,100, and our utility bills run $400 a 

month. I am going to tell you my income; I cannot tell you hers. 

My income is $667 a month, so I cannot afford to live outside of 

public housing. 

At C.J. Peete, we lived next door to each other. Our units did not 

get any water damage. As a matter of fact, no units in C.J. Peete 

had any water damage; HUD and HANO made that up. We did not 

get any water. The damage that was done to our home was done 

by looters after our homes were left unlocked. Everything was 

taken from us, all the tenants of C.J. Peete, and I know I can 

speak for C.J. Peete because my sister and I went in and cleaned 

up units. 

HUD and HANO claimed that it would take them 3 years—

which today I heard 2 years—to do one unit. It took us—me and 

my sister—4 hours to do one unit. 

We do not have—HUD cut the water off—HUD or HANO cut the 

water off to keep us out. They cut the lights off to keep us out. We 

went in and we cleaned up 15 units. It took us 2 days to clean up 

15 units until they put a sign on there that we were going to lose 

our vouchers. I have a family, and my sister has a family, and we 

cannot afford to live on the streets. 

We went to Baker, Louisiana, to visit some of our friends because 

we wanted to know if they wanted to come home, and we cleaned 

up their units. It is a concentration camp, Congress. You all ought 

to see it. I heard FEMA talking about how they have 60,000 or 

30,000; they have 600 trailers in Baker. They are close together; 

it is a cow pasture. A horse fly bit a friend of mine, and she had 

to travel all the way to New Orleans to get doctor’s care, because 

they were 30 miles from a doctor. They are 30 miles from school, 

they are 30 miles from a grocery store, and they have one bus to 

take them to Wal-Mart once a month. Come on now, there is no 

62

reason for us to have to to live like that. We can go home. HUD’s 

plan is about keeping us from home for a long time, probably until 

we die. 

We recently visited C.J. Peete friends at the camp that I told you 

about. I am not reading; I am just not a reader. 

Congresswoman Waters, we are asking you all today to stop 

HUD from awarding any contracts for redevelopment until the people come back and participate. 

Thank you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. 

Ms. Johnigan. 

STATEMENT OF DONNA JOHNIGAN, TENANT 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. Welcome to New Orleans, Chairwoman Waters, 

and members of the committee. First of all, I want to thank you 

for not just coming to listen to the people who make the decisions, 

but also the people like us who are directly affected by the decisions that everybody is making. 

I lived in B.W. Cooper for 30 years, and I have been a part of 

the resident council. I lost one son to violence, one to incarceration, 

and I am still fighting. I know what it feels like to lose a child. I 

am a 16-year survivor of breast cancer, so I advocate for American 

women on knowing about breast cancer. 

But when we left New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina, I was in 

the Superdome. I do not care how much money you put into the 

Superdome, I will never revisit it. If you could put that much 

money into the Superdome, you could put that much money in putting people back into homes, and into educating our children. 

When we came back to B.W. Cooper, the Housing Authority did 

not help us. It took my maintenance director, Mr. West, and three 

of his people to call my executive director, Darrell Williams, and 

the board of directors, five of us women who went through training 

to become resident management of our housing development. We 

came back, we started the assessment in B.W. Cooper, and we 

started removing debris, and doing assessments on our own apartments. I do not know if you saw the pictures; I still have the ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after’’ pictures. This was work done by our maintenance 

people. 

We came in, an then HANO came in and stopped the work, but 

when they saw that we would not stop, it was us who started. It 

took us, as residents, because we were responsible. 

I heard you ask, how do you track your residents? We went to 

every city where residents were, every shelter, every FEMA office, 

every hotel, everywhere residents were, and we know where our 

residents are, and I can show it to you, because we have it in black 

and white. We know where they are because we tracked them. 

Every other week for a year, myself and my board and my executive director traveled from Houston to New Orleans doing assessments on our development. We kept our residents informed about 

what was going on. We went to the HANO meetings. 

I heard you ask if HANO did anything else to help with personal 

items, replacing things. Not only did the storm destroy us, but vandalism came in and destroyed 80 percent after the storm and took 

away personal things. What more could we do? Nobody stood up for 

63

us. The resident leaders, not just in Cooper, in St. Bernard, Lafitte, 

C.J. Peete, Iberville, and Gus, we found out where our residents 

are. We do our own tracking. We know what it is to take care of 

our people because we have been doing it for so long. 

All we ever asked the Housing Authority for, or HUD, or anybody, was to give us the resources, the tools, and the funding, and 

let us take care of ourselves, because we have always done that. 

We had approximately 1,078 units occupied. We had a good after 

school program, and approximately 78 to 80 percent of the residents worked. All of us worked, even if it was at Burger King or 

McDonald’s. 

We taught our residents how to deal with what happened when 

welfare went into its 5-year lifetime term and after that you were 

not able to go back on welfare. 

Our job is as a liaison between a social service agency or anybody 

who makes decisions on our lives to be a part of it. Everybody does 

not have to make a decision on what we need to do. When we get 

angry as a people of color, and go to the schools, we are rioters. 

When other people go to the schools because things are not right 

for their children, they are concerned parents. What is the difference? 

And everybody wants to say it is not racism. It is not—well, look 

at the color of the people you see every day, who are begging to 

come back home, who need to be back home. Because it is a project, 

look at the violence in the City now. The projects are not open. 

Do they arrest them and ask them whether they are from public 

housing? Because it is not there. 

This is what I am saying. You talk about the revolving door. Has 

anybody taken a step to hire an ex-offender? Has anybody ever 

talked about giving them a job? No. But you know who picks them 

up? The drug dealers; the drug dealers are the employers and the 

entrepreneurs, because nobody else gives them a chance. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you wrap it up for me, please, Ms. 

Johnigan? 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. I sure will. But what I am saying is if anybody 

is going to do anything for us, then ask us what you can do to help 

us. I thought when you helped somebody—say I am a cripple and 

I drop my crutches—that you help me, you hand me my crutches 

to help me stand; you do not knock my crutches out of the way so 

that I cannot stand up on my own. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very, very much. 

Next, we have Mr. Ben Dupuy—how do you pronounce your last 

name? 

Mr. DUPUY. Dupuy. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Dupuy. The Cypress Group. 

STATEMENT OF BEN DUPUY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CYPRESS 

COTTAGE PARTNERS 

Mr. DUPUY. Thank you. I am Ben Dupuy, I am a native New 

Orleanian, and I am the executive director of Cypress Cottage 

Partners. I would like to thank the committee for conducting this 

hearing. I would also like to thank Governor Blanco for the LRA 

for their support for the project my testimony describes. 

64

The shortcomings of FEMA’s emergency housing options allowed 

for under current law are well known. The Inspector General of the 

Department of Homeland Security has reported that some of 

FEMA’s group sites on the Gulf Coast will be operating for 5 or 

more years and are far from ideal living conditions. The cost of a 

FEMA trailer is at least $60,000 for an 18-month period. As of the 

start of this year, there were 70,000 trailers in use in Louisiana. 

That amounts to a cost of $4.3 billion in this State alone. 

The combination of the unprecedented demand for disaster recovery housing and the shortcomings of existing options available 

prompted Congress last year to appropriate $400 million to FEMA 

for the Alternative Housing Pilot Program to: (1) identify new solutions for disaster recovery housing; and (2) transition displaced 

families into housing more appropriate for long-term use. The legislation included a one-time waiver of the Stafford Act so as to make 

it possible for homes built under this program to be occupied for 

longer than 18 months. Louisiana will receive $74 million. It is 

noteworthy that Mississippi received $281 million despite the fact 

that Louisiana had a far greater number of homes destroyed. The 

selected proposal for Louisiana was the Cypress Cottage Partners 

solution to build homes that transition from temporary housing to 

permanent communities or what we call temp to perm. 

The homes we will build are affordable, permanent, quickly constructed, appropriate for various sizes of families, able to withstand 

winds of up to 140 miles an hour, and easily adaptable to local zoning, building codes, and architectural styles. 

We will build several models of single family homes, ranging in 

size from two to three bedrooms. We will also build two models of 

single-story, multi-family buildings, with units ranging from one to 

four bedrooms. 

Our homes will carry a higher initial cost than trailers, however, 

their total life cycle cost will certainly be lower, given that the 

State of Louisiana will own a permanent and appreciating asset at 

the end of the 2-year pilot program. Most importantly, our homes 

will enable displaced citizens to move more quickly into housing 

appropriate for long-term use. If all of the trailers in group sites 

in the New Orleans area were instead temp-to-perm homes, the 

City’s affordable housing crisis likely would not be as severe as it 

is today. 

We plan to build our homes at four sites in southern Louisiana, 

each of which has formally expressed its support. In New Orleans, 

we plan to build homes in the Treme neighborhood. The State of 

Louisiana, which is currently developing its guidelines for this program, has indicated a willingness to prioritize former residents of 

public housing for residence in our homes in the Treme neighborhood. 

204,000 homes in Louisiana experienced major or severe damage 

from Katrina and Rita and there is a much greater demand for permanent homes like the ones we are building than can be delivered 

through Louisiana’s $74 million grant. Several solutions exist. 

First, the State could use proceeds from the sale of these homes to 

create a revolving fund that could be used to build additional units. 

Second, Congress could dedicate part of the funds from the proposed GSE Affordable Housing Program to the appropriate agenVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
65

cies in Louisiana and Mississippi to build additional units. Third, 

as Governor Blanco and members of the Louisiana Congressional 

delegation have advocated, Congress could appropriate additional 

funds to a Federal agency for this purpose. Finally, Congress 

should encourage FEMA and OMB to write the regulations and 

policies necessary to implement Congressman Richard Baker’s important provision in the DHS Fiscal Year 2007 appropriations bill 

that amends the Stafford Act to enable the Federal Government to 

build permanent housing in the wake of disasters. 

To respond to future disaster situations, the Federal Government 

should have among its available solutions the ability to deploy 

temp-to-perm housing that enables displaced citizens to return 

quickly to their communities and that prevents the prolonged purgatory of life in temporary group sites. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dupuy can be found on page 101 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very much. 

Our next witness is Ms. Emelda Paul. 

STATEMENT OF EMELDA PAUL, PRESIDENT, LAFITTE 

RESIDENT COUNCIL 

Ms. PAUL. Chairwoman Maxine Waters, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Emelda Paul, and I am 

a 30-year resident of Lafitte, as well as the president of the Lafitte 

Resident Council. 

Shortly after the announcement in August by Secretary Jackson, 

I was contacted by Providence, who met with the leaders of the Lafitte Resident Council and explained their role with Lafitte. 

We asked a lot of questions because we wanted to make sure 

that they were doing the right thing. Providence wanted to know 

our views and how we felt about the things that were happening 

with Lafitte. They wanted to know what Lafitte was like 20 years 

ago, and what we would like to see happen now, and what kind of 

apartments we wanted to see. 

Providence told us that they would make sure that every resident could come home. Every unit that was taken down would be 

replaced with a unit that would be affordable to the residents. And 

most importantly, that they would work with the residents in planning, not against them. 

I was skeptical at first. But they have kept their word on their 

promise ever since. We have been involved in every step of the 

process. 

There was a week-long workshop where they brought in all the 

local Lafitte residents in New Orleans and one in Houston. As the 

week went on, I liked what I heard. We were asked what we wanted to see and what we wanted to preserve and what kind of housing we wanted to live in. I was impressed with the presentation. 

A lot of the residents who were there agreed with the things that 

we saw. And most importantly, the plan that Providence had produced reflected the things that we said we wanted to see. 

I, along with some of the residents of Lafitte, worked with ACT 

to do a survey of Lafitte residents who were living in different 

States. We gave them an update on what was happening and lisVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
66

tened to their questions and concerns, and then Providence developed newsletters that responded to the things we were hearing 

from the residents. Providence did not have their own agenda; they 

listened to what we wanted. In our survey, we asked how many 

bedrooms they would need if they came back, what kind of help 

they would need when they come back, childcare, mental health, 

and counseling. 

I know there are a lot of people out there who need counseling, 

I am not one of them, but I know those who do. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Please allow Ms. Paul to give her testimony. 

Ms. PAUL. When I see and hear some of these people who are 

fighting the redevelopment, I ask myself who the heck are these 

people and where were they when we really needed them? All of 

a sudden, they are crawling out of the woodwork saying they want 

the historic buildings. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Please, please, please, you must let her 

talk. 

Ms. PAUL. They are talking about bricks and mortar. We are 

talking about people’s lives. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you hold on one moment, Ms. Paul? 

Ms. PAUL. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Now you may not agree with her testimony, but we must allow her to give her testimony and then there 

will be questions, so please cooperate with us. 

Yes, I know, please, please—please. Listen, we have done a great 

job today, we are learning a lot, let us keep— 

Ms. PAUL. We are the ones who have to live under these conditions. I cannot say for sure how many, but I think there are a lot 

of people who, like me, want things better than they have now. 

I have been back to Lafitte and from what I have seen, I do not 

want to go back there like that. I do not want to live like that any 

more. I am living in a senior village over at Fischer, and it is nice, 

clean, and safe. When I go for my appointment at Fischer and see 

my old apartment in Lafitte, it is depressing. Beyond the mold and 

the looting, it is also not safe. 

Those who say the buildings would be preserved are looking at 

the bricks and mortar, but they are not looking at the outside. 

When you get up close, you see that the ground is sinking. I had 

mold in my bedroom way before Katrina and now I have mold 

growing up the walls on both sides. If people are going to come 

back, I want to see them coming back to something decent, something healthy. I took photos of the development that shows what 

I saw from the window of my apartment after Katrina. 

People are under a lot of stress and want to come home. Something should be done as soon as possible to get the residents back 

and start working on new Lafitte. Our residents want to come 

home and they want a new apartment and new homes. They want 

something better for their families. So why can we not allow those 

who want to come home to come now and also take down and rebuild part of the sites in the meantime. While we are sitting here 

bickering about what should be done, the people are the ones who 

are suffering. In fact, some of them are dying. I lost a sister. I 

think there are about 300 to 350 individual families who want to 

67

come back now. And probably 100 or 200 would want to come back 

in a couple of years, because they are happy where they are right 

now. They have a decent apartment, their children are in school, 

and they have jobs and medical care where they are. We have to 

give them something to come back to first, something for the kids 

to do, schools and medical. 

I like the idea of phasing. I know that more and more people are 

excited about it. People can come home to apartments temporarily 

and participate in the planning for the redevelopment. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Ms. Paul, could you please wrap it up? 

Ms. PAUL. Yes, okay. 

Ms. PAUL. We want new apartments for our children. In other 

words, what we want is a new Jerusalem now. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Your time has expired and we will now go 

to our questions. 

Thank you very much. I will recognize myself for 5 minutes. I am 

going to ask the members to be very concise in their questions 

when their time comes. They have been very, very descriptive in 

their testimony. 

And so I want to just ask one question, and I want to ask this 

question of the residents. If there was a policy that returned everybody that wanted to return with the kind of support that I alluded 

to—relocation and getting out of the leases and some support for 

getting household goods back—and we got everybody back in, do 

you think that you could engage—and if there was a moratorium 

on dismantling or tearing down any units, do you think that as 

residents and as a resident council, you could engage with HUD 

and the City and talk about the future and give input and take a 

look at recommendations and make decisions that would be in the 

best interest of everybody. Would you do that? 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. But will they listen? Will HUD, will HANO, will 

anybody listen? 

Chairwoman WATERS. So let me understand. Basically what you 

are saying, Ms. Johnigan, and maybe what you are saying as well, 

Ms. Paul, is that we have to guarantee that everybody who wants 

to come back can come back. Do we all agree on that? Do we agree 

that redevelopment is not out of the question; it is just a matter 

of how it is done? 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. It is how it is done. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Do we agree that if people could get together and get some guarantees because of the fear that this development could not be one-on-one replacement, could exclude folks 

and may not get done for years like Desiree was done, that if all 

of these issues could be dealt with, there is a possibility that there 

could be a meeting of the minds about the future? 

Okay, thank you very much. That is all for me. We will go on 

now and I will recognize Mrs. Biggert. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. 

Mr. Kelly, could you explain exactly how you propose phasing the 

redevelopment of Lafitte? How many units, and what is the specific 

timetable? 

Mr. KELLY. The number of units on the phase-in, Ms. Biggert, 

would depend on how many residents want to come home. So I 

think the first thing to do would be to perform a new survey to forVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:47 May 17, 2007 Jkt 034675 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\34675.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
68

mally survey the residents, for example, of Lafitte, to find out how 

many want to come back to Lafitte or how many might want to 

come back to New Orleans. That would be the first step. From 

there, then you could move forward on knowing how many apartments that HANO and HUD would need to repair so the people 

could get back in them—repair and clean, not rehab or anything, 

just clean and repair. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Just repair them. 

Mr. KELLY. Clean and repair so people could get in right away. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. And about how many would that be? 

Mr. KELLY. The question out there is, is it 300, is it 400? We 

hear different numbers. I think you would have to do a formal survey. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. 

Mr. KELLY. And I think one of the things you could do is you 

could also do redevelopment off-site at the same time so that people 

would have an option at looking at homes off-site, as well. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Right now we want to talk about the developments. Mr. Jefferson. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

If I could, I would like to recognize Dr. Millie Charles, is she out 

here? Ms. Waters, she is a long-standing dean of the School of Social Work at Dillard University, and she has done so much work 

over the years with the Housing Authority. Is she still there? She 

has been ill, under the weather. It is wonderful to see her out. 

There she is. Thank you for permitting me to do that. 

I just want to ask one question of Mr. Kelly. I want to commend 

the tenants and all of the folks who have testified. This has been 

wonderful testimony and very helpful. 

I want to ask you a question. I wish I had asked someone else, 

but my time ran out. The problem seems to be that decisions are 

being made for people when they are not in town. 

And the question is, no matter how beautiful these plans may be, 

do you think it is right for these decisions to be made with people 

not here able to participate? Or should we make that an essential 

part of building this case of trust? 

Mr. KELLY. No argument from me. We have gone to Houston; we 

have brought in residents from Baton Rouge; we have tried to 

reach out. We have had residents survey other residents. Is it ever 

enough? Absolutely not. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. I understand, and the chairwoman has it right. 

If we get our people back home first so that they can participate 

and be a part of the decisionmaking, then we can go ahead and 

make these plans for development and improvement. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Neugebauer. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Madam Chairwoman, I do not have any questions for these witnesses. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. Mr. Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, one quick question 

for our ACORN representative. Would you just quickly please tell 

us about the two projects that we saw today, if you did not mention 

it in your testimony, the two houses that were constructed. I would 

like to know how much it cost to construct those units, please, and 

69

how long it took. And when you are up and running, how long will 

it take? Just quickly, please. 

And I will yield back, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. BRADBERRY. The two houses that were developed down on 

Dellary Street were a partnership with Louisiana State University 

with a grant from Housing and Urban Development that trained 

gentlemen from Bethany Colony South and Covenant House in how 

to do construction work. Those houses were funded primarily, construction was funded by Countrywide Bank in the form of grants 

to go to two Lower Ninth Ward residents. I think it is around 

$84,000 per property for those two properties and it was an extensive program, including the training and all, I think it took maybe 

about 9 months for that. 

Mr. GREEN. We may have missed that number. Was that $84,000 

per unit? 

Mr. BRADBERRY. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. 

Mr. BRADBERRY. If we were to sell them. 

Mr. GREEN. I yield back. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. Did Mr. Cleaver 

leave? Mr. Sires. 

Mr. SIRES. I do not have a question, but I do have a compliment 

to ACORN on your advocacy for affordable housing. In my State, 

you are a force for affordable housing and I compliment you. Keep 

up the good work and we are here to work with you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. We would like to thank you very, very 

much and we are going to call up our next panel now. Thank you 

so much. 

We are now seating the fourth panel. Each will be recognized for 

5 minutes for an opening statement. To the panel, please take your 

seats and let us ask everyone else to take a seat. 

Chairwoman WATERS. We need order please. Please take your 

seats. This panel is made up of Ms. Isabel Reiff, senior vice president, ICF International, Inc.; Mr. Mark Rodi, president-elect of the 

Louisiana Realtors Association; Ms. Tracie L. Washington, director, 

NAACP Gulf Coast Advocacy Center; and Mr. Paul R. Taylor, 

president, SRP Development. 

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would give me your attention, there 

is going to be some very important information that we are about 

to hear. It is very important that we keep down the noise so that 

we can hear our panelists. 

We are going to start with Ms. Isabel Reiff, senior vice president 

of ICF International, Inc. 

STATEMENT OF ISABEL REIFF, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ICF 

INTERNATIONAL, INC. 

Ms. REIFF. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Waters, and members of 

the subcommittee. I am Isabel Reiff, the senior vice president of 

ICF International, and the deputy program manager for the Louisiana Road Home Program. I am pleased to participate in today’s 

hearing and will discuss ICF’s role in the implementation of the 

program. 

70

ICF was founded as the Inner City Fund in 1969 to provide analysis and advice on public policy issues facing inner city communities. 

Chairwoman WATERS. One moment, please, Ms. Reiff, one moment. Ladies and gentlemen, it is very important for you to cooperate with us. We cannot hear up here and we need this information 

in order to go back and make good public policy. So if you will help 

us out, we would appreciate it very much. Thank you. Let’s start 

again. 

Ms. REIFF. Okay. As I said, I am Isabel Reiff, and I am the senior vice president with ICF International, and the deputy program 

manager for the Louisiana Road Home Program. I am pleased to 

participate in today’s hearing. I will discuss ICF’s role in the implementation of this program. 

ICF was founded as the Inner City Fund in 1969 to provide analysis and advice on public policy issues facing inner city communities across the United States. We bring decades of experience 

with the Community Development Block Grant Program and we 

have also been involved with major housing disaster recovery 

projects and emergency response related work. 

As many have said, the level of devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is unparalleled. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Please. We really do need to get the information. The hour is getting late and it is very important. And I 

want to ask my witnesses to get to the meat of their testimony. We 

would love to hear about your background, but we want to hear 

about Road Home. 

Ms. REIFF. Okay. We signed, ICF signed, a 3-year contract with 

the State of Louisiana in June of 2006. We have been under contract since June and we have been in the operational phase of this 

program for 41⁄2 months. 

During the initial pilot phase of this program, we established 10 

housing assistance centers, we hired and trained 2,000 staff, we developed the Road Home application, and we began the planning of 

the rental program. 

In October, with the beginning of the implementation phase, we 

began to accept applications and move homeowners through the 

process that culminates in the disbursement of funds. During this 

implementation phase, we have also opened a center in Houston, 

Texas, and we are deploying mobile units to Atlanta, Georgia, and 

Dallas, Texas, to also reach out to homeowners. 

Originally, we planned to complete the process of accepting applications, calculating awards, and closing on all of these transactions 

by the end of 2008. We now project that much of this work will be 

done and most closings held by the end of this calendar year, a 

year earlier than the original schedule. 

During the 4 months of this operational phase, we have, as of 

February 18th, received over 105,000 applications. We have scheduled, or held, actually, appointments with nearly 80,000 applicants; 

we have visited over 65,000 homes to conduct home evaluations; 

and we have committed in excess of $3 billion in funding for close 

to 40,000 applicants. 

Through the end of February, we expect to close on approximately 2,600 applicants. In the month of February alone, we will 

71

be closing on 6 times the number of applicants in the whole period 

of the program prior to that. And we have every expectation that 

the numbers will increase significantly and appreciably as people 

move through the process. 

Chairwoman WATERS. We are going to have to ask you to wrap 

it up and we will get back to you with questions. 

Ms. REIFF. Okay. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Reiff can be found on page 159 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. We will move on to our next person on the 

panel, Ms. Washington. 

STATEMENT OF TRACIE L. WASHINGTON, DIRECTOR, NAACP 

GULF COAST ADVOCACY CENTER 

Ms. WASHINGTON. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Waters, and 

members of the Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee, and thank you for allowing me to testify this afternoon. 

I know you want to get to the meat of what we have to say and 

so I am going to try to work around what I had prepared. 

We are here today in a City that is known for its ability to have 

a good time, but I am here today because this subcommittee really 

offers the last best chance to bring some discipline and some sense 

to what I can only refer to as bureaucrats gone wild. 

You have the power and the moral responsibility and fortitude to 

solve New Orleans’s affordable housing crisis, and we need you to 

step in because those who have been charged with this responsibility have failed miserably. Now you know the problems. You have 

been to public housing and you have heard, I am sure, about the 

problems with Road Home. 

I want to kind of answer the charge. You asked us to provide you 

with some proposed solutions, and I want to talk to you today 

about some of those solutions. 

First, let me talk about public housing, and I am going to get to 

solutions. I want to dispel a couple of myths that you heard today. 

Public housing residents pay rent. I want everybody in this room 

to understand that if you have an income, and you live in public 

housing, 33 percent of your aggregate income goes to pay—is part 

of your rent calculation. 

Public housing residents work. We live in a very poor City, but 

86 percent of my clients, public housing residents, work at least 

one job, many of them work two or three jobs, just to move from 

being abjectly poor to just poor. 

Public housing residents in the public housing communities cannot be seen as the breeding ground for crime. We had a real interesting e-mail from one of our city council members, a breeding 

ground for crime. Four murders in the last 24 hours during Mardi 

Gras, not a public housing development big four open. The bricks 

did not shoot anybody, mortar and concrete do not shoot anybody. 

So let us stop the madness about, you know, the public housing 

buildings commit the crimes. 

Next thing, number two, let us debunk some of these fairy tales 

that you heard today from some of the people who testified. Public 

housing residents do not ‘‘want’’ to return home, they are here. 

72

They might live with cousin Ray Ray, Aunt Sis, or whomever, but 

they are here. 

Number three, that are 2,000 units open right now. Representative Cleaver, you are from the show-me State. Next time somebody 

says that, please put them under oath—please. Tell them to please 

tell you where those 2,000 units are, we do not know where those 

2,000 units are, and they do not know where those 2,000 units are. 

It is fantasy. 

And finally, that it costs more to rehabilitate than it does to demolish and tear down; that is just not true. I am not going to go 

through all the numbers, let me just give you Lafitte. $20 million—

now these are HANO’s numbers, their insurance company. The 

wonderful thing about litigation is that when you sue somebody 

and the judge says to give them the information, we can get it. $20 

million to repair, $100 million to demolish and rebuild. Now this 

ain’t Iraq. That math should work for somebody—$20 million to repair, $100 million to demolish and rebuild. This does not make 

sense. 

So what should we do? First of all, all we have been asking for 

a survey. Now I know HANO cannot do the survey, they cannot 

find 200 or 300 residents. But somebody surely can do a survey and 

find the people they are still giving checks to, do a survey, find out 

when they want to come home—30 days, 60 days, 90 days, or 120 

days. Not rocket science. We can get this survey done, but they 

have to give you the information. Now they will not give it to 

Tracie Washington, but surely they can give it to Maxine Waters. 

We can get that information. 

Once we find out who wants to come home and when, open the 

units. We know that the units can be cleaned out and opened. And 

then once we get people home, we can have a fair, reasonable conversation about what happens with public housing. I do not live in 

public housing. I will take part in the conversation like the rest of 

the community, but it is not my home. It is their home. 

Bring them home and we will deal with the redevelopment. Just 

cleaning them up, repair, whatever, but let us get the survey done. 

Okay, in my written testimony, I have some other proposed solutions but I want to very quickly move on to Road Home, because 

Road Home is just—that is just bad. That is just bad and you need 

to hear some solutions and I am going to just give one because my 

testimony, my written testimony gives more. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I am going to need you to wrap it up 

quickly. Go ahead. 

Ms. WASHINGTON. It is not difficult to give away $10.5 billion if 

you want to. We know 100,000 people, 100,000 homes had water. 

Insurance companies did not go to 100,000 homes in the City of 

New Orleans, they said okay, zip code 70125, you had 3 feet, so we 

are going to give you 30 percent of your insurance policy. If you 

need more, write us. 70122, you had 9 feet, so you are going to get 

all of your money, because we know with 9 feet of water, you need 

your policy limit. 

If insurance companies can do it, and if banks know how to give 

out money, why do we need—all due respect—to give you $800 million to give away $10 billion? That does not make any sense to me. 

73

I want Congress to simply change the regulation. I say they can 

do it if they try. But they cannot get it done, but if you could write 

new law and legislation and help us, so that our people can come 

home, you would have done a service to this community that we 

cannot expect now for another 10 years. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Washington can be found on 

page 180 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Rodi. 

STATEMENT OF MARK RODI, PRESIDENT-ELECT, LOUISIANA 

REALTORS ASSOCIATION 

Mr. RODI. Madam Chairwoman, and other distinguished members of the committee, I want to thank you on behalf of the Louisiana Realtors and the National Association of Realtors for allowing us to make comments on public policy that we think would be 

effective in future disasters and in the current situation we are in. 

I have already submitted a detailed testimony, so I am going to 

summarize quickly what we have. 

First of all, it is our knowledge that FEMA, HUD, and Homeland 

Security struggled to develop a cohesive plan to assist housing 

needs immediately after. 403, 408, and housing vouchers did not 

work. The rules were too complicated, and even the officials did not 

know how to interpret them. 

We at the National Association of Realtors and Louisiana Realtors believe that the responsibility for disaster housing should be 

moved from FEMA to HUD. They have the most effective knowledge of where the houses are and where we could put people. Trailers, cruise ships, and hotels do not work in the short run or in the 

long run. 

We would also like to say that the national flood insurance 

works. I was one of the beneficiaries, I got paid quickly, and I was 

able to start my rehabilitation. While we may have some funding 

problems because of solvency, it is a program that should be continued by the Congress and we would encourage the Congress to do 

everything it can to encourage the implementation of Bunning-Bereuter-Blumenauer, the Flood Reform Act of 2004. 

The Gulf recovery is an ongoing problem. Construction costs have 

skyrocketed. Already, Dr. Blakely testified that if we did not have 

affordable housing for construction workers, we are not going to be 

able to get New Orleans rebuilt. We have to do something with 

Federal assistance in the reconstruction of housing in this area. 

One of the things that we could do is for the Congress to take 

a look, and this committee, although it might not be in its jurisdiction, to support a continuing House resolution of 1549, the bipartisan bill of the 109th Congress which provided tax credits of up 

to 50 percent for the cost of construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing. This would allow the capital accumulation that 

we need from the private sector to help implement the reconstruction in New Orleans and in future disasters throughout the country. 

NAR and Louisiana specifically believe that the Congress has to 

address a comprehensive national disaster policy on insurance. 

Without affordable insurance, there is no affordable housing, 

74

whether it be for a homeowner or a renter, because renters are 

passed on those costs for high insurance. The Congress needs to do 

something about a disaster insurance for—to underwrite and put 

a limit for the public insurance companies. 

We appreciate the fact that you have given us the time to have 

a short testimony today. Our written report is filed with the clerk 

and we thank you for this opportunity. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rodi can be found on page 170 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Paul Taylor. 

STATEMENT OF PAUL R. TAYLOR, JR., PRESIDENT, SRP 

DEVELOPMENT 

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for 

the opportunity to testify today and submit this statement regarding the affordable housing crisis that New Orleans is facing in the 

aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To the other Members of Congress, I am thankful for being given the opportunity to testify 

today. 

I am here today as a follow-up to an invitation Congresswoman 

Waters extended during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 35th annual legislative conference. The invitation was to develop solutions for the rebuilding of New Orleans as part of the 

outcome of ‘‘The Rebuilding Process in New Orleans: Strategies for 

Leveraging the Public-Private Partnership Forum’’ held during the 

ALC. 

We were one of several national development firms, AfricanAmerican firms, that was brought in to look at how we can take 

the engines that we have in other cities and bring them in partnership with New Orleans, not to replace jobs and people in New Orleans, but to bring solutions. 

We have taken the Congresswoman up on that effort and I am 

pleased to be here today. 

SRP Development is a faith-based development construction 

firm, which is one of the largest African-American construction concerns in the country. Our organization has done projects ranging 

from Union Station in Washington, D.C., to the MCI Arena, and 

Coseco Stadiums—a lot of public works as well as doing housing 

subdivisions for low- to moderate-income people, and HOPE VI 

projects all over the country. My resume and background is included in the record. 

But what I want to focus on very clearly here, and it is appropriate that we are last on this issue, because once all the conversations are done, somebody has to put a shovel in the ground and get 

work done. And right now, the challenges that we see when we put 

that shovel in the ground to get the work done are some very glaring things that are being omitted, being touched on, but being 

omitted in the process. 

The residents have clearly demonstrated that they have lost everything that they have. You have also heard from the recovery 

fund people and everyone else that the verification of ownership is 

impacting the ability to collect resources and get access to resources. 

75

What we have looked at when we have come into New Orleans, 

and you have heard it today, 40 percent of the homes in greater 

New Orleans were duplex two-family structures. That is a large 

percentage of homes that are providing rental and homeownership. 

Public housing is important, and I am a strong advocate of public 

housing. But we also have to look at the loss of those duplex units 

from the housing stock, because what it is doing, it is starting to 

create a cannibal effect of people who have been displaced from 

homeownership and these duplexes on a limited amount of resources to replace housing. 

55 percent of all housing in New Orleans, as the Mayor testified, 

was rental housing; that means 45 percent of the housing stock 

was homeowners, and those homes were destroyed or lost also. 

What is happening in this equation is that you are starting to 

see people take, and you have heard it in the testimony, take available housing because you have lost homeownership as well. The effort has to be very well balanced. If not, you are going to continue 

to create crisis. 

The community impact we see once you get the housing on the 

ground is three points. 

The very first one is amazing, a lot of people did not talk about 

it today. You have a title insurance problem here. You cannot get 

title or clear title to real estate. You cannot access the Road Home 

funds, you cannot access Fannie Mae, you cannot access Freddie 

Mac. You cannot access anything without title. So with that process, we have looked at that and said, ‘‘Okay, we have to develop 

a solution.’’ 

The second point, our research has shown that the lack of reasonable property insurance—I am just taking a couple of examples 

of research we have done here. The average insurance between the 

flood insurance, the property insurance—and that is not even 

counting wind insurance—is going to run between $7,000 and 

$10,000 a home—$7,000 to $10,000. You are not going to put people back in housing with that kind of pricing structure, especially 

when you are talking about the affordable people. Plus, when you 

take that and you push it into the rental community, it is going 

to continue to raise the ceilings. 

The last impact, and it is the most important impact, is the financial gap. 

Chairwoman WATERS. You need to wrap it up, Mr. Taylor. 

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, ma’am. 

You have heard the impacts on the gaps. The gaps are going to 

range anywhere between $80,000 to $100,000. Funds are not going 

to be there for people to pick up the housing on the other side. 

Our recommendations: 

First, title insurance. I had with me today, but he had to leave, 

the chief underwriter for Stewart Title. Stewart Title has entered 

into an MOU with our firm and our partnerships here in New Orleans to actually write through the title insurance and actually create, along with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and 

Congress, a title mitigation fund. The purpose of that fund is that 

if you cannot verify the title, issue the policy. Mitigate the claim 

on the back side, because we are doing without housing because we 

76

are coming up with solutions of why we cannot provide the funding. 

The second solution is on the insurance side. We are already 

starting to take it upon our group and organization to meet with 

some of the top insurance companies in the country. We have gone 

directly to the top and we are going to challenge them on this pricing structure. 

The third piece, and it is one you have heard today, is if we are 

going to come in as private developers, we cannot work with all 

this confusion—a lot of confusion. And it is impacting people’s lives. 

We are not criticizing the local system that has been done today. 

But we are going to partner and work with institutions like Dillard 

University in developing RFP’s so that we can work with that form 

of government on a smaller scale and then download our entire resources, because they are a stakeholder here and they have been 

here for a long time. That resource will then be able to work in this 

particular community, the Gentilly community, to perfect change. 

Thank you, ma’am. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Taylor can be found on page 177 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very, very much. I do appreciate your testimony here today. 

I would like to recognize myself for a question or so. I am going 

to turn my questions to the Road Home Program. 

I want you to start with the number of applications that you 

have received, and give me the numbers again. You said 105,000, 

then you gave me 80,000 had been something, then you said 

65,000. Then I want to you to tell me exactly how many applications you have completed and funded. Quickly. 

Ms. REIFF. Okay. We prepare and present this data every single 

day in an official report, so I will give you the information through 

this Tuesday. Okay? So as of this Tuesday, we had recorded 

109,176 applications. We have scheduled—we have mailed out letters to applicants inviting them to come in for an appointment to 

100,139 applicants, of which 75,536 have called to schedule their 

appointments. We have completed 78,033 appointments through 

Tuesday and we have calculated benefits for 43,421 applicants 

and— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I am sorry, what was the 43,000, what is 

that? 

Ms. REIFF. We have calculated benefits for 43,421 applicants and 

have actually sent out letters to 35,873 of those applicants. To date, 

we have received back—this is something that comes back, not 

something that we have done—but we have received back benefit 

selection forms where applicants have made their decisions, from 

17,307 homeowners. We have scheduled, again through Tuesday, 

2,160 closings and we have held through Tuesday, 749 closings. 

Obviously, these numbers change every day. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right, so you have actually closed or 

funded 749 residents, homeowners. 

Ms. REIFF. Through Tuesday, yes, that’s correct. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Through Tuesday. Those 749 have gotten 

money, is that what you are saying? 

Ms. REIFF. The money is provided to a lending institution. 

77

Chairwoman WATERS. I beg your pardon? 

Ms. REIFF. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. 749 have gotten money. 

Ms. REIFF. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, given all of the criticism about the 

program, all of the news accounts, and the beatings that the Governor’s Office is taking on this, our concern about this, the unhappiness of the residents and the homeowners, what do you recommend can be done to implement this program faster, to get rid 

of the accusations that you do not know how to do appraisals, you 

do not know how to clear title, that the program is only designed 

to mitigate against fraud or to keep fraud from taking place and 

these obstacles have just made this an unworkable program? What 

are you going to do? 

Ms. REIFF. Okay, why don’t I start by telling you some of the 

things that we have done and that— 

Chairwoman WATERS. No, no, no. Just tell me what you will do 

to straighten out the program. If you have done it already, just say 

that this is how we straightened out appraisals. 

Ms. REIFF. We are accepting affidavits from homeowners for 

their insurance and for their FEMA so that we can move forward 

before we get the third party verification. We are having homeowners—we have implemented a second disbursement policy so if 

homeowners are not satisfied with their award or do not have all 

of the documentation they need, they can go to closing and they 

can go back a second time for an additional disbursement, they do 

not have to have it all in perfect place to be able to move ahead. 

Chairwoman WATERS. That is at the end. 749 or so, you know, 

10 or 15 may be unhappy, I do not know, but how do you get, how 

do you move the numbers? 

Ms. REIFF. We are—you probably remember we have received 

109,000 applications and we have only scheduled 75,000 appointments and we are calling everyone who has had an application— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Did you hire more people? 

Ms. REIFF. We are calling every individual— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Did you hire more people? 

Ms. REIFF. Excuse me? 

Chairwoman WATERS. Did you increase your personnel in order 

to do this? 

Ms. REIFF. Yes, of course we did. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, thank you. 

Ms. REIFF. When the program was accelerated, we increased our 

personnel tremendously. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you at any time, if this does not 

move any better or faster, would you at any time say to the State 

of Louisiana that this is not working, we want to tell you that you 

need to find another way to do it. We appreciate the contract, but 

we need to get out of it? 

Ms. REIFF. We are in constant contact with everybody at the 

State level and the Federal level; yes, we would, of course say that. 

We would make every suggestion. We are fully committed to doing 

this as expeditiously as possible. We share the sense of urgency. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. My time is up, I 

am going to have to go to our ranking member, Mrs. Biggert. 

78

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. I think rather than ask a question, 

and we have been here since a little bit after 2:00 and we I think 

have had a thorough hearing and I would like to thank all of the 

witnesses for this panel. I think you all have brought something 

new to the table from what we have been talking about this afternoon, and I think we will take that back. 

I am particularly interested in the insurance and the title. In one 

of my former lives, I used to be a real estate lawyer, so this has 

always been something that is so important, and really, I think, is 

an impediment to the development and the rehab and everything 

and it needs to be resolved in order to move ahead. 

But I do think that all of the witnesses have really brought 

something to the table and all of the residents that are here, all 

of the people here as I look across the room, there are not as many 

as were here at 2:15, but I think it just shows—but there are a 

lot—and it really shows the commitment to the issue and the challenges that we all face in trying to resolve this. And I appreciate 

everybody staying and listening and participating. 

So thank you very much. With that, I yield back. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very, very much. 

Mr. Jefferson. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I am just 

going to ask one question. 

Can you tell me, describe for me, the demographics of the folks 

who have been awarded the Road Home grants so far? What neighborhoods do they come from? 

Ms. REIFF. I can provide that to you separately. We do compile 

a list of everyone who has closed on the program by parish and according to a whole variety of demographic data and I can provide 

that to you. I do not have that in front of me. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. The anecdotal information we have is that the 

people who are best situated, who have the better homes and all 

that, who are more knowledgeable, who always know how to work 

the system better, are getting results. And other folks are having 

a harder time. So we just want to be sure how this thing is working out for people. Okay? 

Ms. REIFF. Yes. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. Can you help us out with that? 

Ms. REIFF. I can provide you all that data. 

Mr. JEFFERSON. I want to give others a chance. I know that the 

hour is late. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Neugebauer. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters. 

I think this day has been very productive and I appreciate the 

participation of the witnesses and my colleagues and certainly the 

folks who came. As I said earlier, it shows your commitment to 

making this work. 

I want to kind of go back to what Mr. Taylor was talking about, 

because as a former land developer and homebuilder, I been in the 

real estate business, you know the title insurance piece of it is an 

important part of that. That is an interesting proposal by Stewart 

Title and I wondered if that would require any Federal changes 

in—title insurance laws in Texas are pretty much regulated by the 

79

State and so you are not proposing any Federal participation in 

this to bring that forward; did I hear you correctly? 

Mr. TAYLOR. That is correct. One of the things that we sat down 

with—I had the chief underwriter for Steward Title here today. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Yes. 

Mr. TAYLOR. And one of the things that we have looked at—in 

the pricing structure—is to create a recovery fund to deal with any 

mitigation. We can then come back and look at taking it to a national level to create like a reinsurance if we need to. We are not 

looking at tinkering with any of the laws, that is just slowing it 

down. We can make it work within the existing structure. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Now I guess that is where I want to go. Is 

that reinsurance fund a Federal fund or a State fund? 

Mr. TAYLOR. We are looking at it both ways, looking at it both 

ways, does it make sense at the State level or the Federal level. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Can I make a suggestion? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Sure. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. You do not want the Federal Government involved in this any more than you possibly have to, so I would suggest to you that you try to do that at the State level. Trust me. 

Mr. Rodi, you bring up a great point about the insurance. It is 

one of the things that I have—I have just recently come to Congress, about 4 years ago I was building communities in Texas, and 

what I do know is that the cost of housing, and part of that is taxes 

and insurance and all of those, that piece of it, but one of the 

things I think is incumbent upon this committee, I think if we in 

the 110th Congress, we are going to have to come up with a solution on a comprehensive policy that addresses all of the risks of living on the coast. And quite honestly, one of those proposals in my 

mind is actually to get the Federal Government out of the insurance business and come up with a way that that pricing structure 

is built into the marketplace. Because quite honestly, I think long 

term, it is more—the private markets are more efficient. I think in 

some ways we are prolonging or subsidizing the behavior in the 

marketplace that is somewhat manipulative. So I would look forward to hearing solutions. 

And I appreciate particularly this panel. You brought some solutions to the table and that is really what we need. We have plenty 

of—and I think my colleague said we had talked about a lot but 

we need to start doing a lot more. So I appreciate the solutions that 

you brought and look forward to—Mr. Taylor, did you want to 

make a comment? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes. I would just ask that as you look to do that, 

I think—I have been in the business a long time, just like banks 

are regulated, I think the insurance companies need to be regulated. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you. And I will yield back my time. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. 

Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Let me just—

since this is probably my last question, thank you very much for 

all of the commitment you have shown over the—since the tragedy. 

I appreciate it very much. 

80

Ms. Reiff, did I pronounce your name correctly? Do you have any 

idea how much the homeowners have been paid so far? 

Ms. REIFF. I do not have the number off the top of my head, no. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Do you have any idea how much ICF has received 

thus far? 

Ms. REIFF. I do not know that number either, not off the top of 

my head. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Okay. Those are some important questions—well, 

the answers are more important than the questions. And the reason I am saying that is that we are talking about a lot of money, 

I think you would agree. And so it certainly causes one to wonder 

why the State would not enter into some kind of contractual agreement with local banks to handle this kind of money, because most 

States are not equipped to do this. And I think the latter part of 

what I just said makes more sense if I knew the numbers. I mean, 

for example, if ICF has received more than the homeowners, then 

I think we have a problem. Is there any possibility I can get that 

before we leave? 

Ms. REIFF. I would be happy to provide your staff with that data. 

Obviously, ICF has incurred—we have a team of 23 firms and we 

have engaged in a very substantial startup effort. We have opened 

11 centers including centers in Houston. We have hired 2,000 people, 84 percent of whom are Louisiana residents, and 70 percent of 

whom have been affected by the storm. 

Mr. CLEAVER. I think it is a very difficult job, I am not trying 

to make light of it. I think it is a very, very difficult and complicated job. 

My concern is the ratio that homeowners get compared with ICF 

at this point. If the ratio is always in favor of ICF, then I think 

maybe you would agree that we would have a problem. 

Ms. REIFF. Right. Sir, over the course of this project, the ratio 

will certainly be on the side of the homeowner. 

Chairwoman WATERS. If the gentleman will yield. We would like 

you to submit for the record to us the information that is being requested from you. 

Ms. REIFF. Absolutely. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Sires. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

You have 108,000 applications? This is the number, or 109,000? 

Ms. REIFF. That is applications, yes. 

Mr. SIRES. Is this in the 41⁄2 months span that you have been 

there? Is that— 

Ms. REIFF. Excuse me? 

Mr. SIRES. Is that in the 41⁄2 months? 

Ms. REIFF. Yes. In the operational phase, yes. 

Mr. SIRES. That is a staggering number. 

Ms. REIFF. Yes, it is, sir. 

Mr. SIRES. Maybe the Federal Government should contract you 

to do the census in 2010 since you are so good at getting, you 

know— 

Ms. REIFF. One job at a time. 

Mr. SIRES. —at doing this. This company, yours, it just went 

public, right, recently? 

81

Ms. REIFF. Yes. 

Mr. SIRES. Was it after you got the contract? 

Ms. REIFF. We went public after we won the contract, yes. We 

decided to go public considerably before that. 

Mr. SIRES. So this contract in essence has increased your revenues by a large amount since you went public. 

Ms. REIFF. It has increased our revenue, yes. 

Mr. SIRES. Well, I just hope that, you know, all these numbers 

are correct and you are doing, you know, what it says here, because 

I just find it difficult to look at these numbers and just not question it. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, very, very much. 

With that, the Chair notes that some members may have additional questions for this panel which they may wish to submit in 

writing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 

30 days for members to submit written questions to these witnesses and to place their responses in the record. 

And I have been told to share with you that we have copies of 

much of the testimony that was done here today, and to the extent 

that it will cover the members in this room, you are welcome to it. 

They will make it available to you so you can take this testimony 

with you and review it at home. 

And with that, the hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 6:55 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

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A P P E N D I X

February 22, 2007

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