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26–753 PDF 2006

HOUSING OPTIONS IN THE AFTERMATH

OF HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

DECEMBER 8, 2005

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services

Serial No. 109–67

(

(II)

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

MICHAEL G. OXLEY, Ohio, Chairman

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

DEBORAH PRYCE, Ohio 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama 

MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio 

SUE W. KELLY, New York, Vice Chair 

RON PAUL, Texas 

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio 

JIM RYUN, Kansas 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

VITO FOSSELLA, New York 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio 

MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida 

RICK RENZI, Arizona 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

TOM PRICE, Georgia 

MICHAEL G. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

CAMPBELL, JOHN, California 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts 

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 

DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

BARBARA LEE, California 

DENNIS MOORE, Kansas 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEVE ISRAEL, New York 

CAROLYN MCCARTHY, New York 

JOE BACA, California 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

MELISSA L. BEAN, Illinois 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin, 

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

Robert U. Foster, III, Staff Director 

(III)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio, Chairman

GARY G. MILLER, California, Vice Chairman 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio 

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida 

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida 

RICK RENZI, Arizona 

STEVAN, PEARCE, New Mexico 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL G. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky 

CAMPBELL, JOHN, California 

MICHAEL G. OXLEY, Ohio 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

BARBARA LEE, California 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

AL GREEN, Texas 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts 

(V)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

December 8, 2005 ............................................................................................. 1

Appendix: 

December 8, 2005 ............................................................................................. 53

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2005

Garratt, David E., Acting Director, Recovery Division, Federal Emergency 

Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security ................................ 12

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Oxley, Hon. Michael G. .................................................................................... 54

Ney, Hon. Robert .............................................................................................. 56

Garratt, David E. .............................................................................................. 58

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Hon. Robert Ney: 

Joint statement from the National Community Development Association, 

et al. ............................................................................................................... 72

Letter from the National Multi Housing Council and the National Apartment Association ........................................................................................... 78

Hon. Barney Frank: 

Statement from the National Low Income Housing Coalition ...................... 80

Letter from the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials ................................................................................................................ 81

Hon. Al Green: 

Three letters from Hon. Bill White, Mayor, City of Houston, Texas ........... 84

Hon. David Scott: 

List of News Headlines .................................................................................... 93

(1)

HOUSING OPTIONS IN THE AFTERMATH 

OF HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA 

Thursday, December 8, 2005

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 10:06 a.m., in room 

2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Robert W. Ney [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Ney, Baker, Neugebauer, Davis, Waters, Velazquez, Carson, Lee, Scott, Frank, Davis, Cleaver, and 

Green. 

Also present: Representatives Melancon and Watt. 

Chairman NEY. The Housing Subcommittee will come to order, 

and the hearing today is on the housing options in the aftermath 

of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. 

The Housing Subcommittee meets this morning to discuss the 

Federal Government’s response to the emergency housing needs of 

residents affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; specifically, the 

Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, hotel program for 

evacuees and the role of the HUD housing programs in response 

to disasters. 

Also, we had hoped, I had personally hoped to include the Department of Housing and Urban Development in today’s panel, but 

due to some scheduling conflicts, they were unable to attend. However, I was assured by the HUD Secretary last Monday that the 

Department would be able and available to participate in another 

hearing on this matter. I think it is going to be critical. The Department is going to have to make someone available to be here to 

discuss this important issue. So we are going to continue— 

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman NEY. Yes, Mr. Frank. 

Mr. FRANK. I wonder if at this point I might be recognized for 

2 minutes. 

Chairman NEY. The gentleman is recognized. 

Mr. FRANK. As you know, and I gave you notice, and I appreciate 

very much the efforts that you and the Chairman of the Full Committee have made to have a HUD representative, but it is unthinkable that we should be without a HUD representative on a housing 

policy matter. It is also a disadvantage—and I appreciate FEMA 

has been very forthcoming. I have some criticisms of how they have 

done this, but they have always been responsive to our request for 

2

meetings. I wish I could say the same thing for HUD. Not having 

HUD and FEMA here at the same time is already a disadvantage 

because there is a collaborative effort here, we hope. But the failure of HUD—and I understand you have made several efforts, and 

Chairman Oxley has made several efforts. The Secretary was given 

a week’s notice. It wasn’t a demand that he personally come but 

that a responsible official come. I know you tried through the staff, 

diligently, to schedule something for next week. And the notion 

that HUD would refuse to come and has not, by now, given you a 

firm date is an outrage. 

And I therefore would note that Ms. Waters, the ranking member 

of the subcommittee, and I have submitted a letter—which I believe you have—yesterday to you. Let me just read it. 

‘‘We are writing to request that you convene a business meeting 

of the Housing Subcommittee at the earliest opportunity and prior 

to the end of the current Congressional session so that members of 

the subcommittee can vote to authorize and issue a subpoena to 

HUD Secretary Alphonzo Jackson. I am very disappointed that we 

have to come to asking you to do this, but it is just an outrage, a 

Constitutional outrage, for the Secretary of the relevant department not to come and speak about these issues.’’ 

And because while FEMA has some responsibility, we have a 

longer-term responsibility; we have the question of the interactivity 

of HUD section 8 vouchers and what has been going on. And so I 

just want to note this, Mr. Chairman. 

And as I said, this is no criticism. Indeed you and the Chairman 

of the Full Committee have been very cooperative on this. FEMA 

has been cooperative. I have never seen anything in 25 years here, 

like the failure of the Secretary of HUD either to come himself or 

send a representative to talk about what has got to be one of the 

most important issues facing that Department. 

So I thank you for your attention to this. And if you can get a 

response from him without us having to subpoena him, that would 

be preferable; but we will press this notion of a subpoena if that 

is what it takes, sadly, to get a HUD representative. 

Chairman NEY. Thank you. 

Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would like to have a moment 

on this myself, because I really believe that this is an extraordinary dereliction of duty. It is an insult to this committee. It is 

an insult to the entire House of Representatives that not only did 

Mr. Jackson refuse to come and refuse to respond, but of all the 

employees that HUD has, you mean to tell me we cannot have one 

representative from that one agency—that obviously has more substantive need to respond, particularly with Katrina and with 

Wilma, with Rita, the historic devastation that those storms have 

done. I mean, this is just unacceptable. And I think it is obviously 

a signal of a huge meltdown on the part of this entire Administration in terms of its inability, unwillingness, and insensitivity, to respond to the pressing needs of people who have been devastated. 

We have had victims from Katrina up here literally crying, begging for help from day one with the storm. And consistently this 

Administration, this government, has failed them. This is despicable. And it should not go unnoticed. And we must hold this govVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:03 Oct 04, 2006 Jkt 026753 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\HBA342.040 HFIN PsN: TERRIE
3

ernment to a higher standard in responding to its people. The people in the Gulf area and the people of America deserve better than 

what this Administration has given them, and the failure of the 

Housing Secretary himself not to be here is appalling and unacceptable. 

Chairman NEY. Thank you. I am going to go ahead and finish my 

statement, but I appreciate the comment of the gentlemen. 

Again, I talked to the Secretary, and I have talked to Chairman 

Oxley. I talked to him last night, and I see no reason why somebody can’t be here from HUD. And I will tell you that somebody 

has to be here from HUD, and that is going to cost us another day 

of a hearing as we come back this week—I don’t think we are going 

to be back the week after that, so it is kind of important. If we 

don’t get the comments and find out what is going on—and maybe 

some things went right and maybe some things went wrong—then, 

as I understand it, on a date in January when we are not here, this 

whole thing is going to take place of where people are going to be 

or not paid, or in hotel rooms or not. 

So after talking to Chairman Oxley last night, I fully expect that 

somebody will be here that can converse on this issue. Again, it is 

going to cost an extra day. I apologize for that, but somebody will 

be here. I will correctly assume that. 

So again, along with the Louisiana and Alabama and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Federal and local governments now face a huge 

task of coordinating relocation of thousands of individuals and families whose lives have been uprooted by these hurricanes. 

In September we had a meeting and we brought together groups 

from across housing spectrums. Most members of the committee on 

both sides of the aisle were at that meeting. And this was, I think, 

one of the first steps in trying to get a handle and respond to how 

we were going to deal with this. 

On September 23rd, the Department of Homeland Security and 

the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced 

two distinct programs to address the housing needs resulting from 

Hurricane Katrina. FEMA is the lead agency in administering disaster assistance, and the majority of those in need of housing assistance will be helped through FEMA’s Individual Households Program, IHP. Those that do not qualify for FEMA assistance, including formerly HUD-assisted evacuees and those homeless prior to 

Hurricane Katrina, will qualify for assistance under HUD’s Katrina 

and Disaster Housing Assistance Program. FEMA is providing 

funding to HUD through a mission assignment for the program. 

I was pleased to see FEMA’s announcement last month that it 

was extending direct Federal emergency assistance reimbursement 

for hotel and motel rooms occupied by people who had to be evacuated. 

As I understand from many interested parties with varying perspectives on the merits of the hotel program, it appeared that significant research and analysis was necessary to understand the 

true impact of this; how many people were affected, where they are 

at and what options they have, especially in the area of housing. 

If they are trying to get a job, they have to have a place to stay. 

So given the complex ramifications of abruptly ending this program, it became increasingly clear that more time is necessary to 

4

work with State, local, and Federal partners to ensure these families can become somehow self-reliant again and reclaim some normalcy to their lives. 

And I look forward to this hearing; and with that, I am going to 

yield to Mr. Frank. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you. Let me yield to, if I could, first the gentleman from Texas, who represents the city of Houston, and who 

has some important correspondence that was submitted to us for 

the record from the mayor. Houston has been one of the cities that 

has done an excellent job of trying to help out. The mayor has done 

a great job, and Representative Green has been very active with 

that and has been one of the point people for us on this. So if we 

could just recognize the gentleman from Texas to make that submission. 

Chairman NEY. The gentleman from Texas is recognized. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Chairman Ney. And I would like to 

thank Ranking Member Frank, also subcommittee Ranking Member Waters. And I would also like to, if I may, just briefly say 

thank you to you, Mr. Garratt, for being here. You are in a tough 

position today. And you are in a tough position because we live in 

a world where it is not enough for things to be right, they must 

also look right; and it doesn’t look right for us not to have the representation from HUD in attendance. 

Now having said that, I do have letters from the Mayor of the 

City of Houston, Mayor Bill White, and these letters are addressed 

to the Chairman—pardon me; yes, the Chairman of HUD, the Honorable Alphonzo Jackson, the Secretary of HUD. And I would like 

to, with your consent, Mr. Chairman, enter these two letters into 

the record, if I may. 

Chairman NEY. Without objection. 

Mr. GREEN. And Mr. Chairman, would it be appropriate for me 

to make additional statements now, or should I wait until my turn? 

Chairman NEY. We will go to Mr. Frank and then come back. It 

is still Mr. Frank’s time. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Before I begin my statement I would like to also submit for the 

record a statement from the Low Income Housing Coalition, and let 

me just quote from it: 

‘‘In the 3 months since Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Government, which is required by law to assist people displaced by natural disasters, has been unable or unwilling to develop and implement a coherent, functional, consistent plan. The result is continued instability and trauma for tens of thousands of people who are 

unable to begin to rebuild their lives.’’ This is on behalf of the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities; the National AIDS Housing Coalition; the National Alliance to End Homelessness; the National 

Law Center on Homelessness; the National Low Income Housing 

Coalition; the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness in New Orleans; and Unity for the Homeless. 

I would also submit statements from the National Association of 

Housing and Redevelopment Officials, and the National MultiHousing Council, again lamenting the shortfall. And I would ask 

the— 

Chairman NEY. Without objection. 

5

Mr. FRANK. Now, as I said, I have serious concerns about HUD, 

and we ought to be clear that HUD should not gain from its absence. I have many criticisms to make of FEMA, but I am more 

critical of HUD, and obviously by being responsible and coming forward, FEMA exposes itself to these criticisms. And we ought to be 

very clear that HUD has also been, in my judgment, even more culpable. 

In particular, there were early requests from HUD to cities that 

have section 8 waiting lists to take people who were evacuated and 

put them ahead of people under section 8 waiting lists. Pitting poor 

people in distress against each other is a despicable situation, to 

quote my colleague from Georgia. And that was especially the case, 

because at that time FEMA had been given $62 billion. And for 

HUD to be urging administrators of housing authorities who had 

section 8 waiting lists to cut into this already badly stretched section 8 program was a mistake. And I hope—and I have been talking to the appropriators. That appears to have stopped going forward, but it does seem to me appropriate for the housing authorities to be reimbursed for that so we don’t have that loss. I think 

there is enough money, and we have asked the appropriator in his 

reprogramming to do that. 

But now as to FEMA. First of all, I have to say that this announcement on November 14th that people would have to move out 

of hotels on December 1st was one of the most heartless things I 

have ever seen a government do that did not involve absolute loss 

of life. FEMA did, 9 days later, correct that, but what distress was 

imposed on already saddened people. And the very fact that somebody so thoughtlessly would have done that, you know, I—and in 

some cases, the gentleman from California who has now joined us, 

the Ranking Member—have sent a number of letters to FEMA. I 

don’t believe we have gotten any answers. 

On October 7th, I said to FEMA, look, you have got a deadline 

coming up. Could you please tell people what is going to happen 

at the end of the 3 months? They waited 5 or 6 weeks to do that, 

and they gave people who were deprived of their homes, who were 

homeless, in many cases without any income, without a lot of resources, they gave them 2 weeks’ notice that they were going to 

have to move out of their hotels. Then they held it off until January 7th. That is just outrageous. 

Secondly, we have this insistence that people rent apartments for 

3 months. Does everybody in FEMA own a home? Has no one in 

FEMA ever rented an apartment? Does no one in FEMA understand the difficulty of getting a 3-month lease, particularly when 

you are homeless? Now, compound that with the fact that in some 

cases cities were willing to step up—the gentleman from Texas just 

read to us from the Mayor of Houston. Mayor White has been superb. People in Atlanta have been helpful, and other cities. They 

were willing to help out, they were willing to be kind of be the gobetweens, they were willing to sign the leases. It is hard enough 

to get a landlord to give you a 3-month lease; maybe if the mayor 

or his people asked, they might do it. And they were doing that, 

to their credit. 

First, many of them signed 1-year leases. HUD, without—FEMA, 

without adequate notice to them, has since told them that they 

6

won’t honor the full year lease. And there was nothing that I saw 

in advance that led them to think that. They looked at the Stafford 

Act, which seemed to authorize up to 18 months. So there is a kind 

of retroactivity problem here. And at the very least, where you had 

a city put itself out that way and sign a 1-year lease, shame on us 

if we try to stick the city when you are sitting on a $62 billion appropriation. 

Secondly, why repudiate the cities now? You have told the cities 

that you won’t take their help anymore. You know, I can understand that—I mean, if George Forman was in a fight and he told 

me he didn’t need me, I would understand that he could probably 

handle it without me. But you are not George Forman. You are not 

doing a good enough job by any means to refuse help from cities 

that are ready to step in. Again, we are talking about people, some 

of whom were at a low-income status, people who were working 

hard to deal with life. They were hit with this terrible disaster 

through no fault of their own. Their lives were further disorganized 

by the inadequate government response. They were put in hotels. 

They don’t have resources. Some of them may be far away from 

home; they don’t have jobs. And a city is willing to help them rent 

an apartment for 3 months, and you say no? I hope you explain to 

me what possible reason you could have for refusing the willingness of local governments to do this. 

Finally, we still have people in an uncertain situation. They are 

being told 3 months; 3 months, we don’t have any clear criterion 

for what they need to do to continue beyond the 3 months. Why not 

give them a year? Look, people aren’t voluntarily staying away 

from their homes. People aren’t loving living in hotels. You don’t 

have to worry that they are going to cheat you by staying there 

longer than they need to. Why not give them the year, and then 

if they can find something else, let them out. Again, with this $62 

billion, why not err—if it is going to be an error, why not err on 

the side of a little bit of compassion and charity instead of subjecting these people to this kind of constant every 3-month turmoil? 

And finally, one last point. We continue to have a great deal of 

uncertainty about the mobile home recreational vehicle trailer situation. One of the things I will be doing is submitting to you: Can 

you tell us who is in what category and where they are? I am told 

there are 800 mobile homes, 36,000 recreational vehicles. We are 

told there are 25,000 mobile homes that have been delivered to 

FEMA to staging areas. The Mobile Home Institute and Manufactured Housing Institute has told us that. What is the status of 

those? What is holding it up? I understand you can’t put them all 

in there right away. Frankly, I think you were unfairly criticized 

by some. Some people said the mobile homes are terrible. Well, 

they are only part of the solution; they shouldn’t have been the 

whole solution. And we appear to have gone from too much reliance 

on them to not enough. 

But the fundamental point I want to leave with is this: Do not 

treat these people who have been through so much trauma, who 

have had through no fault of their own so much taken away from 

them, do not treat them with the kind of microscopic scrutiny that 

this government hasn’t applied to contractors in Iraq or contractors 

anywhere else. Let’s understand the status of these people; let’s 

7

work with cities that want to help, and let’s show a great deal more 

compassion than has been shown so far. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman NEY. The gentlelady from California, our ranking 

member. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members. 

First, I would like to thank our active FEMA director. And I 

want to preface my statement by saying any harsh comments that 

you may hear today are not personal. We are pleased that you are 

here. We are very upset that HUD is not here and HUD has left 

you to face the music alone. And you are in a position where the 

previous director of FEMA failed his country and the people of the 

Gulf region, and so you are what we have to deal with today. And 

we are very, very frustrated with FEMA. We are very, very upset 

that we are constantly bombarded with questions, with complaints, 

with dissatisfaction from the victims of Katrina. 

The first thing you need to know is this: Nobody really understands how you work. We have been trying to get clarification for 

every written request that we have made to FEMA. We have not 

to this date gotten a response. We can’t find out how many trailers 

you have, where they are located. We don’t know where the people 

are in the United States, and how many. The Mayor of the City 

of New Orleans was here yesterday; he cannot get from FEMA 

where the people are from his city, where are they located? Where 

are they living? 

We were passing out baskets for Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, 

California, to people from New Orleans who were living in hotels, 

who were crying in line because of the information that was disseminated from FEMA that they were going to be put out as of December 1st. We know that you came back and you changed the 

date. Now they will start crying, I guess in January, because that 

is the purported date. 

Then when we called FEMA, FEMA tells us, well, that is not 

really a hard-and-fast date. We are going to take it on a case-bycase basis. What are the rules? When someone calls FEMA and 

their time is up, what are the rules? What rules are people playing 

by? What are the questions? Where are the forms? What do they 

look like? What constitutes the reasons by which they will be extended or denied? We don’t know that. We cannot get our workers 

and our officers trained to be able to be of assistance to people all 

over this country. We need some answers. 

What is the interaction between FEMA and HUD? We have real 

questions about housing assistance, because this is the most desperate—these are the most desperate needs that we are confronted 

with. 

I would like to spend some time asking you about contracting 

and how you are contracting. Are we still in the low-bid contracting 

game? What happened to the Big Four that we were contracting 

with, the Ford Corporation, the Shaw Corporation, Halliburton? 

Have we figured out—I don’t know whether or not—where we are 

with affirmative action in times like this? 

But since I don’t have a lot of time and we are just doing our 

opening statements at this point, I just want to try and commuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:03 Oct 04, 2006 Jkt 026753 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\HBA342.040 HFIN PsN: TERRIE
8

nicate to you how dissatisfied we are, how upset we are, how embarrassed we are about FEMA. FEMA does not work. It is not 

working. And maybe it is not your fault as an acting director who 

stepped in, but what are your recommendations for how we can do 

better? Why can’t we get this relocation right? Why can’t we—we 

started talking about manufactured homes and trailers right at the 

beginning of all of this, because we knew that people couldn’t stay 

in the shelters forever. We knew that we had to have some transitional housing. We knew a few things. We talked to FEMA about 

not putting up extensive ghettos where you could spread out the 

trailers on small lots. We have had people who have come forward 

with private lots and offered to give their lots, volunteer their lots; 

they have not been accommodated. And then you pass this off by 

telling us, well, that is really not your responsibility; it is up to the 

cities, it is up to the States, to talk about location. 

The buck has to stop somewhere. And so we are going to have 

a lot of questions for you today. 

And again, I want you to know that we are not happy with HUD 

either. And I think it has already been identified by Mr. Barney 

Frank that we are going to try and subpoena HUD. And I have 

suggested to some of my colleagues that if HUD doesn’t get over 

here, I am going over to HUD. I am known to do those kinds of 

things. I am going over there, and I am going to ask some people 

to go with me. And as a matter of fact, it is time for me to come 

see FEMA and see what you people do, how you are organized, who 

is responsible for what. I am just sick and tired of looking stupid 

and dumb when people ask me questions. I yield back the balance 

of my time. 

Chairman NEY. I thank the ranking member. 

I want to submit for the record, without objection, two statements, one from the National Community Development Association, the other from the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials—and hearing no objections—for the record. 

The gentlelady from New York, Ms. Velazquez. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just want to be on the record to express my disappointment and 

my frustration with the fact that the Secretary of HUD, Mr. Jackson, refused to appear before this committee to help us understand 

the lack of response or the ineffective leadership and mismanagement of the disaster response from the Federal Government. 

You know, if there is a time when this Administration can show 

the world and Americans what they mean when they talk about 

compassion and conservatism, it is today. And I am tired of hearing 

the Administration’s response to criticism, saying that this is an 

unprecedented disaster. Yes, it was an unprecedented disaster, and 

this is why we need an unprecedented response that the people 

who are suffering and who have lost everything are not getting 

from this government. 

On October 18th, I sent a letter to the White House—and maybe 

you can answer for the President today—expressing concern about 

the Administration’s wasteful spending on uncoordinated efforts to 

house Katrina victims. The letter questioned taxpayer spending on 

cruise ships, trailers, and hotels when other more cost-effective, 

long-term housing alternatives exist. The letter also questioned 

9

why the Administration refuses to create an entity to coordinate 

the Federal Government’s housing functions. 

And, Mr. Garratt, the response to this crisis has been ineffective, 

inadequate, and clearly is not working. I would strongly suggest to 

you, accept the fact that you have made mistakes, go back to the 

drawing board and come up with a strategy that will bring hope 

to the people who are suffering so much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman NEY. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the outstanding job that you have done, for your persistence, your hard 

work in doing everything you possibly could to get HUD here. It 

is certainly—he is not here, and he is not here at a great disappointment to you as chairman. And I know that personally. And 

I just want to make a point on the record to let everybody know 

how hard you worked to try to get him here and how disappointed 

you are, as all of us are as well. So I want to thank you for your 

efforts on that. 

I can’t say enough now just how mad I am about this entire situation. And this meeting, this gathering here this morning, is fully 

demonstrative of the sadness and the shame of the situation. This 

committee room should be packed. Every single member of this 

committee ought to be here. It tells you something. Not only is 

HUD—HUD’s absence from this is symbolic of this entire country’s—and this Administration’s especially—attitude about this 

problem. And you know, I am beginning to wonder why. Is it because these are poor people? Is it because most of these people are 

African Americans? These are serious questions, and we have got 

to find some answers to them. 

On the day before yesterday, there was a hearing on these very 

issues by another committee. And I cannot erase from my mind the 

pain and the anguish on the faces of those victims coming up here 

from New Orleans and Mississippi. It is inexcusable for this HUD 

Secretary not to be here. 

Now, I just want to submit for the record here—and I think it 

is very important. And we have traced just a news headline litany 

that I think expresses the attitude, because we are going to have 

to get to the bottom of this. We are going to have to find out why 

this government is not responding to this most serious issue, when 

hundreds of thousands of their citizens are in such great need. If 

we can go over to Iraq and tear down a country and rebuild that 

country, the least we can do is the same for our own people. 

Chairman NEY. I just want to note that the time is expired, but 

the gentlelady has to go to a markup, so I want to make sure— 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I just want to make sure that everybody understands the seriousness of this issue. And in view that the lady has to leave, I will 

reserve some of my other comments for the question and answer 

period. Thank you. 

Chairman NEY. The gentlelady from California. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much. And I will be very brief. I just 

want to associate myself with the remarks of all my colleagues here 

and say a couple of things, Mr. Garratt. 

10

First of all, let me just say with regard to Secretary Jackson’s absence here, I think it is really a slap in the face. I think it shows 

the rest of the country now exactly what this is about and why 

there is such a gap in terms of—an attitude gap, a gap in coordination, a void in terms of the delivery of services that people deserve. 

And it shows us that this government has probably—on this, and 

God knows if there are any future disasters—it melts down, actually in a time of need. And it is just downright shameful that the 

Secretary of HUD won’t come to a housing subcommittee. And for 

the life of me, I don’t know if this is just an attitudinal problem, 

I don’t know if it is one of his schedule, I don’t know if it is just 

one of the facts that he just doesn’t want to come forward. I mean, 

I have no clue why he is not here, but I would hope that someone, 

our chairman and our ranking member, that we get him here; because people who have been victimized through no fault of their 

own have a right to know what their Department of Housing and 

Urban Development is doing and what type of expectations they 

should have. 

Secondly, let me just say, what has happened with FEMA in this 

whole disintegration, I think, has been horrible and disastrous, and 

the anxiety—and we have probably about 1,200 residents in our 

area—the anxiety that has been created. Just, for example, when 

people were notified that they would be put out of the hotels and 

motels, this was right before the holidays. The insensitivity just to 

let that word go out worries me in terms of what kind of culture 

you have over at FEMA that would allow this edict to even go out. 

I think that that was just an example of the kind of problems you 

have at FEMA that really, unfortunately, resonate with people and 

impact people who have been traumatized, who have a lot of anxiety, and who don’t know what is going to happen next. I would 

think FEMA would be trying and working in every way possible to 

minimize this anxiety and to talk about and make sure that people 

knew that this transition would be as painless as possible and that 

FEMA was working with HUD to help make sure that people get 

home as quickly and as safely as possible. 

But the direct opposite messages are coming out, and so I am not 

sure what is happening. I think Congresswoman Waters is right; 

we need to figure out just what the deal is over, inside of the agency that would allow such unbelievable kind of messages. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I just thank you. Thank you, Mr. Garratt, for 

being here. And as soon as we finish with our markup, I intend to 

be back and we will produce some of the answers to those questions. 

Chairman NEY. I thank the gentlelady. 

The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman. And again, thank 

you to Ranking Member Frank and subcommittee Ranking Member 

Waters for holding these important hearings. 

Especially as we approach the holiday season, we want to make 

sure that the persons who are victims of Katrina and Rita, these 

hurricane evacuees, that they know that we are sensitive to their 

needs. 

Mr. Chairman, I want to say a kind word about the City of Houston, because the City of Houston at a time of need opened up its 

11

arms, its hotels, and its apartments, to the evacuees. I would like 

to compliment Mayor White, our county Judge Eckles, for the outstanding work that they did. And I mention them because at the 

time that they were being resourceful and being helpful, they didn’t 

ask about section 403, section 408. They saw a need, and they met 

the need. Probably the only rule that was of paramount importance 

to them was the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have 

them do unto you. And that is what our city did. 

And it is regrettable that we now have this consternation developing with reference as to whether there will be reimbursement for 

leases that are longer than 3 months, because at the time these 

leases were negotiated, there was no indication that they would be 

but for 3 months. This not only creates a financial concern for the 

City of Houston, but it really does create anxiety with the evacuees. I think that we somehow have missed out on the whole notion of loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, just treating people right. 

This has become a major problem for this country, and here is 

why; because after 9/11—and it was a dastardly thing that was 

done—we treated the families, the victims, right. We did the right 

thing. With the savings and loan debacle, we did the right thing. 

It doesn’t look right for us to do anything less than the right thing 

for the victims of these hurricanes. 

If we don’t act prudently and expeditiously, the world is going to 

start to draw conclusions about the victims that they saw on television juxtaposed to the victims of 9/11 and the savings and loan 

debacle. 

So I beg that you would please understand that, having answered the clarion call for help, the City of Houston and the evacuees ought to be treated fairly. 

I yield back the remainder of my time, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman NEY. Thank you. The gentleman, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member 

Waters, Ranking Member Frank. 

Though it is redundant, I too must render or state my disappointment and even disgust with the failure of HUD to show up 

for this hearing. I will say it again; it is almost as if the Federal 

Government is suffering from ADD, attention deficit disorder. We 

just can’t stay focused on a problem very long. We are at best, it 

seems, a 12-week Nation. 

For HUD to miss this hearing sends a statement across this 

country that is difficult for any of us to explain. HUD’s failure to 

show is like Moses failing to show up for the crossing of the Red 

Sea. It is like Manning failing to come out of the locker room after 

half-time. And this is the second half of this tragedy. 

And I know that we have all kinds of hearings scheduled here 

in the House, and no committee operates in respect of another committee’s time, and so many of my colleagues are no doubt in committee hearings at this time. That is my hope; that they are either 

at hearings or at funerals. The reason is that I cannot imagine—

and none of you can’t either, I don’t care what your political pedigree might be—having this hearing 8 weeks ago without having 

every member of the committee here, the HUD staff, and even a 

phalanx of staffers from FEMA, standing room only. They would 

12

have been here. There would have been cameras everywhere, people bumping into each other, fighting for space. But not today. 

The agency commissioned with the responsibility of dealing with 

housing is not here. The biggest issue facing New Orleans is housing, and the Federal agency responsible for dealing with housing 

didn’t show up. This is, as one of my colleagues said, an embarrassment. The Los Angeles times carried a story on Tuesday, ‘‘Giving 

Up on New Orleans.’’ There are people from New Orleans who believe, with a lot of good reason, that this Nation has given up on 

New Orleans. And it is a shame that I have got to talk with you, 

but you know, if only one chicken shows up, that is the one you 

feed. 

And so I am sorry; I mean, I am not mad at you, I am happy 

that you are here. But unless somebody else—could we get a substitute for HUD, somebody to just sit at the table with a HUD 

sign? I mean, because I feel badly about talking to you. You didn’t 

do it, although I wish you had had a few more staffers with you 

just to make us feel better that it was serious. But this bothers me. 

I have got some questions about FEMA later in the hearing, but 

I had to register, Mr. Chairman, my disgust. And I appreciate very 

much you being here. Thank you. 

Chairman NEY. Any other members have any other statements 

or—any other members? 

If not, with that we will go on to welcome David Garratt, who 

is the Acting Director of the Recovery Division at the Federal 

Emergency Management Agency headquarters here in Washington, 

D.C. The Recovery Division is responsible for planning and executing the Federal Government’s recovery efforts for major disasters and emergencies. Mr. Garratt has participated in over 30 

Presidentially declared disasters or emergency operations, including the World Trade Center-Pentagon terrorist attack of 2001. 

We welcome you. I am sure you are happy to be here today, too. 

We appreciate you coming. 

Chairman NEY. With that, Mr. Garratt, thank you. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID E. GARRATT, ACTING DIRECTOR, RECOVERY DIVISION, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. GARRATT. Thank you, sir. 

Good morning, Chairman Ney, Ranking Member Frank, and subcommittee members. I am David Garratt, the Acting Director of the 

Recovery Division at FEMA, and I am representing Secretary 

Chertoff and Acting Director Paulison. It is an honor to appear before this subcommittee to summarize and discuss our emergency 

sheltering and housing efforts in support of Hurricane Katrina and 

Rita victims. 

We at the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA appreciate your interest in the housing challenges presented by the scope 

and scale of these unprecedented disasters, as well as the resources 

Congress has provided to help us tackle those challenges and accomplish our mission. 

I think we all recognize that these hurricanes, and Katrina in 

particular, have thoroughly tested the capabilities of FEMA, the 

Department, and the Nation, including the many States and comVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:03 Oct 04, 2006 Jkt 026753 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\HBA342.040 HFIN PsN: TERRIE
13

munities nationwide, who are hosting displaced evacuees from the 

affected Gulf region. And yet, while these events have tested our 

plans and processes as never before, FEMA’s sheltering and housing assistance programs have provided and facilitated the means 

for hundreds of thousands of evacuees to quickly secure interim accommodations and continue to fund and facilitate aggressive strategy to transition those individuals and families into longer-term 

housing solutions. 

What we want to stress at this hearing and to disaster victims 

across the Nation is that now is the time to begin reestablishing 

and rebuilding your lives. We have been and remain committed to 

helping households recover and reestablish themselves. And I 

would like to outline the assistance programs under the Robert T. 

Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act that FEMA 

is authorized to provide in support of those housing and sheltering 

needs. 

Under our Public Assistance Program authorized by section 403 

of the Stafford Act, FEMA is authorized to reimburse States for 

emergency protective measures, including emergency sheltering. 

Typically these costs are reimbursed only for those States directly 

affected by the disaster. However, the scale of the evacuation 

prompted by Hurricane Katrina required a more expansive approach. Accordingly, to encourage States outside the affected area 

to accept the hundreds of thousands of evacuees from the Gulf region, the President responded to gubernatorial requests by declaring emergencies for 43 States and the District of Columbia. These 

emergency declarations had the effect of reassuring those States 

that their sheltering costs would be reimbursed, as well as provided the means for States to transition these evacuees out of shelters and into longer-term temporary housing. 

This latter capability has provided an invaluable bridge to our 

longer-term housing strategy, as it allows jurisdictions, on a reimbursable basis, to arrange short-term lease apartments for evacuees, allowing them to move out of transitional environments, such 

as hotels, and into more stable temporary housing. The long-term 

goal is to bring these individuals into broader FEMA housing assistance programs that have more consistent guidelines and levels 

of assistance. 

While section 403 supports sheltering activities, FEMA’s housing 

assistance authority is covered under section 408 of the Stafford 

Act. FEMA provides the following forms of housing assistance 

under our Individuals and Households Program, as authorized 

under section 408, rental assistance, home repair assistance, home 

replacement assistance, direct housing, and other needs assistance 

to meet serious needs and necessary expenses, to include personal 

property losses. 

The scope and scale of devastation from these two hurricanes 

eliminated the home repair option for many households. Of course, 

home repair does not apply to renters, who have the same need for 

temporary housing assistance. For both these types of households, 

FEMA offers two forms of interim housing assistance: rental assistance in the form of financial assistance paid directly to an eligible 

applicant, and direct housing assistance in the form of a dwelling 

provided by FEMA to an eligible applicant. 

14

We have been collaborating closely with HUD from the outset of 

this event, working together to determine the best possible means 

of joint cooperation to benefit those most in need of housing assistance. In particular, I would like to cite the assistance of Mr. Hank 

Williams, a senior HUD official who joined our Housing Area Command in Louisiana early on, and led an intergovernmental and 

public/private housing group in developing housing solution strategies for the Katrina-Rita impact area. We greatly appreciate the 

support and expertise that Mr. Williams and HUD contributed to 

the development of effective housing strategies for the region. 

HUD also made repossessed houses available to FEMA-eligible 

disaster households. It has placed hundreds of disaster victims in 

houses in the four-State area, including 207 families in Texas 

alone. 

HUD, through their Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program, or KDHAP, is copartnering with FEMA in the transitional 

housing assistance program. The KDHAP, funded by FEMA and 

administered by HUD, is specifically for those disaster victims who 

were in HUD-assisted housing programs prior to the hurricane, or 

are ineligible for FEMA housing and assistance, such as 

predisaster homeless citizens who did not have a previous permanent address. Such victims are being assisted through HUD’s 

KDHAP. 

While finding temporary housing for so many displaced households has been and will continue to be a challenge, FEMA and its 

partners at every level of government and within the private sector 

will continue to work together to find solutions. 

In summary, as of early December, FEMA has spent over 4.3 billion on housing for disaster victims. This relentless recovery phase 

continues. So, too, does our commitment to the victims of these disasters and to the States and cities who are helping house and care 

for them. 

At the same time, we continue to seek and develop alternative 

housing solutions in the impacted areas to afford as many displaced victims as possible the opportunity to return home as fast 

as possible. 

Thank you. I would be happy to answer any questions that you 

may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Garratt can be found on page 58 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman NEY. Thank you for your comments, and I recognize 

Mr. Baker. 

Mr. BAKER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your indulgence. I regret 

I was not here to make my opening statement, but I did want to 

express my appreciation to you for this hearing. 

I will say that of the calls I received in the days after the storm 

made landfall, yours was the first offering appropriate assistance 

in whatever direction that might be taken at the time to respond 

to the circumstances. So I want the record to be clear that this subcommittee chairman has done excellent work in responding to the 

identified needs. 

I also want to make clear that we are, at this moment, in continuing discussions with members of the delegation relative to the 

finalization of H.R. 4100, which creates a government corporation 

15

to assist in the resolution of the devastated housing within the 

Katrina-Rita impact areas. We are very close, and I am hopeful 

that when we return next week, given all members of the Louisiana delegation’s willingness to sign on to the proposal, that we 

could have assurances and assistance from members of this committee in urging consideration of that proposal as a component of 

the broader Katrina relief package that I believe will be considered 

on the Floor next week. 

Unfortunately, I read yesterday in a local wire service publication, The Daily Report, that the first calls are now being made to 

the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions, complaining about 

demand notices being issued for 4 months’ back payments, plus interest, for homeowners who are not now even able to return to 

their property. With the Congress not returning until February, I 

am very distressed that tens of thousands of notices will go out to 

individuals without an identified method by the Congress to respond to what I hate to say will be a cataclysmic financial problem. 

The banks who are taking this action are certainly within their 

legal authority to do so, and may, in fact, have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and to regulators to take these actions, 

but the banks will be in no better position than the individuals. 

Once the banks acquire the property through the foreclosure process, they are going to have parcels scattered all over the area, not 

contiguous. They will have a liability on the lot, which is a devastated structure, which they will have to pay to remove, and then 

only have improved property to liquidate to try to remedy the partial mortgage obligation. 

I have learned that it will not be unexpected to see a very significant number of Louisiana institutions forced into a financial condition that will not warrant continued operations for lengthy periods 

of time—I am saying that as carefully as I can. But these are extraordinary circumstances, and they are extraordinarily bad. 

Mr. Chairman, again I want to emphasize my deep appreciation 

to you for your leadership and insight into these matters, and 

make clear to the members of the committee I have a deep and 

abiding interest in this matter, but I do find it absolutely necessary 

at the time, working with members of the Louisiana delegation, to 

try to get the elements of H.R. 4100 finalized, so I can return to 

this committee and to the Financial Services Committee with an 

offer for its consideration, I hope, next week. And I thank the gentleman for his courtesy and yield the time. 

Chairman NEY. I thank the gentleman for his comments. 

I think that FEMA is in unchartered waters, and I thank you for 

coming here today. I think FEMA itself, again, is in an area of unchartered waters. Now, we have had disasters, and we evacuated 

in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, 7,000 people last year, out of a county 

of 70,000. But that was temporary. And then the water went down, 

and they came back in, so it wasn’t long term. And we had people 

who also had some horrific damage. But this is a long-term situation of immense magnitude. 

I think, just reflecting back, that maybe the Congress should look 

at how funds are distributed, or maybe the funds go from FEMA 

or they go over into HUD, I am not sure. 

16

I also do feel at times that this is done in a vacuum. I cannot 

hang that on you. You are not running the top of the food chain 

with the ship. But you read in the newspaper, well, people are 

going to leave on such a date, and then it got extended, and now 

it is going to be in January. And even if the Congress is not in session, I still think that FEMA and HUD have to communicate with 

Members of Congress and also with the committees of jurisdiction, 

because, again, I just think sometimes things are done in a vacuum. Now, maybe they are done in a vacuum, and they are good 

things, but maybe some of the things are not working. 

But right now, I would like to know, to the best of the knowledge 

you have of how this is working, what is the exact coordination between HUD and FEMA? This decision of people to have a date certain to leave, was that decision made by FEMA only, by HUD, in 

joint communication? How are the decisions made, for example, on 

the issue of the hotel rooms and things? 

Mr. GARRATT. We are collaborating very closely with HUD on a 

regular basis, both in terms of the transitional housing strategy 

that we have unveiled and in the longer-term, long-term recovery 

basis. HUD is a member of ESF–14, which is the long-term community recovery ESF (Emergency Support Function), and they are 

a regular participant in that, again, as well as participating with 

us in our normal assistance programs to individuals. 

In terms of the hotel-motel issue, that was a decision that was 

made principally by FEMA. HUD was not a collaborator in that decision. And although you indicated that you thought that that was 

probably a decision that was up above my level and that I could 

not answer that, in fact I am the individual who issued the guidance for that particular date, so the buck stops with me regarding 

the hotel dates that have been established, both the original December 1st date and the new December 15th and January 7th 

dates. 

Chairman NEY. Thank you. On the issue of January 7th, aren’t 

States or locals supposed to submit some type of plan to FEMA? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir, they are. 

Chairman NEY. Does that go to FEMA and HUD, or just FEMA? 

Mr. GARRATT. It is just going to FEMA. It is going either to the 

Federal coordinating officer or, in the absence of the Federal coordinating officer, the regional director. 

Chairman NEY. I see here in the notes that 10 States— 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir. 

Chairman NEY. Would receive further extensions to January 7th. 

That gives them time to, I think, outline their plans or how they 

are going to deal with this; is that correct? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir. 

Chairman NEY. Okay. How does a State know when their plans 

are approved? 

Mr. GARRATT. That approval will be provided—I expect that feedback to go back to the State almost immediately. In fact, I expect 

that the States are collaborating closely with the individuals who 

will be approving those plans. So I would expect that to be almost 

immediate. 

Chairman NEY. I had a chance yesterday to meet the Mayor of 

Gulfport, Mississippi, who is up here trying to, obviously, help his 

17

town. We talked about New Orleans a lot, but is the same situation 

occurring and, if it is, to what extent with Mississippi and other 

areas? Or is that not the case in other parts beyond New Orleans? 

Mr. GARRATT. In terms of— 

Chairman NEY. People temporarily housed in hotels. 

Mr. GARRATT. Our biggest problems are the States of Louisiana 

and Mississippi. Both of them have individuals in hotel rooms, and, 

again, there is a lack of available housing stock in both of those 

States. 

We have been working hard with both States to get travel trailers and mobile homes in there. As a matter of fact, I think, just 

recently, we hit the 40,000 mark for manufactured homes. So in 

the last 3 months, we have managed to push and install 40,000 

travel trailers and mobile homes into those States. That far exceeds 

anything we have done in the past in Florida or elsewhere. 

So we are making some good progress, but we are still a long 

way away from where we need to be to fully accommodate the hotel 

and motel populations in both of those States—Mississippi to some 

extent, Louisiana to a much greater extent. 

Chairman NEY. I think the issue of normalcy of people, people, 

for example, have come up to Ohio, have come to our area or Columbus. They don’t necessarily want to be there, but they have 

some semblance of normalcy because they are in some type of 

home, and the children are in some type of school. But the people 

who do not have the ability to travel or the resources or the connections or friends or relatives, I assume, are a lot of the people who 

are in the hotel rooms; correct? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir. 

Chairman NEY. Now, has it been explored as an option to have 

available manufactured housing or some type of trailer or something of that nature—and you said it is 40,000—for those people 

to be back into their home area, maybe where they had a house, 

and there is a vacant lot, and they could be there? Or will the infrastructure not handle that at this particular time in certain parishes? Do you have any handle on that? 

Mr. GARRATT. It is a determination that is being made on a parish-by-parish basis. There are certain parishes where the infrastructure does not exist to support placing homes on individual’s 

lots with the available hookups. That is, in fact, our preferred 

method of dealing with this, at least at the front end of this, is 

placing those on lots. And the vast majority of the travel trailers 

and mobile homes that we have pushed into the area to date have 

been placed on individuals’ private lots next to their homes so they 

can stay there while they are working there. 

Clearly, we are trying to improve that capability. We are in fact 

going to help out Entergy in the Orleans Parish which has had a 

problem bringing in assistance to help them complete hookups, and 

we are going to be using our own contractors to help them with 

some of the hookup activities that they are going to be engaged 

with just so we can help facilitate getting additional travel trailers 

and mobile homes in there. So we are trying to get solutions to 

some of the problems they are facing. But, at the end of the day, 

we are still looking at close to 120,000 travel trailers or mobile 

homes at this point in that affected area. 

18

Chairman NEY. That you need. 

My time has expired so we will move on. I know members have 

some question. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, can I ask unanimous consent—we have been joined by our colleague from Louisiana, Mr. Melancon. Can I ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to join us? 

Chairman NEY. Without objection. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Garratt, I am going to be submitting a series of questions. 

I must tell you, the gentlewoman from California and I have sent 

a series of letters. We haven’t gotten much in the way of answers, 

and I can’t ask them all now, so I will be submitting you some 

questions. I will submit them for the record. 

Let me just ask, I want to focus on the rental of regular apartments, because, obviously, we all agree that would be a very good 

thing if we could get them there. Why the decision to cut off the 

intermediary role some cities have been willing to play, Houston, 

Atlanta and others? They were willing to be helpful. Why are you 

rejecting their help? 

Mr. GARRATT. Sir, I am not familiar with the— 

Mr. FRANK. Well, let me explain. We had the situation where 

several municipalities have agreed to be the intermediaries, rent 

the apartment for the individual and then get the reimbursement. 

They have been told that, as of January—I believe, as of March 

1st, they can no longer play that role, even for people who would 

still be eligible. 

Now, again, we are talking about people who may not be terribly 

knowledgeable about the rental market, and you have this 3-month 

problem, which I also want to talk to you about, which is a separate issue. But I don’t understand why, if the City of Houston, the 

City of Atlanta, as my colleague from Georgia reminds me, and others that want to be helpful and be the intermediary, why are you 

rejecting that? 

Mr. GARRATT. I don’t believe we are rejecting that, and I think 

this sounds like it is the result of a misunderstanding rather than 

a rejection of State or city assistance on the part of FEMA. In fact, 

we look forward to it, and the cities getting involved. 

Houston in particular has been a model in terms of dealing with 

the population that they have. They have been moving upwards of 

500 families a day out of hotels and motels and into apartments. 

So they have been a model for the rest of the country in terms of 

how to address and handle that, and they have been maintaining 

that pace for a number of weeks now. 

This is the way that it works in terms of our relationship with 

403 and 408 to renting apartments. We provided 403 assistance to 

the States, to the cities and told the States and cities at the very 

beginning of this disaster, you can arrange for and lease apartments for up to 12 months for individuals, for evacuees. As part of 

that process, we did that because we recognized that they were not 

necessarily going to be able to, in a lot of the cities, obtain apartments for less than 12-month leases. 

19

Our preference was to get 3-month leases or 6-month leases, but 

we authorized it up to 12 months. Even as we were doing that, authorizing them to secure those apartments using the 403 protective 

sheltering public assistance funding, we have been moving to convert and move individuals into the individual assistance program, 

whereby we are providing assistance directly to them or we are 

going to assume the lease on that apartment using that 408 money. 

So when we encouraged a State or authorized a State or a city 

to lease an apartment for 12 months, we incurred an obligation to 

honor that contract. Now, honoring that contract either means that 

that individual who is in an apartment that was leased for 12 

months will take over the lease on that apartment, because they 

are now getting individual assistance—otherwise it would be a duplication of assistance—or we will convert that 403 lease to a 408 

lease, and then we would pay that ourselves, again continuing that 

lease to the 12-month period. Or if the individual chooses to leave 

that apartment once they get their individual assistance, we would 

ask the city to terminate that lease, and we would, in accordance 

with the contract, pay the termination fees of that contract. 

Mr. FRANK. What do you mean by termination fee? I mean, they 

sign a 12-month lease. Should they go say to the landlord it is 

over? What is the termination fee? 

Mr. GARRATT. Typically, when you sign a lease for an apartment, 

if you terminate that lease early, there is a penalty for terminating 

that lease early. That is part of the contractual arrangement. We 

are willing to pay that penalty as part of terminating that lease 

early. In other words, we will honor the terms of that contract. 

Mr. FRANK. So let me get this. The cities will not lose a penny, 

because you said they were told they could have 12 months, so they 

will be held harmless for the full 12 months? 

Mr. GARRATT. They will be held harmless for the terms of that 

contract. 

Mr. FRANK. If they signed a 12-month lease—I still don’t understand. I think it has been helpful to have the cities be this intermediary. Why don’t you keep it up? Why terminate it now? You 

say, well, it will be up to the occupant. Why not continue it for the 

full term of the lease? 

Mr. GARRATT. You are talking about the March 1st date sir, is 

that correct? 

Mr. FRANK. Yes. 

Mr. GARRATT. The difference is the type of programs that we are 

dealing with. One is a public assistance program whereby we are 

providing funding to a State to then manage this particular program. The other is an individual assistance program where we are 

dealing directly with the individuals. So what we want to do is terminate a public assistance— 

Mr. FRANK. Why? 

Mr. GARRATT. Because it is being done under category B, Emergency Protective Measures. 

Mr. FRANK. Excuse me—finish your sentence. I am sorry. 

Mr. GARRATT. The emergency protective measures are not designed to be a long-term program. That is what the individual assistance program is. 

20

Mr. FRANK. Let me say, Mr. Garratt, with all due respect, that 

is a bureaucrat’s answer. ‘‘Why’’ is, there is a public policy reason. 

‘‘why’’ would be good or bad. ‘‘Why’’ is not because of category A 

or category B, and it wasn’t designed for it. 

Continuity has something to be said for it. You have these people, again, obviously if people were able in a lot of ways to get out 

from under this, they would have done that. But you have some 

people still in this situation; the cities are still willing to help. I 

don’t understand. We can redesign it? And the difference between 

6 months and 12 months, we are not talking about 40 years. 

I don’t understand what public policy purpose is served by saying, okay, no more of the city, now you have to do it yourself? 

Mr. GARRATT. Except at that point, sir, on March 1st, what we 

hope to have happen is that every individual who is currently in 

an apartment that was arranged by a city under 403 will now have 

been identified. We will have determined their eligibility. We will 

have begun providing them rental assistance and/or providing 

housing. 

Mr. FRANK. First of all, if everything we had all hoped to have 

happened had happened, this would be a much nicer world. For 

you, given the track record, to terminate this on a hope is a very 

unwise thing to do. What I would recommend to you strongly is 

where you can work it out for the individual, okay. But what you 

have announced is a blanket termination. You hope to be able to 

make these individual determinations. You have announced a blanket end. 

Let me ask you, what percentage of the people in this category 

now, for what percentage has that determination been made, the 

individual has the ability, etc.? 

Mr. GARRATT. What percentage of individuals— 

Mr. FRANK. Of the people who will be affected by the March 1st 

cut off, on what percentage have you done the determination necessary to transfer them into the other program? 

Mr. GARRATT. I don’t have those figures. 

Mr. FRANK. I don’t think you do. I don’t think—you don’t have 

the figures in your head. I don’t think FEMA has the figures. 

Again, this is what troubles me, this kind of arbitrary, we are 

going to end this on March 1st on the hope that we will have taken 

care of everybody. What you ought to do is try to take care of everybody, but not put this March 1st guillotine hanging over people. 

The second question I want to ask you, and I really urge you to 

think about that, you know, you were wrong about telling people, 

on November 14th, that they were going to be kicked out in a couple of weeks. You made some misjudgments here. I think you made 

another one here by this arbitrary date. 

The second question, and I appreciate the time, why a 3-month, 

3-month, 3-month? It is very hard to rent an apartment for 3 

months. I notice the National Multi Housing Council says in a letter we put in, ‘‘It is shortsighted to expect a majority of evacuees 

to be able to return to their homes in the next 12 to 18 months. 

The 3-month commitments for housing do not meet the needs of 

evacuees, nor do they meet the needs of housing providers.’’ 

What leads you to say 3 months for the leases here, or 3 months 

for the rental agreement for people, particularly where a lot of 

21

them are in a particular area? Why would we insist on this shortterm thing, particularly from the beginning? I don’t understand 

why you didn’t do 12 months from the beginning. Did you really 

think they would all be out of there in 3 months? 

Mr. GARRATT. Two issues here. We did establish the 3-month 

lease requirement when we published our initial guidance that 

identified the December 1st date as the original date by which individuals— 

Mr. FRANK. You did that. I am asking you why you did 3 months. 

I understand that you did that. Why? What is the public policy reason for only 3 months? 

Mr. GARRATT. Three months from December 1st would have 

brought us to March 1st. That is the date that we wanted to convert from 403 to 408 individual assistance. 

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Garratt, again, that is bureaucrat talk. You 

want to go from 403 to 408. We are talking about human beings 

here. Three months, you know, these are not the most sophisticated 

people in the world in some cases. In some cases, they are. They 

have been traumatized. Finding a 3-month apartment, if somebody 

came to me today and said, look, you have got 2 weeks to get out 

of where you are living now, and you have 3 months to find a new 

place here in D.C., I would feel, gee, I am not sure I can work that 

out. Why in policy terms only 3 months? 

Mr. GARRATT. It is not only 3 months, sir. That was our goal. We 

said that we wanted it to be 3 months, but we also authorized exceptions to be made for that. If the city comes to the—if the Federal coordinating officer comes to the regional director, and identifies that we can’t obtain leases of 3 months, they can be authorized 

to extend those. 

Mr. FRANK. It is this extra bureaucratic step to do that. Did nobody think about the difficulty of getting a 3-month lease from a 

landlord? 

Mr. GARRATT. It is certainly more challenging getting 3-month 

leases from a landlord, sir, but it is by no means impossible. 

Mr. FRANK. You know what—and I am going to end my questioning now—you say it is not impossible. It is challenging. Haven’t 

these people had enough challenges in their lives without you adding to them? Could you not err on the side of not posing another 

challenge to these people? 

Mr. GARRATT. This challenge is one that we placed on the cities, 

sir, not on the individuals. This requirement, this 3-month lease 

was a requirement for apartments that they— 

Mr. FRANK. You are now taking the cities out of it, so now the 

challenges will be the individual’s going forward for the 3 months? 

Mr. GARRATT. The purpose of this, again, was we wanted these 

individuals as they were approaching the end of that 3-month 

lease, March 1st, to begin— 

Mr. FRANK. To take on the challenge of another 3 months, because what they have is another 3 months, right? 

Mr. GARRATT. Individuals can actually lease an apartment for as 

long as they would like. 

Mr. FRANK. You will only guarantee to pay for 3 months, and a 

lot of them wouldn’t— 

22

Mr. GARRATT. We are giving them rental assistance in 3-month 

increments. 

Mr. FRANK. So my last point, yes, you are giving these individuals, some of whom have no jobs and have lost everything, the 

right to go make a 12-month deal with a landlord with only a guarantee of 3 months rental assistance. Fat chance. 

Chairman NEY. The gentleman from Texas. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Garrett, one of the things that, through 

this housing issue, that I have wondered, and maybe you can enlighten me a little bit, basically, when the disaster hit, we had different kinds of occupancy, different kinds of ownership in the areas 

that are affected. One, we had owner-occupied structures that were 

damaged, and those people who were in those were displaced. And 

then we had renter-occupied structures where those people were 

just renting that structure. So, basically, it looks like, to me, what 

we have is different kinds of affected folks with different kinds of 

housing needs, and for us to really have an effective program, we 

have to kind of sort through that. 

For those folks who were renting those structures, many of those 

structures will not be rebuilt or will not be rebuilt in a fairly longterm basis because there are some unresolved issues. So what it 

looks like to me, appropriate Federal policy there is, as far as it 

goes for disaster relief, is a transition period. And I think that is 

what you are kind of saying there, is we are doing these in 3-

month or 6-month blocks. But at some point in time, those folks 

are just going to have to go find a different place to rent; that we 

can’t indefinitely continue to provide assistance for those folks with 

some kind of a false hope that they are going to be able to go back 

and rent a structure that was where they were before. 

The second piece of that then is, though, people who owned 

maybe those properties that were being rented and what kind of 

disaster relief that they are going be able to receive. As the gentleman brought up a while ago, some of those properties were mortgaged. Maybe some of them were not. So that landlord now doesn’t 

have a tenant but now still has a mortgage, so we have to give 

them some resolution of this is what the Federal response to that 

is going to be. 

Have you begun to quantify and identify folks in categories like 

that? Because I think there is this sense that I get—and I have 

been down there and I have listened to a lot of the testimony; I 

have read it—is that there is a sense out there that the Federal 

Government is going to come back in and put everything back just 

the way it was, and that is just not the case, because, long-term, 

there are many long-term decisions that are going to have to be 

made about some of the areas, what kind of rebuilding will go back 

in. And I know the gentleman from Louisiana has talked about creating these zones. But even in his plan, any realistic plan, it is 

going to take a long time to determine what kind of rebuilding is 

going to happen and in what form it is going to happen. 

So I think what probably would help folks more than anything 

in this process is for us to define, this is what is going to be your 

benefits, and if you have been renting a place, we are going to help 

you transition until you find another place to rent. But then our 

23

commitment ends there, because we can’t indefinitely pay for people’s rent until something magic happens. 

I think sometimes managing expectations is more important 

than actually managing the process. I think there may be some unreasonable expectations out there, but I think one of the things we 

need to probably do in this process is give the affected groups, 

whether they completely like it or completely agree with it or think 

it is fair or not think it is fair, but at some point in time, I think 

we owe it to those folks to say, this is going to be the Federal portion of that response. 

What is your sense of, for example, in some of those parishes, 

how many renters are we dealing with as opposed to homeowners? 

Because that makes a lot of difference of what that response is 

going to be. 

Mr. GARRATT. Sir, I don’t have those figures, but we do have the 

capability of pulling those figures from our system. We do capture 

when individuals register whether they were renters or homeowners, so we can provide that information to you, and we can 

break it out by parish as well. 

Just a couple of points. Every individual, whether a renter or a 

homeowner, is eligible to receive up to $26,200 worth of assistance. 

That is the cap on individual assistance. That is in the form of 

rental assistance and/or repair assistance, home replacement assistance and other needs assistance. You can have situations where 

we have individuals who are renters who may not be eligible for 

home replacement assistance or repair assistance but who nevertheless are going to hit that cap. Others need assistance, it is going 

to cover their personal property that they had in that rental property, their transportation, serious medical needs that they may 

have had, as well as rental assistance. So they could hit that cap. 

Homeowners are also much more likely to hit that cap, because, 

in addition to home replacement assistance, they also have had the 

personal property losses and also may have rental assistance requirements. 

In practical terms, at a parish level where we have a mix of renters and homeowners, homeowners are in a better position right 

now to get travel trailers and mobile homes, and the reason is, as 

we bring travel trailers and mobile homes into the area, the preferences or the easiest, most expeditious way of providing assistance 

is to drop a mobile home or travel trailer on somebody’s property 

where they have those hookups already existing. We can hook it 

up, and that individual, that family can live there while they try 

to rebuild their home. 

Renters don’t have that capability, so renters are going to need 

group sites to support renters, and group sites are either existing 

commercial sites, which we can find and use, and those are being 

gobbled up pretty quickly in the area, those where hookups are capable, or building a brand new group site to support a population. 

But those group sites also have their own social challenges. We 

need to have jobs for the individuals who are in those group sites. 

There needs to be a supporting infrastructure, wrap-around services, security; there needs to be schools nearby. A lot of issues go 

into building a group site and making sure we can support something like that. 

24

But the bottom line here is, at this stage of the game, travel 

trailers and mobile homes, we can get those in, get them put on 

individual property owners’ property a lot faster than we can set 

up these larger group sites to support individuals who in many 

cases are largely going to be renters. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. But if you drop a trailer, let’s say, on my prop- erty, and if my maximum benefit is $26,200, is there a rental then 

on the trailer that comes out of my $26,200, or how does that 

work? 

Mr. GARRATT. No, sir. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. So I get $26,200 plus the trailer? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir, you could, for up to 18 months. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. For up to 18 months. So what you are saying 

is that, yes, $26,200 is a maximum cap of cash benefits; is that correct? 

Mr. GARRATT. That is. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. But there are other benefits, depending on 

what class, whether you are a renter, whether you are—so if I was 

a renter, though, the rent comes out of my $26,200? 

Mr. GARRATT. It does. You have the $26,200 and all of the individual assistance that you are eligible for under that. You also 

have, unrelated to that $26,200, which is this direct-housing capability, and that is the provision of a travel trailer, mobile home, or 

in the case of States outside of the affected area where we are securing apartments for individuals under that authority also up to 

18 months, and we can place individuals there as well. These are 

individuals who have reached the cap, who no longer can receive 

rental assistance and have to turn back to FEMA for housing assistance. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Are any of these trailers being put back on 

properties that were in the major flooded areas? 

Mr. GARRATT. We can put trailers on properties in flooded areas, 

but there is an eight-step process that individuals need to go 

through in order to install a mobile home in a floodplain or in an 

area that is susceptible to flooding. It can be done. It is a rigorous 

process. 

Travel trailers don’t have the same requirements as mobile 

homes, and we have some latitude with travel trailers to place 

them in areas that are susceptible to flooding. But, yes, we do have 

that capability. 

Chairman NEY. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentlelady from California. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much. I am going to try to go 

through this very quickly. 

I am told that there are a number of homeowners who would like 

to get back into their homes, and these are homes that can be 

saved. They have mold maybe in them, or they need to remove 

damaged furniture, trash, what have you. What assistance do you 

have for them? 

Mr. GARRATT. Assistance in terms of getting back into their 

homes? 

Ms. WATERS. Yes, and helping to remove debris and rubbish. 

Maybe there is a fallen tree in the yard. Maybe there is damaged 

furniture. You have a lot of contracts that are out to remove debris. 

25

What assistance do you have to these homeowners directly who 

say, I want to go back and clean up my house and move in? 

Mr. GARRATT. If those individuals have their home inspected, a 

home inspector will come out and evaluate their home, will validate 

and verify the issues that they want to have fixed. If they are dealing with— 

Ms. WATERS. So they have to call FEMA to get an inspector to 

come out? 

Mr. GARRATT. I would hope that everyone who has been affected 

by this disaster will register with FEMA. That is the only way that 

an individual can get individual assistance from FEMA. As part of 

that process, if they were a homeowner, an inspector will come out, 

will evaluate their home and will validate and verify the damages 

to their home, and that process— 

Ms. WATERS. All right, so we need to tell people to just call and 

get their number and to identify the problem that they have to see 

if you have some assistance for that particular problem? 

Mr. GARRATT. Absolutely. 

Ms. WATERS. All right. On these contracts that you are letting 

out, for example on this debris removal, demolition, etc., I understand that you contract with someone who may charge you a particular amount. Then they subcontract with someone else, and they 

make money. And then that person is subcontracting with someone 

else, and they make money. And they are getting down to where 

the actual cost of getting the job done is very cheap, but we have 

paid—FEMA has paid 3 or 4 times as much money as is needed 

to get the job done. 

Are you aware of the subcontracting that is going on, particularly 

from no-bids or the big companies? 

Mr. GARRATT. I am aware of the first level of subcontracting that 

goes on. I am not personally aware that this has been subcontracted several levels down. 

Ms. WATERS. How can you find out? 

Mr. GARRATT. Go back and talk to the individuals and the joint 

field offices who are overseeing those contracts. 

Ms. WATERS. I would suggest, particularly since this is the taxpayers’ money and we all have to be very prudent in the way that 

we spend the money, that you know whether or not your big contractors are charging us a sum that is much more than the actual 

cost to get the job done. 

I had some figures—and I don’t have it before me. It was some- thing like with the removal of debris, it was $44 per something, 

and that they have subcontracted down to the point where the job 

is actually getting done for $11 per whatever that is. So you need 

to know that, and if that is true, you need to learn, how do you 

contract directly for $11 rather than $44 and save the taxpayers 

the money, and let us stop getting ripped off by the big boys, okay? 

Will you take a look at that? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. Secondly, where are all of the people? What cities 

are they in? How much money is it costing in each city, and why 

is it that the Mayor of New Orleans, for example, or Biloxi or these 

other cities cannot know where their people are? Where are the 

lists? 

26

Mr. GARRATT. We maintain lists. Anyone who registers with 

FEMA, when they register, they tell us two things: They tell us 

what was their original address, and they tell us what is their 

mailing address. So we have that information on individuals. And 

we are, subject to Privacy Act considerations, prepared to share 

that with anyone. 

Ms. WATERS. What Privacy Act considerations? Cite that Privacy 

Act that does not allow you to give the mayors that information. 

Mr. GARRATT. I did not say that the Privacy Act prevented us 

from providing it to mayors, ma’am. I said that we were prepared 

to provide that information. 

Ms. WATERS. The mayors don’t have it. I was just appalled that 

they don’t have the information about where their residents are. 

They have no way of contacting them. People are talking about 

elections and everything else, and you are citing some privacy act. 

What privacy act are you citing? 

Mr. GARRATT. I am citing the Privacy Act. But that information 

has been provided to each of the States, ma’am. Each State has 

that information. They can share that with the mayors. If the mayors cannot get that from the States, we will be happy to engage. 

But that information has been provided to all of the States affected 

by Hurricane Katrina. 

Ms. WATERS. Well, your mayors don’t know it, and I am going 

to call today Mayor Nagin and maybe one or two others, and I am 

going to tell them that, first of all, their Governors have it, and 

that Governors could give it to them, but if not, you will; is that 

right? 

Mr. GARRATT. Subject to Privacy Act approval, yes, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. What do you mean by subject to Privacy Act? Don’t 

parse words with me. What do you mean? Can you give it to them 

or not? 

Mr. GARRATT. If our Office of General Counsel approves that, 

yes, ma’am, we can. 

Ms. WATERS. You should know by now whether or not your Office 

of General Counsel is telling you yes or no. Who told you that you 

couldn’t give it to them? 

Mr. GARRATT. No one has told us we can’t give it to them, ma’am. 

There are a couple of considerations— 

Ms. WATERS. Then give it to them until someone tells them you 

can’t. Do you know what you are doing? If you hold on to that information, and they don’t have access to it, people—I mean, the 

mayor from New Orleans is going over to Atlanta to hold a town 

hall meeting. Six or seven hundred people are there. There are 

1,300 people out in California alone. They don’t have any contact. 

Nobody is talking to them. They don’t know what is going on. So 

I am suggesting to you, don’t make it a problem. 

I am going to follow up today with the fact that you said the Governors have it, and they can get it, and I don’t want to know about 

some problem that you have not been told that you have. Just get 

the information to them, and I will make sure that the mayors are 

in contact with you today to find out where their information is. 

It is extremely important. 

Now, I understand there has been a lot of conversation about 

these trailers. We know that the people have got to get out of these 

27

hotels. I don’t know how much money you have spent on hotels, but 

you can’t dump them out in the street. And I don’t care what your 

deadline dates are. Don’t dump people out in the street in any city. 

You have got to get them settled somewhere, and transitional housing is only the next step. 

We knew that they could not stay in the shelters or the hotels. 

Transitional housing, trailers, and manufactured housing, if you 

have a city that is not cooperating with you and they are not giving 

you the space or they don’t give you the land or you can’t get the 

hookups, I would appreciate it if you would let the chairman know 

about that problem, because the mayors tell us that you have all 

the space that you need; they don’t have any problems in cooperating with you; they have been identifying spaces, but you are not 

putting the trailers down. You have the trailers, right? 

Mr. GARRATT. We have trailers, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. You have enough to accommodate all of the 120,000 

trailers—you have 120,000, is that it? 

Mr. GARRATT. We don’t have those yet. They are in the pipe. 

Ms. WATERS. They are in the pipe. So if there are 10,000 that 

are needed in New Orleans today, you could move them there if 

you had the space, is that right? 

Mr. GARRATT. Not necessarily, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. How would you do it? 

Mr. GARRATT. We have got a contract to obtain up to 119,000, 

120,000 travel trailers and mobile homes— 

Ms. WATERS. A contract? 

Mr. GARRATT. We have a national contract to have those produced and delivered. 

Ms. WATERS. Wait a minute. Is this one manufacturer? Is this a 

wholesaler, an in-between person who is going out buying them, 

marking them up and then you are paying the taxpayers’ money 

for them? 

Mr. GARRATT. Both the national contract and local buys, our 

principal contractor— 

Ms. WATERS. Well, wait a minute. Back up so we understand. 

You have one contractor, is that right? 

Mr. GARRATT. No, that is not correct, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. Explain it to us. 

Mr. GARRATT. We have a national contract, but we are also 

supplementing that with local buys. 

Ms. WATERS. Explain the national contract. What is that? 

Mr. GARRATT. It is a contract that was developed, executed, at 

FEMA headquarters for ‘‘X’’ number of travel trailers to be provided by Gulfstream— 

Ms. WATERS. How much is that contract for? 

Mr. GARRATT. I am going to have to get that information back 

to you, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. No, no, no, you tell me now. You know. You have 

to know. That is a lot of money. If you can go out and spend millions of dollars on a contract, and you can’t come here and tell us 

that, then something is wrong with the way you think about this. 

That costs a lot of money. Who on your staff knows? All those people sitting behind you, who knows how much that contract costs 

28

and who got the contract? Gulfstream got the contract. For how 

much? 

Mr. GARRATT. I don’t know, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. Ask all the people behind you who came with you. 

Mr. GARRATT. Two people came with me, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. I am sorry. Of the two, do you know how much we 

are spending on this Gulfstream contract? Well, that amazes me. 

That absolutely amazes me. Of that one contract, the national contract, how is that contract divided up to get all of the trailers? 

What do they do for you? How do they get you all of these 120,000 

trailers? 

Mr. GARRATT. They produce the trailers in their plants. They 

ship those trailers down to staging areas where they are picked up 

by our individual assistance, IA, technical assistance contractors, 

who then— 

Ms. WATERS. Is that a no-bid contract? Don’t tell me you don’t 

know that. Staff members, was that a no-bid contract? 

Mr. GARRATT. I don’t know, ma’am. 

Ms. WATERS. I respectfully request another 30 seconds. We don’t 

know how much the huge, profitable contract is to supply 120,000 

trailers. We don’t know how much we paid for that, is that right? 

Mr. GARRATT. Ma’am, we can certainly get that information. 

Ms. WATERS. And we don’t know whether or not it was a no-bid 

or it was a competitive bid, is that right? 

You are not prepared for this meeting today. You should not be 

here without that information. That is what is wrong with FEMA. 

If you come before the Congress of the United States where we are 

talking about an agency that is not working and an agency that is 

spending our taxpayers’ money, and we are not getting the results; 

you can’t tell me whether one of your major contracts is a no-bid 

contract and how it works; you are not prepared for this meeting 

today. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman NEY. Thank you. I want to ask a quick question to just 

follow up. When decisions are made about, for example, manufactured housing, which seems to be one of the best things to do for 

the quickest ability to get people out of there, when a decision is 

made, do you contact the manufactured housing people who make 

this in whatever State, Indiana or down in the Carolinas—not 

you—but does FEMA contact and say, I need ‘‘X’’ amount of units? 

Do they do that? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir. 

Chairman NEY. Because manufactured housing, I know, at one 

point in time a few weeks ago, we had asked people in manufacturing housing, unless the order goes in, they can’t produce them. 

If we say we want 200,000 manufactured houses, they can only 

produce so many, no matter what. So I just wonder, in the area of 

contracting, do you call every manufactured housing entity and 

say, I want to purchase X amount, or how do you do that? 

Mr. GARRATT. For the contract, for this particular contract, 

again, we typically obtain contracts when we are responding to disasters through local buys, is the way that we typically do that. We 

want to use the resources in the affected area. So we will do local 

29

buys, and we are doing some of that down in the affected areas 

right now, supplementing that national contract. 

We did that national contract or started pursuing that national 

contract immediately after Katrina hit, when we recognized that 

there was going to be a huge paucity of available housing down 

there, that we were going to have tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed and that there was going to be a huge population 

necessary to support, we embarked on setting up a national contract to support that. That was done out of FEMA headquarters. 

We wanted to secure a set number of travel trailers and mobile 

homes then that were going to be delivered over time, that we 

could manage over time, getting them into the area. 

Chairman NEY. Are you going to get, if you don’t know the statistics, how many manufactured housing units different than the 

Gulfstream trailers have been ordered? I am told it is 25,000 have 

been ordered, is what I am told is an estimate, has been ordered. 

That might be nationally. 

Now, if we anticipate we need more to get people out of the hotels, if only 25,000 have been ordered, from wherever they have 

been ordered from, I don’t know if you ordered it from one place, 

one contract, if you know you have got all these people and you 

have a time deadline and people are going to be told they have to 

get out, if we need another 30,000 of them, if they are not ordered, 

you aren’t going to get them. That is just something I think you 

need to be quite aware of. 

I will move on in a second. I just wanted to ask about a precedent setting. Some of the things you are doing, and I think we have 

an unusual, horrific disaster, and so, therefore, we have to do some 

things we don’t normally do. The FHA, I talked to Secretary Jackson, he extended that 1 year to not have to pay payments, and I 

am not quibbling with that. But by him doing that, does that mean 

that people in Ohio, to pick obviously my State, or Georgia, if you 

are Mr. Scott, or wherever you are from, will that same support be 

extended to people who reach a natural disaster? 

We are not going to have the proportion of New Orleans, but a 

person in my district who loses their home, will that also be automatically extended, that payments can be paid for other people 

across the country? Maybe not just floods, maybe earthquakes. 

Have you talked about that? What you are doing now, will that set 

a precedent? I am not saying that is bad, but will it set a precedent 

to help similar people in similar situations? 

Mr. GARRATT. I can’t speak for the agency on whether that agency is prepared to extend that program for other disasters. 

Chairman NEY. I am sorry, things you do. Let me restrict it to 

FEMA. Things that you are doing now that are outside the box 

that you had to do, that are not the usual things done. Will that 

same support be extended across the United States for disasters for 

people? 

Mr. GARRATT. I would say that it may be, sir. We are going to 

look at the lessons learned from this event, lessons that we are 

learning even as we are moving through this event right now. If 

we determine that there is a smarter way of doing business and 

we determine that, as a consequence and a response to this disaster, then there is no reason we should not extend that smarter 

30

way of doing business to the other disasters. But that will depend 

on an innovation-by-innovation case review and a determination 

that that is the smartest thing to do. 

Chairman NEY. But what you are doing are temporary extensions. In other words, what FEMA does now is temporarily waiving 

a rule or suspending a rule? 

Mr. GARRATT. We have made some accommodations, for example, 

in debris removal. We do not typically, for example, remove debris 

from private property. But given the circumstances of Katrina and 

Rita, given the declaration of a public health emergency, given the 

catastrophic nature of the event, we have authorized debris to be 

removed from private property in recognition of that. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Mr. Chairman, may I make a parliamentary inquiry of the Chair and interrupt the witness for one second? 

My inquiry, I note there are a number of individual members 

here who want to ask questions. I did want to make one request 

for solicitude from the Chair. The two of us in the room who actually represent States directly affected are Mr. Melancon and myself, and I know that he has been given unanimous consent to participate. 

Can I ask that the Chair consider at least allowing the two of 

us, given the fact we have a vote coming in about 10 or 15 minutes, 

to go ahead of some members who have all spoken previously when 

the two of us have not? 

Chairman NEY. Unless somebody objects. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Chairman, I just have a few questions, and 

I have a meeting on the issue of immigration that is coming before 

us. 

Chairman NEY. I am done with mine. 

If there is no objection, we will move on. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate that. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank 

the gentleman. 

Mr. Garratt, I would just like to continue to ask you some questions about the contracts that have been awarded by FEMA. Specifically, you said that you want to do local buys, right? 

Mr. GARRATT. We like to do local buys. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. I would like to know, are you doing local contracts? Are you awarding contracts to local contractors? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Okay. How many Federal contracts have been 

given, of those big contracts, in the area of debris and demolition? 

Mr. GARRATT. I don’t know how many contracts have been given 

in the area of debris and demolition, ma’am. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Since FEMA falls within the jurisdiction of 

Homeland Security and is subject to the Small Business Act, you 

are required by law to make sure that those big contractors submit 

a subcontracting business plan to you. Have you seen any of those 

subcontracting plans? 

Mr. GARRATT. I am certain that our procurement staff have seen 

those, ma’am. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Would you be able to submit those to us? 

31

Mr. GARRATT. I would be happy to take that back to our procurement staff, yes, ma’am. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. I just have one question about—I want to ask 

you, does FEMA provide assistance for mold remediation? 

Mr. GARRATT. I am sorry, assistance for what? 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. For mold remediation. Mold. 

Mr. GARRATT. We can certainly provide assistance under the 

Other Needs Assistance Program that individuals can use for mold 

remediation. That would fit the criteria for a necessary expense 

and a serious need. It may also be possible that assistance could 

be provided by a health agency, and that assistance could potentially be subsidized, but it is going to depend on the nature of the 

facility that is affected and some determinations that are made. So 

the bottom line is, yes, they can get assistance under other needs 

assistance, under direct individual assistance. It is possible to get 

other forms of assistance. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. There is. By FEMA, they could get assistance; 

yes or no? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Well, my staff called the hotline, and we inquired about assistance, and they said that you provide none. So 

the problem that we have is that it seems like the right hand 

doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. There is no coordination 

on this recovery effort, and people and families do not know how 

to navigate the assistance that the different agencies are providing, 

and so, therefore, at the end of the day, they are not getting any. 

Mr. GARRATT. Any individual who registers for assistance with 

FEMA, when an inspector arrives to evaluate their home and they 

identify the mold issues, that would be an eligible expense and 

they would be eligible for assistance to address that expense. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Okay. 

Regarding the Federal contracts and subcontracting business 

plan, I just would like to make sure that we get the subcontracting 

plans submitted by a Latino business contractor in Mississippi—

and I don’t have the entire information with me. The only thing 

that I know is that she is a Latino contractor who got a contract 

for $6.7 million, and I am happy to know that she is a minority 

contractor who happens to be married to the nephew of the Governor of Mississippi. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman NEY. Is there objection to moving to Mr. Davis? 

Mr. Davis. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank my colleagues for being indulgent with my request. 

Mr. Garratt, let me ask you, you have gotten a lot of pointed 

questions from the committee, and that won’t stop with me, so I 

certainly want to put you on notice regarding that. There are several things I just frankly don’t understand about this process, and 

I will be very blunt on the first set of questions. 

This decision that was announced in mid-November that my colleagues have queried you about, the initial decision that people had 

to get out of these hotels, that honestly strikes me, coming a week 

32

before Thanksgiving, as frankly one of the dumbest decisions I can 

imagine anyone making in government. 

Who made that decision? 

Mr. GARRATT. My name was on the guidance document that implemented that guidance. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Did you make that decision unilaterally? 

Mr. GARRATT. I signed that document, sir. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. I don’t mean to offend you. I am sure 

you are a competent, capable person. Although I don’t know anything about you, I will make those assumptions. But that is a pretty tone-deaf decision. It is a pretty clueless decision for a number 

of reasons. My colleagues have mentioned some of them, but I will 

add an obvious one: It was right on the eve of the holiday season 

coming up. 

Do you have the authority to make that kind of decision without 

talking to the temporary head of FEMA? 

Mr. GARRATT. Whether I do or I don’t, I think that my responsibility is to talk to the acting director of FEMA. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Did you talk to the acting director of 

FEMA about that decision? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. And did the acting director of FEMA 

consent to what you did? 

Mr. GARRATT. The acting director of FEMA is aware of what I 

did; yes, sir. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Did you ask him, is this a good idea or 

bad idea? 

Mr. GARRATT. We discussed that decision, sir. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. And did he agree with you that it was 

a good idea to do it? 

Mr. GARRATT. The decision to make December 1st the date that 

we stopped the subsidies of hotels and motels was actually made 

well before that guidance document was issued, sir. When we took 

over the corporate lodging consultant contract from the American 

Red Cross— 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. I understand all that, Mr. Garratt. But 

who made the decision to go with the termination and not to seek 

an extension. You said it was you. I don’t want to spend my whole 

5 minutes on this. I think you have gotten my point. It was a remarkably bad decision, frankly, and if you did share it with the 

FEMA director, one of two things occurred: Either your chain of 

command is so loose that he didn’t engage in it, or that he joined 

you in the bad decision. 

The second line of questions, you mentioned several times that 

you all do an inventory and you do a census, I guess, of people who 

have registered with FEMA, that you have some kind of an inventory of people who register with FEMA. And you said you get two 

pieces of information from them, you get their past address and 

you get their current address. 

Do you ask them what their current housing needs are? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. And is there an inventory that lists 

these people by housing need in terms of, are they renters, are they 

33

homeowners, are they behind on their payment? Is that level of 

specificity contained in this information? 

Mr. GARRATT. We find out if they are homeowners or renters, sir. 

When I said these two pieces of information, I meant just regarding 

whether—we obtain a lot of information during the registration 

process. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. So let me ask you about that. You ascertain whether they are homeowners or renters. Do you ascertain 

what their specific financial situation is right now with respect to 

their delinquency on any payments? Do you ascertain specific information about what their financial situation is right now? 

Mr. GARRATT. We ascertain their pre-disaster income level. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Do you ascertain specific information 

about their status right now in terms of whether or not they need 

help from the government or any number of other things? 

Mr. GARRATT. When they call to recertify, after they start receiving assistance, an individual calls to recertify that they want to 

continue to receive rental assistance, we will discuss that with 

them at that time. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Let me ask you about the Transitional 

Housing Assistance Program that was implemented back in, was it 

September I think, Mr. Garratt? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Can you give me an assessment of how 

many people participated in that program? 

Mr. GARRATT. In the Transitional Housing Assistance Program? 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Maybe a better question, instead of you 

giving me a number out of the air, what is the status of those people? Can you tell me or is your agency able to tell whether or not 

you have an inventory as to how many of those people have been 

placed in permanent housing right now? 

Mr. GARRATT. We can tell you that we assisted between 500,000 

and 600,000 of those individuals. In terms of how many of them 

have been placed in permanent housing, I cannot tell you that. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ALABAMA. Why can’t you tell me that? Because it 

would seem, and I don’t want to go over my time, but it would 

seem that what is striking about this process, obviously, you all 

have an inventory of some sort. You have some identifying information about these people. You get some information from them, and 

I can’t understand why you wouldn’t get the full waterfront. I can’t 

understand why you all don’t have adequate information regarding 

the status of the people in the program. 

I guess I will just close, Mr. Garrett, on this point, because I 

know my other colleagues do want to ask questions. All of us understand the gentleman from Texas’ point earlier that, well, yes, 

something bad happened, but at some point, these people have to 

get their lives together. Let my give you briefly a different perspective on that, sir. 

Everyone on the other side of the aisle and our side of the aisle 

has spent the last 4 months talking about all of the failures of government, and, yes, in candor, the people on our side talk a lot 

about your agency and the Federal Government. 

34

People on the other side like to talk a lot about the State Governor, like to talk a lot about the mayor, but the one consensus 

that we all seem to have is that government really messed this up. 

We have something called a social contract in this country. And 

if we have a broad consensus, Mr. Garrett, that multiple levels of 

government failed, municipal, State and Federal, that means something basic to me. It means that they failed not in the abstract, but 

they failed people, they failed human beings. So isn’t it reasonable 

to you that we owe those people something that we wouldn’t owe 

them in the ordinary course of life? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, sir. And we owe that same level of support 

to the victims of any disaster anywhere. 

Chairman NEY. The time is expired. 

Is there still a unanimous request to—without objection, we will 

recognize the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Melancon. 

Mr. MELANCON. Mr. Garrett, with the trailer issues, a number of 

things, I guess, that come to mind. 

We had trailers that we bought for Florida last year for the hurricane. It is my understanding that they were auctioned off as they 

became available; is that true? 

Mr. GARRETT. We do auction off trailers, yes, sir. 

Mr. MELANCON. So we have 1-year-old trailers that we auctioned 

off and then turned around and we are buying new trailers now. 

Is there no plan within FEMA to possibly store and maintain 

these? Because hurricanes are pretty common now and other disasters where they could used. Is there no plan to do this at all? 

Mr. GARRETT. We store and maintain them at multiple locations 

now, sir. 

Mr. MELANCON. Are you talking about the trailers from Florida 

and previous disasters, or are you talking about new trailers? 

Mr. GARRETT. I am talking about either rehab trailers or new 

trailers. We store both. 

Mr. MELANCON. How many trailers did you rehab from Florida 

last? 

Mr. GARRETT. I don’t know those figures, sir. We can get them 

to you. 

Mr. MELANCON. How many did you auction? Do you know that? 

Mr. GARRETT. I don’t know that either. 

Mr. MELANCON. If you can get that to me, also. Now, Hope, Ar- kansas has a contract for $25,000 a month to store trailers, and nobody from FEMA seems to be able to tell anybody how many trailers are there, how many are coming through. I think between Texarkana and Hope, which is a staging—off staging area I think is 

the proper term—is there, I mean, do we not know how many— 

Mr. GARRETT. The Hope staging area is largely, if not exclusively, being used for mobile homes and not travel trailers. It turns 

out that there is not the demand for mobile homes in the affected 

area that there is for travel trailers. As a result, we have some excess supply, and we are storing those at the Hope site. 

Mr. MELANCON. In south Louisiana the demand is for travel 

trailers because people would like to get back to their property, 

start cleaning it up and establishing their lives if that is at all possible, particularly if their houses are salvageable, and even if they 

are not, where some of them are just completely gone. There seems 

35

to be a great difficulty with FEMA. They have to come in, they 

have to establish the electrical supply, they have to make sure 

there is sewage and water. 

Now, if I understand the concept of travel trailers that people 

use for campers, are there not holding tanks to these trailers? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MELANCON. Are there water tanks on these trailers? 

Mr. GARRETT. There certainly can be. 

Mr. MELANCON. A 5–KW generator in my mind would probably 

run the air conditioning and the lights, and the stoves would probably run on propane; would that be a fair guess? 

Mr. GARRETT. My understanding was that we were actually moving away from the propane units, sir. 

Mr. MELANCON. Okay. I guess where I am trying to go is, I spoke 

with the president of the parish of St. Bernard. They are averaging, I believe, one trailer per day that they are spotting in St. 

Bernard Parish. At that rate, it will probably be in the next century before the folks will be able to get back and get started. And 

I have heard complaints from people who had several acres of land 

in Blackman’s Parish, it is family owned land, they wanted to put 

four trailers or houses within a mile, daughters, son, the mother, 

and they are refusing to let them do that. Now, there are people 

camped out in pup tents in front yards from Mississippi and Alabama all the way through Louisiana, and having a travel trailer 

with a bed to sleep in, even if they didn’t have air conditioning and 

they didn’t have running water at this point in time, they had a 

septic tank, that is way ahead of the curve. But yet we refuse to 

let these people into those trailers until they are completely sited. 

And then one of the things that I have been seeing when I fly 

into Baton Rouge, there are several hundred trailers in Baton 

Rouge. That is not going to get those people back into New Orleans 

and St. Bernard and Plaquemine Parishes where their homes are, 

and the commute, with traffic, will probably be an hour-and-a-half, 

2 hours a day. They will never reestablish that. It is almost as 

though there is an intent there to not let them get established 

back. 

You said there is about 40,000 trailers. Do you have the numbers 

per State that are sited and per parish and per county? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, sir. By State, let’s see, Louisiana travel trailers, projected needs 80,000, capacity on leased sites, 23,482. Capacity on leased sites is the sum of leased commercial pads plus industry sites plus leased group emergency group site pads, plus private 

sites. 

Cumulative units on pads, 20,686. Cumulative ready for occupancy, 6,099. Units occupied 13,772. Occupancy rate of 86 percent. 

Mr. MELANCON. Is that Louisiana or is that all States? 

Mr. GARRETT. That is travel trailers in Louisiana. 

Mr. MELANCON. Because you are giving me pads, you are giving 

me on sites, you are giving me at locations. I guess I need to get 

you, if you could provide that for me in written form rather than 

run through all those— 

Mr. GARRETT. I would be happy to do that. 

36

Mr. MELANCON. Because my problem that I am finding is that 

they are not getting the trailers to their homes, to their lots so that 

they can restart their lives and get their places back up. 

The cost per trailer is about $20,000 average for these 30-foot 

trailers, or what is the average cost? Don’t you have a— 

Mr. GARRETT. That is the reasonable average cost, but we have 

also been getting them—I would say between $14- and $20,000 is 

probably a good— 

Mr. MELANCON. So if you had 125,000, average price $18,000, 

that might give you the number you have been looking for? 

Mr. GARRETT. I think the number for the national contract is less 

than that. Some of our local buys— 

Mr. MELANCON. They are staged, and then they are hauled in. 

Do you know what the price per trailer contract is for hauling them 

from wherever it is from the staged area down to where they are 

going to be located, what the cost is per trailer to make those 

moves? 

Mr. GARRETT. We have those figures, sir— 

Mr. MELANCON. I am told it is $4- to $5,000 per trailer. 

Mr. GARRETT. To haul and install? 

Mr. MELANCON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GARRETT. That would seem a little high to me, but I would 

be happy to verify that. 

Mr. MELANCON. One of the other complaints I am getting is rotation of personnel in and out. A lady called that I talked to last 

night, she was trying to get her claim adjusted for damage from 

Katrina. Then the person she was dealing with was rotated out. In 

the meantime, the next person comes back in and he is a Rita inspector, he is not a Katrina inspector, so she hasn’t gotten anything 

completed on the storm damage that occurred during Katrina, and 

the guy is saying well, we have a problem because you have to finish that up before I can help you with Rita. 

The parish presidents and the people who are dealing with them, 

they finally get somebody on the ground, and after about 2 weeks 

they are starting to understand the demographics and the geography and the problems, and then you rotate them out and they 

start from scratch. Grand Island, Louisiana rotated out a lady who 

had worked on the list of those people who could occupy the trailers, all of a sudden they rotated her out, the new person came in 

and nobody knew where the list was. The mayor took a crowbar 

and was getting ready to break into the trailers to let his people 

in them. It is as though the agency, instead of taking the initiative 

and saying let’s make it work, it is like if it is not written that we 

can do it precisely, we are going to opt not to do it. And that seems 

to be the mindset, and that is where the frustration level is. 

As I told the committee and Governor Barbour yesterday, and he 

agrees, Congressman Pickering made the statement that the people 

had moved into a state of depression. My people in Louisiana are 

either behind that curve or ahead of it because they are PO’d now, 

they are not depressed anymore, they are just flat out mad, and it 

is getting worse. 

Chairman NEY. The time is expired, but would you like an answer? 

37

Mr. MELANCON. No. What I will do, if I could, Mr. Garrett, I will 

make a list of the some of the things, numbers and such that I 

need and I will get them to you, and if you could get them back 

to me I would appreciate it. 

Mr. GARRETT. I will get them back to you quickly. 

Chairman NEY. Actually, can I intervene on one point you made, 

I would like to see if we can get a response on it, on the coordination of what the Congressman is saying about the fact that people 

are moved in and they are moved out. Have you heard this before, 

that this happens? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, sir, we have, not only in this disaster but in 

previous disasters. 

Chairman NEY. Because it has happened to us back home. Well, 

can you put a stop to that? You know, can you have the continuity? 

Have you taken that step? 

Mr. GARRETT. We are working towards that, sir. We recognize 

that is an issue. Our problem is that a lot of the individuals who 

are currently out in the field right now are individuals from the 

various 10 regions, permanent full-time individuals who have been 

down there for three-and-a-half months. What we typically do in a 

disaster is we will often flood that disaster with permanent fulltimers, and then over time backfill them with our Disaster Assistance Reservist Corps. 

In this particular case we have been pretty stretched across the 

country, and we have had individuals in a lot of these positions for 

a lot longer period of time than we would like, and so we are getting around to slowly rotating them out. We are also rotating people out just for some R&R. But our long-term strategy for this particular area is the same strategy that we employed in Florida last 

year, and that is to develop long-term recovery offices with individuals who are assigned to that office and will be there for the long 

term and will be able to provide that kind of continuity. We are not 

there yet, but that is what we are moving towards, and we hope 

to have that kind of continuity in place here in time. 

Chairman NEY. Thank you. 

Mr. MELANCON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman NEY. The gentleman from Georgia. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Garrett, let me ask you—I want to be clear, is it accurate 

to say that you made the decision, not signed off, but that you 

made the decision to evacuate the evacuees from the hotel rooms? 

Mr. GARRETT. I made the decision, and I signed the guidance for 

that that made that official. I would not characterize it as evacuating individuals from hotels, I would characterize that as that was 

the date by which we had planned to stop subsidizing hotel room 

stays. However, I also want to make a point—and I think it is an 

important point to make here—that anyone who was a—if FEMA 

determined that an individual was eligible for assistance from 

FEMA, had not received that assistance yet, FEMA was prepared, 

and is prepared now, even beyond the December 15th date to continue on a case-by-case basis subsidizing individuals in hotel rooms 

until they receive the assistance that they are eligible for and due 

from FEMA. 

38

By the same token, if we have individuals in our queue who are 

in what we call the pending queue, these are individuals whom we 

haven’t made an eligibility determination for yet, we will continue 

to subsidize those individuals beyond December 15th until we can 

determine if they are eligible, and give them rental assistance, at 

which point they will be responsible for taking care of themselves, 

or we determine that they are not eligible for FEMA assistance, at 

which point we would refer them to HUD and to the KDHAP program. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, there are two dates that are amounting to some 

confusion in my mind as far as extension of the deadline. You mentioned a December 15th date as the extension for the hotel stay, 

but also there is a January 7th date. Can you explain the difference? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, sir. We initially had established—on the initial guidance that went out we established December 1st as the 

date that we would stop the subsidies. And we had authorized two 

States, Mississippi and Louisiana, to apply for extensions up until 

January 7th. A week later we amended that guidance and extended 

what was the original date of December 1st to December 15th. And 

we preserved the January 7th date, but we also opened that up to 

an additional eight States who had the highest number of evacuees 

in their States. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, what you have just said is ample evidence of 

why the people are so confused. I mean, that—to go through that 

minefield that you laid of dates, how it applies, you know, even for 

me just sitting here, I had a little problem comprehending and following all of the dates. I can imagine what it would be for people 

who are actual victims of it. 

But from my own point, then, January 7th is that foremost date 

at this point that you have extended for folks to be able to stay in 

the hotels? 

Mr. GARRETT. For 10 States, sir. 

Mr. SCOTT. For the 10 States. All right. 

Now, now that you have extended the hotel deadline until January 7th for those specific States, those 10 States, does that mean 

that the 403 program’s deadline is also extended to permit the 

evacuees to enter into this program and enter contracts into this 

program? 

Mr. GARRETT. First, just a point of clarification is that those 10 

States are authorized up until January 7th. I am personally aware 

that only one State has submitted a plan and has received the authorization to go to January 7th at this point. We have pending 

plans from the others, but they certainly have that capability. 

In terms of the 403 and the extension, yes, sir, as long as individuals continue to be subsidized in hotels and motels as part of an 

organized strategy, then the States and locals who are hosting 

those evacuees will continue to have the authority to use 403 to 

place them in apartments during that period of time. 

Mr. SCOTT. How are you getting that information out? How are 

you publicizing that information? 

Mr. GARRETT. A couple of ways, sir. In terms of the information 

to the hotel occupants themselves, we are putting flyers under the 

doors of every one of the occupants. Corporate Lodge Consultants 

39

contacts the hotels, provides them those flyers, provides the direction to do that. And we have done that multiple times. We also 

have teams who are going out, not only the Federal Government 

or joint teams with the States and locals, but States and locals are 

doing this themselves as well, knocking on doors, advising individuals about the deadline, what their options are, that they need to 

register; if they haven’t received assistance yet, what their options 

are. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, as we move through that to the 403 programs, 

you stated—I think you released in November—that the payments 

under this section 403 program will end March 1st. Is that deadline still accurate? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, let me ask you this; how will this impact cities 

like Atlanta and Houston and Dallas that have already entered 

into 1-year contracts with the property owners? Will these commitments be honored to full term? 

Mr. GARRETT. Well, if the commitments aren’t honored to full 

term, then the provisions of the contract that allow that contract 

to be terminated, to include whatever those termination or penalty 

fees are, we will honor those terms. So if an individual who receives individual assistance by March 1st, is now receiving rental 

assistance at that point, elects to take that rental assistance and 

move to another city, leaving that apartment vacant, we are not 

going to pay for the full term of that apartment for 12 months. 

What we are going to do is we are going to tell them you need to 

terminate that apartment, we will pick up and reimburse you for 

whatever penalties you have to pay for terminating that apartment 

early. 

Mr. SCOTT. Let me go to another point, because there has been 

a lot of discussion about monies that have been given to evacuees 

for their rent, to help with the rent, but they have used it on other 

things. And I want to find out from you that some of these apartment owners have even forgone the rent and have done so under 

the belief that they would be compensated by FEMA directly for 

housing assistance or through the evacuee once the evacuees receives this housing assistance money, but, however, in many cases 

where the funds were provided directly to the evacuees, the money 

was spent on more urgent needs, such as food, clothing, and medicine. Will FEMA advance money now to evacuees to pay their back 

rent? 

Chairman NEY. The time is expired, but if you would like to answer that question. 

Mr. GARRETT. I would like to answer that question. 

We have issued guidance to our national processing service centers, we recognize that that is an issue, that the initial money that 

went out to the evacuees was sent to them or put in their bank accounts in advance of information that described what the intended 

use of that money was for. We also recognize that these individuals 

may have had compelling other needs at that particular time. The 

ones you mentioned, they needed food, they needed clothes for their 

kids. In recognition of the fact that these individuals who received 

that first increment of 3-month rental assistance may have needed 

that funding for other things and may not have been notified about 

40

what the intended use of that was for, we have authorized our 

NPSC’s to recertify those individuals if they will just make a selfcertification statement. All they need to do is certify one of those 

two things occurred, either I was not notified what the intended 

use of this money was for prior to its receipt, or I had these compelling other essential needs that I needed to fulfill with that money. 

If they will do that, we are prepared to recertify them for rental 

assistance. 

We are also prepared for individuals who need to pay, for example, a first month’s rent with their 3 months worth of rental assistance and therefore only have really 2 months of rental instance 

left, we are prepared to recertify them at the end of that 2-month 

period. They are not going to lose a month as a result of that. 

So we have made some accommodations here to recognize the situations that these individuals are in and to try and make sure that 

an individual is not penalized because they had to make what 

was—even an individual who was given—they had to make a difficult decision, and it may not have been the technically appropriate decision, but it was the smart decision for this individual 

and for their family. They made a decision, and we are not going 

to penalize those individuals for doing that. 

So again, they will be recertified, they will be eligible for recertification of that rental assistance, they are not going to lose that 

source of funding. And we will continue to recertify people—and 

this is a point that we want to make to landlords all over the 

United States, which is that as long as an individual—I mean, just 

an individual who receives an initial allotment of rental assistance 

from us, and we are prepared to on a case-by-case basis, at the request of any individual who we are providing rental assistance to, 

talk to their landlords and explain how this works. This is not just 

a three months and they are out. This individual, in a situation 

that they are in, is going to be working on developing a plan to find 

a permanent housing plan for themselves, and they are also, during this period of time, hopefully going to be working to try to find 

a form of employment. We will continue to subsidize those activities up until the point that they are self-sufficient, and we will tell 

the landlord that, that until this individual is self-sufficient we will 

continue to provide them rental assistance. Once they achieve selfsufficiency, then our expectation is they are no longer going to be 

receiving rental assistance from us because they have achieved 

that self-sufficiency. And that is what we want to do with all the 

individuals, is we want to provide assistance to them to help them 

reach a point where they can be self-sufficient. And we are prepared to do that as long as we are legislatively authorized to do so. 

So until they reach the cap on rental assistance, then they are 

going to be authorized for that. And even if they do reach that cap, 

we have the capability to provide direct housing assistance to that 

landlord for up to 18 months. So they have got some options, and 

we are going to be prepared to work with all of them to make sure 

everyone is taken care of. 

Chairman NEY. We are going to move on to Mr. Green, but I just 

want to take one second, if the gentleman will yield. Just to clarify, 

I think, what I heard. 

41

FEMA will continue to pay rent until a person is self-sufficient? 

Now, do you need a law change to do that? Did you say that FEMA 

will continue to subsidize—I am just trying to clarify what you had 

said. 

Mr. GARRETT. We pay rental assistance to individuals. It is typically in most disasters paid on a monthly basis and they recertify 

monthly; in this disaster, because of the size of the population, we 

are doing 3-month increments. So when they come back, as they 

are approaching the end of that 3-month period to recertify and get 

another 3 months, if they have not achieved self-sufficiency at that 

point and if they still have room under their cap for that $26,200 

they will continue to receive rental assistance from FEMA. 

Chairman NEY. But once that $26,200 runs out, you are not 

going to continue after that? 

Mr. GARRETT. We can’t continue rental assistance for those individuals— 

Chairman NEY. Unless you had a law change by the Congress. 

Mr. GARRETT. Correct. But we do have authority to, under direct 

housing, essentially take over that lease and pay that lease directly 

to the landlord. 

Chairman NEY. For how long? 

Mr. GARRETT. Up to 18 months. 

Chairman NEY. Thanks. I just wanted to clarify. 

Mr. Green. 

Mr. GREEN. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. Garrett, I trust 

this will be an amiable, amicable exchange that you and I will have 

because I truly am interested in some very specific information. Let’s start with about $600 million in contracts, 8(a) contracts 

that are to be let, and proposals are due on December 30th. Are 

you familiar with these contracts that I am talking about, the 8(a) 

$650 million broken down into four separate contracts for various 

States that have been impacted by Katrina? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes. I have some information in front of me. We 

are talking about the contracts, the maximum value of each will 

not exceed $100 million? 

Mr. GREEN. $150 million is the information I have. Do you have $100 million? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. How can we acquire information in terms of what 

the scope of the work is for each of these 8(a) contracts? 

Mr. GARRETT. Each contract will provide for the provision of 

maintenance and deactivation of approximately 6,700 temporary 

housing units. The period for performance will be 5 years from the 

date of the order. 

Mr. GREEN. Maintenance and deactivation? 

Mr. GARRETT. Correct. 

Mr. GREEN. Is this information codified someplace so I may have 

it in hand so as to carefully review and make good use of it? For 

want of better terminology, is it codified someplace? 

Mr. GARRETT. I am certain that it is, sir. 

Mr. GREEN. May I have someone on my staff get that codification 

from you as quickly as possible? 

Chairman NEY. Could I make a note on this, too? And I won’t 

take it off of your time. The gentlelady from California had reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:03 Oct 04, 2006 Jkt 026753 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\HBA342.040 HFIN PsN: TERRIE
42

quested, too, about information. Any information requested today, 

you can provide it to the member requesting it and also to the committee so we can then disperse it to all members. I just wanted 

to—any of the questions today, provide to the members asking and 

to the committee so we can disperse it to all members. Thank you. 

Mr. GARRETT. I am have advised that until that appears on 

FedBusOps website, that we can’t provide that to you directly. 

Mr. GREEN. So until it is published on a website there will be no 

means by which I can acquire it, other than what you will tell me 

today? 

Mr. GARRETT. That appears to be true, sir, yes. And I have got 

a little cheat sheet here in front of me. I will be happy to provide 

you information from that. 

Mr. GREEN. Immediately afterwards why don’t you and I visit 

about the cheat sheet and get as much of that information, and 

then I would like to explore some other avenues by which we may 

proceed. 

Quickly now with Houston, and all of the contracts that have 

been let for 12 months. To recap, you will either honor the 12-

month contract, or if the contract is not honored, you will then 

honor any penalties associated with the contract. This is true? 

Mr. GARRETT. That is true. 

Mr. GREEN. Houston has been styled a model city for this type 

of unfortunate circumstance, I think you have as much as said so 

yourself. Given that Houston is a model city, why would we not 

simply try to replicate what Houston was doing, and that was with 

the 12-months contracts, as opposed to negate what Houston did 

and move to the 3-month contracts? 

Mr. GARRETT. No one was trying to—or there was certainly no 

intention to negate any of the very lean forward actions that Houston has been engaging in. Authorizations for cities to enter into 

leases for up to 12 months was not a method of encouraging cities 

to do that, it was recognition of the fact that they might not be able 

to get leases at less than 12 months. 

Mr. GREEN. Here is the concern we have, Mr. Garrett, two—and 

possibly many more, but two quickly—one, your image is being tarnished with landlords once they hear about a 12-month arrangement and find out that you are now willing to move to a 3-month 

arrangement and pay the penalties. That does not encourage them 

to continue to do business with you. 

Two, even if you are so kind as to pay the penalties, you still 

have a person who has to find a new place to stay in an unfamiliar 

environment, possibly with children, possibly without transportation. It still places the person in a position where he or she is 

having to do something that may not be done within a reasonable 

amount of time. 

Mr. GARRETT. I would hope that is not the case. I would hope 

that the individual—again, what we are talking about, when we 

are talking about extending this contract out to the full 12 months, 

is just converting from having that contract paid by the State or 

by the jurisdiction, using 403, to being paid by the individual. So 

if an individual is in an apartment that was leased or— 

Mr. GREEN. Because my time is running short, time is of the essence, let me—you made a good segue now for me as to what is 

43

happening now in Houston. We have approximately 105,000 people 

in apartments, and that will escalate to approximately 130,000 people. Will you transition all the 130,000 people by your deadline? 

Mr. GARRETT. We certainly hope to achieve that, yes, sir. 

Mr. GREEN. And for those that have not been transferred, what 

will happen to them? Transition. 

Mr. GARRETT. The same would apply to an individual on March 

1st. Any individual, who through no fault of their own, if they are 

in an apartment that is being subsidized by the State and they are 

eligible for FEMA assistance and they have not received FEMA assistance at that point, we would continue their subsidy under that 

program until they are converted to the 408 program. So no one is 

going to be dropped from that program because they were not converted to the 408 program. 

Mr. GREEN. So your statement, for the record, is people will be 

transitioned by March 1st or some point thereafter if they have not 

been transitioned on or before March 1st? 

Mr. GARRETT. If they are eligible, FEMA’s goal is to reach every 

single one of those individuals, determine their eligibility, if they 

are eligible for FEMA assistance, begin providing them that assistance. At that point they would be responsible for taking over that 

lease and making the monthly payments on that lease. If they are 

not eligible for FEMA assistance, they would be referred to HUD 

and to HUD’s KDHAP program. 

Mr. GREEN. The persons who have not transitioned—now I think 

I am hearing you give me something more than they will simply 

remain in the program they are in until they can be transitioned. 

You are saying that something else may happen to them as well? 

Mr. GARRETT. Again, three things are going to happen. We are 

going to determine their eligibility and we are going to give them, 

provide them the assistance that they are due, their rental assistance. At that point they are going to be transitioned off of 403, and 

they will, using the rental assistance that they are given, be responsible for taking over the rental payments on the apartment 

that they are in. If they don’t want to stay in that apartment, they 

are certainly free to move out of that apartment and find other accommodations to use that rental assistance. 

They can also be transferred over to KDHAP program, under 

HUD’s program. Or, as we discussed prior to this, was if that individual is still in a state of limbo, if by March 1st we have an individual who is either pending, we haven’t determined their eligibility, or they are waiting for FEMA assistance, we would continue 

to subsidize that individual or those households until that determination is made and that assistance is provided to them. 

Mr. GREEN. One final question as a follow up to our first line of 

inquiry. 

How would one who proposes to acquire one of these 8(a) contracts do so in a prudent, judicious fashion without the information 

that we are making—we are asking you to share with us? 

Mr. GARRETT. That information will be made available to everybody who wants to compete for those contracts at the very same 

time on the FedBusOps announcement. 

Mr. GREEN. Notwithstanding the December 30th deadline for the 

proposals? 

44

Mr. GARRETT. We have to double check on the status of whether 

that announcement is even out yet. It may be out now; I am not 

personally aware that it is. But if that deadline—or if a determination is made by our procurement officials— 

Chairman NEY. Time is expired. 

Mr. GARRETT. —that a deadline needed to be extended, that 

could be done. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman NEY. The answer on that— 

Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir, thank you. 

Chairman NEY. Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Again, thank you, Mr. Garrett, for being here. 

And the questioning, I hope you understand everybody’s frustrated. I have spoken with one of the women sitting here, and of 

course they are frustrated and want answers to questions. And everyone—and we want them, too. And so even if we are noisy, we 

are not going to be nasty, so just bear with us. 

Are you familiar with E.L. Quarantelli? 

Mr. GARRETT. No, sir. 

Mr. CLEAVER. He runs the Disaster Research Center out of the 

University of Delaware. I think one of your staff persons seems to 

be. You know, he has been doing this since 1949, and he wrote, this 

is the worst response to a disaster during his time of research. And 

so you understand that people are frustrated. 

One of the—and this seems so simple, but what is the status of 

reuniting children with their parents? We have children, as I am 

sure you know, separated from parents. In Kansas City, Missouri, 

where I am from, we had some children who came there and ended 

up in the Children’s Mercy Hospital, but we had no idea where 

their parents were, and I am not sure if they know even today. So 

is there some kind of process— 

Mr. GARRETT. We have been working with the National Center 

for Exploited and Missing Children, and they provided us with a 

list of names. We have, on behalf of that center, done call outs to 

individuals, names that match up against the list of individuals 

that we have in our system, and we have locations for those individuals, and we have contacted the individuals or attempted to contact them, if we can, at the address at which they are listed and 

advise them that someone is looking for them at the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children and would like to talk to 

them and provide the contact information for that, either the individual or the guardian. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Do you have a number of children who are still 

disconnected from parents or grandparents or guardians? 

Mr. GARRETT. I think the numbers—and I don’t have them here, 

but we can certainly provide them to you—are the numbers that 

we were provided by the National Center for Exploited and Missing 

Children. The number that we were successful contacting and the 

number, obviously, that we were not. We can provide those numbers to you. 

Mr. CLEAVER. You know, one of the problems is that the name 

of the agency trying to do the connection, Missing Or Exploited 

Children, people don’t like to respond to that is why we have problems with the census in the central city. 

45

But the other issue that I wanted to relate on the same question, 

what would be the feasibility and practicality of having all the children in one area and trying to reconnect or to receive all of the 

children and put them in one area so that everybody in the country 

knows that if there is a child missing from Katrina or Rita, that 

if you go to Baton Rouge or St. Charles, all the children are there. 

Is that practical? 

Mr. GARRETT. I am not prepared to make a practicality assessment of that. I will certainly take that back and we can knock that 

around, but I am not sure what the issues—I think there might be 

a number of issues involved with trying to relocate en masse a lot 

of children. 

Mr. CLEAVER. You know what, I am moving my Congressional office at the first of the year because I can’t get people to come in. 

You know why? Because it is also the office for the U.S. Marshals, 

the FBI, the U.S. Attorney, and so I don’t get anybody to come in. 

I mean, they don’t want to come in to the Federal courthouse, even 

though it is cute. So, you know, Missing and Exploited Children 

sounds like an agency that is going to do something to you. But if 

you would explore that. 

The other, kind of related is do you have any kind of list of the 

people with special needs, the disabled? When you look at what 

happened there in the aftermath of Katrina, there were people—

and it sends chills to me thinking about it—dying in wheelchairs, 

people were watching folk die because they couldn’t walk and so 

forth. So even in the aftermath—and I think is it Justice After the 

Flood or something like—Justice After the Storm is kind of the 

theme they have. And so I am thinking about the disabled. Is there 

any special action being taken for people who have special needs? 

Mr. GARRETT. When individuals register with FEMA, if they selfidentify themselves as having a disability, we can capture that information and we can begin caseworking those individuals, again 

on a case-by-case basis. 

Individuals within the impacted areas are also being caseworked 

on a case-by-case basis. We recently upped the number of ADA 

compliant travel trailers and mobile homes that we are providing 

to Louisiana to address what are the unmet needs of a sizeable 

population of the disabled. 

So we are working that both at the ground level and at the regional and headquarters level to identify individuals, and based on 

where they are located, what their particular needs are, either 

working directly with them or making referrals to the appropriate 

social services to work with them. 

Mr. CLEAVER. How many evacuees have registered with FEMA 

thus far? 

Chairman NEY. The time is expired, but if you would like to 

please answer that question. Thank you. 

Mr. GARRETT. More than two million. I would actually have to 

add those figures up, but I can give you a figure at the end of this. 

Mr. CLEAVER. But roughly two million? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes. 

Mr. CLEAVER. That is fine, thank you. 

Chairman NEY. The gentlelady from California. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

46

A couple of things. Let me ask you, with regard to the homeless 

population, for example, following up on Mr. Cleaver’s question. We 

have learned—and I think it was as a result of the briefing with 

FEMA—that there were what, about 842 Katrina survivors living 

right now in homeless shelters. And I am just wondering, in terms 

of people who were homeless prior to this disaster, as well as those 

who are now on the verge of becoming homeless, what type of services, not only transitional housing assistance, but the type of supportive services that either FEMA or HUD or whomever is providing. 

And secondly, I just want to ask you about rent gouging? We 

have heard of instances where of course landlords are taking advantage of this unfortunate circumstance and gouging, and I wanted to find out if FEMA is working with HUD to establish some way 

to prevent that from happening? 

And finally, a question I have—and I am just not sure what the 

answer is, and forgive me if you have answered this before—in 

terms of local rents in high cost areas, such as—and we have, like 

I said, probably as far as we can tell maybe 1,200 individuals in 

just the Oakland Bay area, and the cost of living, the cost of rent 

is enormous, I think a two-bedroom apartment you probably can’t 

get for under $1,500 a month. And I am trying to find out how 

FEMA adjusts its housing assistance for high cost areas where individuals are living. 

Mr. GARRETT. I will be happy to address all three of your questions or areas you are interested in, and I will start with the last 

one first, in terms of the cost of living. 

FEMA initially gave out, under the Transitional Housing Assistance Program, 3 months at a national fair market rent. However, 

that was only for the initial allotment of rental assistance. From 

that point on, when an individual came back or comes back to 

FEMA and recertifies for rental assistance, they will be recertifying 

based on where they are living now, where they have established 

that temporary residence, and we will from that point on provide 

them rental assistance at the prevailing FMR for wherever they 

are living. So someone living in Oakland will get what that FMR 

is, not what the Tulsa, Oklahoma FMR is or what the national 

FMR is. And that will be effective with the very first recertification, and from every certification from that point on. 

In terms of rent gouging, it is because we are only providing 

rental assistance to individuals at the fair market rate, it makes 

it a little more difficult for someone to gouge an individual who is 

basically on a fixed rental income at that point. We recognize that 

that does take place and it has taken place; that is largely 

anactivity that we make known to—if we become aware of it, we 

will let, through our joint field offices, through our region’s States 

and jurisdictions, make them aware of the fact that we believe this 

may be going on. But that is largely up to the States and local jurisdictions to tackle in terms of addressing that rent gouging at a 

jurisdictional level. 

And in terms of the homeless, that is a more complicated issue. 

For the predisaster homeless, they don’t have as many options as 

an individual who was a homeowner or who was a renter. For example, they are not going to be eligible for rental assistance, they 

47

are not going to be eligible for home repair. They may potentially 

be eligible for some types of other needs assistance. If they had personal property that they lost as a result of a disaster, they may get 

some funding there. But largely, from an individual assistance 

standpoint, they are not going to receive nearly as much as someone else— 

Ms. LEE. Let me ask you this, because they were homeless in a 

disaster area where—they were homeless for, unfortunately, many 

reasons, but this compounded their homelessness and had to move 

from one homeless venue to another. Isn’t there any way that 

FEMA can perhaps look at grandfathering in predisaster homeless 

individuals who were displaced to provide some type of assistance? 

Because it is unfortunate they didn’t have a shelter, but now in 

fact because this disaster has hit so many, they should be eligible 

for whatever transitional housing assistance that is available for 

those who had to be displaced. And I think that FEMA needs to 

look at that and come up with some recommendations on how to 

do that. 

Mr. GARRETT. Predisaster homeless are referred to the HUD program, to their KDHAP program. 

Ms. LEE. Well, what is HUD doing? Since they are not here 

maybe you can answer. Don’t you coordinate with them? 

Mr. GARRETT. We do. And we make referrals to them. 

Ms. LEE. Do you know what they are doing? 

Mr. GARRETT. They work with the individuals who are referred 

and through their public housing authorities to find housing for 

those individuals. 

Ms. LEE. Since they are not here, could you ask them, in your 

response to all these questions, what they are doing to make sure 

that people who were homeless and were displaced receive the 

same type of assistance as those who had shelter over their heads, 

please? 

Mr. GARRETT. You bet, ma’am. 

Ms. LEE. And if they are not doing anything, would you let us 

know? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you. 

Chairman NEY. The time is expired. Before we move on—we are 

going to recognize Mr. Watt—I just wanted to note for the committee members, we want to thank Jim Shuman, he is sitting right 

there in the blue tie, from FEMA; he has been a Congressional liaison to this committee, and Friday is his last day. And we all want 

to thank you for your hard work. I don’t know what you are going 

to be moving on to, but whatever you are doing, thank you for all 

your hard work. 

Mr. SHUMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman NEY. And also, we are going to go to Mr. Watt, and 

then we will be finished. 

I do want to reiterate also to the committee members—and I 

want to thank Mr. Garrett for coming and addressing this situation. One way or another somebody from HUD is going to come 

here next week, not in January at the end, but next week, one way 

or the other somebody is coming here from HUD. I just want to assure you here on behalf of Chairman Oxley. So we can do it the 

48

easy way or the hard way, but one way or another somebody will 

come and answer questions. And again, I have talked to Secretary 

Jackson, and he has stated he was going to be coming. So I just 

want to make sure that that is followed up on and to assure you 

of that. 

And with that, we will go on to Mr. Watt. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Garrett, I am Congressman Mel Watt. I happen to be the 

Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. I am not on this subcommittee, and I want to thank the chairman for allowing me to 

ask a few questions and make a few comments. 

Perhaps the face of this disaster, Hurricane Katrina, was disproportionately black, and because it is disproportionately poor, 

and perhaps you are wondering whether the face of this committee 

this morning is disproportionately African American. I guarantee 

you, all these chairs are occupied by folks who are Members of 

Congress. We don’t represent 80 to 90 percent of the committee, as 

you have seen 80 or 90 percent of the questioners here this morning. And there is probably nobody in America who would be more 

justified in taking out and venting against FEMA than me, as the 

Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, because there has been 

a lot of horror stories. And I have passed up multiple opportunities 

to slam FEMA, so I am not here to slam you. I am not going to 

take advantage of this opportunity today to slam FEMA. I got some 

real tough questions. 

And part of what you are hearing is frustration because we can’t 

get any answers, except whatever is convenient to be said at the 

given time. I happened to be in a meeting with the President of the 

United States yesterday, and if I listened to what the President 

told me in that meeting everything at FEMA is going well. It was 

like day yesterday and night today, because everything obviously 

is not going well. And that is the global thing. I want to bring it 

home for a little bit, not playing my national role, but to my own 

State of North Carolina, where I have in front of me a summary 

of Charlotte, North Carolina. I got the names of the individuals 

who are staying at the AmeriSuites, the Marriott Executive Hotels, 

Staybridge Conference Suites, Extended Stay, Glen Haven; 43 people at just those hotels. And we are told this morning that as of 

December 5, 2005, 194 hotel rooms are being occupied just in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I also represent Greensboro, WinstonSalem, and a number of other cities that have evacuees. 

Now, we also were told this morning that this extended extension 

beyond December 15th to March 1st—everybody’s concerned about 

that—applies to only 10 States, am I correct about that? 

Mr. GARRETT. The extension is to January 7th, and yes, it only 

applies to 10 States. 

Mr. WATT. And that North Carolina is not one of those States; 

is that correct? 

Mr. GARRETT. That is correct, sir. 

Mr. WATT. So I have 194 hotel rooms just in one city in my congressional district, and I have the names of the people and I have 

the record of the churches that have been working with them, they 

have been courageous and wonderful in working with these people. 

And they called me just as a last resort, and I don’t know what to 

49

tell them, Mr. Garrett, because they don’t—I don’t know what to 

tell the churches because—and they don’t know what to tell these 

people about where they are going, and I need your help. 

What would you have me say to those people? 

Mr. GARRETT. Pick up the phone, call FEMA’s 1–800 number, tell 

FEMA that you are in a hotel, that you have not received any assistance from FEMA, if that is the case— 

Mr. WATT. No, no, no. These people are receiving assistance from 

FEMA now. I just told you they are staying in a hotel, FEMA is 

paying the bill. But you just told me that as of what date? 

Mr. GARRETT. I was referring to our individual assistance program, sir, versus the program under which they are being billeted 

in those hotels right now. That is a program that we are providing 

to individuals through a— 

Mr. WATT. Well, through what date? I mean, these people have 

been told that they will have to evacuate the hotels on December 

15th. 

Mr. GARRETT. They don’t need to evacuate the hotels on December 15th, sir. On December 15th FEMA will cease paying the subsidies for their stays in the hotel. At that point, it will be their responsibility— 

Mr. WATT. Well, what does that mean to somebody who doesn’t 

have a dime in their pocket, Mr. Garrett, other than you have to 

evacuate the hotel? 

Mr. GARRETT. That they, at this point, shouldn’t wait until December 15th, they should pick up the phone right now. If they don’t 

have a dime in their pocket, they should contact FEMA. If they 

haven’t registered with FEMA yet, they need to register. If they 

have registered with FEMA and they haven’t received— 

Mr. WATT. They have done all of that, I guarantee you. There are 

individual volunteers from churches who are working with these 

people and they have done that, and they don’t have anywhere to 

go on December 15th. What is it that I am supposed to tell them? 

Mr. GARRETT. If they have— 

Mr. WATT. Call the 1–800 number after you are standing on the 

balcony of the hotel? 

Mr. GARRETT. Call it right now, sir, call— 

Mr. WATT. They have already done that, Mr. Garrett, they don’t 

have any place to go. 

Mr. GARRETT. We are prepared, if these individuals have not yet 

received rental assistance from FEMA, if they have— 

Mr. WATT. And if they have? 

Mr. GARRETT. Then they will be responsible for using that rental 

assistance to take over their hotel and motel bills. That is what 

that rental assistance is for. Ideally they would use that for an 

apartment, but if they don’t— 

Mr. WATT. Well, I haven’t even mentioned the people who are 

staying in apartments, I just focused on the—they are having the 

same set of issues here. When do they have to get out? 

Mr. GARRETT. Individuals in apartments? 

Mr. WATT. March 1st? 

Mr. GARRETT. They don’t have to get out on March 1st. March 

1st is when we will complete—or hope to complete the conversion 

from a State—subsidized through the States and locals to having 

50

individuals responsible for that because they will be receiving individual assistance. 

Mr. WATT. Wait a minute. I thought you already terminated 

North Carolina before that. What did you terminate? I don’t understand— 

Mr. GARRETT. December 15th, sir. That was the date that we 

stop doing the hotel-motel subsidy. 

Mr. WATT. For North Carolina? 

Mr. GARRETT. Yes, sir. 

Chairman NEY. The time is expired, but I would like to ask for 

a clarification. You might want to— 

Mr. WATT. I am trying to get a clarification. Maybe you can ask 

the question more clearly than I am asking it. I am missing something here. 

Chairman NEY. Just to get down to a point. Okay. If you were 

HUD assisted—let’s just focus on who is in these rooms. If you are 

HUD assisted, you are taken care of. You are probably not in a 

hotel room if you are HUD assisted. 

Mr. GARRATT. Or you are in that hotel room until you are HUD 

assisted. Once you make a determination that you are a HUD referral, we will refer that individual to HUD, tell that individual to 

contact HUD and begin working with HUD. 

Chairman NEY. But if you were in Section 8 prior to this disaster, you were HUD-assisted. You naturally would have your 

voucher and, if you could find a place, be able to go to it. All right. 

Of the other people who are in there, if you owned a home and you are in this hotel, you get $26,200, if you owned a home? 

Mr. GARRATT. You can potentially get up to $26,200. 

Chairman NEY. Now, is there another category of people, a mom 

and three kids who didn’t own a home, were not HUD-assisted Section 8, but had rented an apartment? What happens to that group 

of people? 

Mr. GARRATT. They are eligible for rental assistance, certainly, 

sir. So they are eligible to get rental assistance at the fair market 

rent, and they are eligible to get that in 3-month increments. 

Chairman NEY. To pay to the hotel? 

Mr. GARRATT. Or ideally to pay to an apartment. 

Chairman NEY. But let me ask a question. We know they are 

HUD-assisted. We know that people who live in that hotel room 

now get $26,200, and they don’t technically have to leave on that 

date, but they would have to start into the $26,200 to pay. 

Now, is there another category of people though who were not on 

Section 8 but were the working poor, barely making it and were 

living in an apartment. Do they right now have the resources to 

pay, if FEMA says we are not going to pay anymore to the hotel 

tomorrow morning, do those individuals in the checking account 

have some money from the United States Government, FEMA or 

HUD, to pay that hotel room? 

Mr. GARRATT. If they do not have that yet, that is why we urge 

them to pick up the phone and call FEMA right now, is because 

if they don’t have it and they are eligible for it—and the family you 

just discussed would be eligible for it 

Chairman NEY. I don’t want to take more time. Who is eligible 

for it? 

51

Mr. GARRATT. Renters and homeowners are eligible for it, unless 

the homeowner had insurance that covered alternative housing. 

Chairman NEY. Say they are renters. Are they eligible based on 

income? Are they eligible just to get it? And how long would it take 

them to get it? I think this is probably— 

Mr. WATT. Is there some written description of these various categories somewhere? 

Mr. GARRATT. Yes, there is, sir. 

Mr. WATT. I beg of you, my office, we need to know what to tell 

these people, and I can’t tell these people to call a 1–800 number, 

Mr. Garratt. That is not a sufficient response for a Member of Congress to tell to volunteers from churches who have been working 

with these individual people throughout the process, who obviously 

they don’t understand what the various alternatives are either, because they have called me after having worked—this is the 101st 

day. We have had people in Charlotte now for almost 90 days, and 

they have been matched up with volunteers. These people have 

tried to figure it out. Now they are calling me and saying okay, 

what do we do on December 15th? And I don’t know what to tell 

them. So if you will give me a description of these. 

The other thing I need you to give me is not a 1–800 number but 

somebody down in North Carolina that I can talk to, that my staff 

can talk to, to try to help these people. These are people out there, 

and now, even though they don’t vote for me—we hope they are 

going to vote—if we ever give—maintain the right for them to vote 

in Louisiana or Mississippi or wherever they were evacuated 

from—even though they don’t vote for me, they are now my constituents while they are in my Congressional district. 

That is why I have the individuals—I mean, this is not a theoretical policy discussion that I am having with you, Mr. Garratt. 

These are about the lives of Walter Williams and Jerome Williams 

and the list of people who I have here in front of me who, on December 15th, don’t know where they are going. 

By the end of the day, just give me a description of these various 

categories and a contact in North Carolina that we can access to 

try to work to help these people. 

Chairman NEY. If you could provide that, and also please, again, 

any information provided to individual members, provide to the 

committee, so we will be able to disseminate it. 

I want to note that some members may have additional questions, of course, that the panel may want to submit in writing. 

Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 30 days 

for members to submit written questions for these witnesses and 

for them to place their response in the record. 

I appreciate the members’ time for an important topic. 

And I also want to thank you, Mr. Garratt, for coming here to 

address these questions. 

Mr. GARRATT. Thank you, Chairman Ney. 

[Whereupon, at 1:03 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(53)

A P P E N D I X

December 8, 2005

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