Katrina funds will likely be diverted

Despite the best efforts of the people along the Gulf Coast and national media, HUD funds for rebuilding homes destroyed by Katrina will likely end up in a $600M port project.

From MSNBC today:

“It’s just insanity, true insanity,” said Sister Martha Milner, a Catholic nun and board member of the Steps Coalition, the loudest voice on the Gulf Coast against the diversion of the funds.

The article, like all the others, tells the very disturbing story of an unchecked Governor only working for the interest of big business. The lies and deceit are unending.

Mississippi, with the highest poverty rate of any state by several measures, already had won HUD waivers of rules that require the funds to benefit low- and moderate-income residents. Critics see the waivers as a product of the unparalleled influence with the Bush administration enjoyed by Barbour, a former Reagan White House political director, Republican National Committee chairman and legendary fixer who continues to receive checks from the Washington lobbying shop that still bears his name.
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Barbour’s current position that part of the housing grant pool was always intended for the port is at odds with his March 2006 testimony before a Senate committee, in which he emphasized that the CDBG money was mostly committed to housing and sought new funds for the port. A year later, Gray Swoope, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority, did not mention port funding in testimony before Congress about the use of grant funds a few months before the new port master plan was adopted.

Another sad day in Mississippi. Thousands of people are still in FEMA trailers or other FEMA housing and deserve a chance to have a real roof over their heads.

Cindy Singletary of Living Independence For Everyone, one of 50 nonprofit, religious and social advocacy groups that make up the Steps Coalition, sees the move to divert the housing funds as a bait-and-switch maneuver. “I have nothing against the port itself,” she said. “The main thing I’m against is the priority of it. … We have jobs on the coast. There’s ‘help wanted’ signs everywhere. But we don’t have homes, we don’t have apartments. … That, to me, should be the No. 1 priority for Mississippi.”