Gulf Coast Recovery News
"The support meetings attracted many single mothers and their young children. At first, Tucker said, there was distrust between the moderators and the storm victims. Many of the victims were low-income African-Americans; the moderators were mostly affluent and white."
"New Orleans' already-stressed network for sheltering the homeless may take another hit this week as the Salvation Army debates the closure of a dorm with 85 beds at its Center of Hope shelter on South Claiborne Avenue."
"Unity of Greater New Orleans will receive a national award tonight for its 'steadfast commitment to re-housing the most vulnerable New Orleanians.' The nonprofit is a collaborative of 63 agencies that provide housing and services to the homeless in New Orleans..."
"Yet the head of the EPA under the Obama administration, Lisa Jackson... say[s] the movement's achievements -- including significantly cleaner air and water throughout much of the USA -- have not been equally shared by low-income and minority communities..."
"Another 168 landlords in the program have a month to return letters committing to rebuilding and renting their units to low-income families at set affordable rates."
"Wage theft, racial discrimination, poverty-level wages and inadequate health care were among a flurry of allegations aimed at France-based Sodexo at a New Orleans City Council committee meeting today."
"The money will be used to increase the numbers of adoptions and transfers, and to provide low- and no-cost spaying and neutering services to low-income pet owners."
"Determining how many people live here will not be an easy task, given the thousands who are still homeless or living with relatives as they await permanent housing, and the bureau is allowing some unconventional counting practices."
"A few men have moved into Terraces on Tulane since it started taking tenants last month, but most of the building's first 46 residents are women who lived together in Forest Towers East... It's difficult to tell how many displaced elders have returned to New Orleans since Katrina. "
"The loss would be especially devastating for New Orleans, which is desperately short of housing for the low-income workers who are essential to the city's service economy. "
"After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, obliterating every home in the mostly black, impoverished Lower Ninth Ward, Washington was forced to go to the Superdome. The dome served as a refuge for the city's poor after the levees failed."
"New Orleans is riddled with problems such as poor leadership, crime, poor education, poverty and homelessness. There are New Orleanians that relocated to other parts of the country from the effects of Katrina, and want to return, but still have not been able to..."
"After Katrina, the poor homeless of New Orleans were airlifted throughout the United States to begin new lives. Many Haitians had tried to make new lives in the United States and until the other day were deported back to poverty and hopelessness."
'''Hurricane Katrina destroyed the lower Ninth Ward, but that community had been ravaged by poverty, without attention,' she said. 'The levees may have failed that week, but the government had failed for years.'''
"On Thursday night, two teams from UNITY's continuum and another from the New Orleans Police Department's homeless-outreach arm searched dozens of transient hot spots and ferried about 50 people to the city's handful of shelters, which were crammed..."
"That would spell disaster for the tens of thousands of low-wage workers -- full-time restaurant workers, home health care aides and maintenance workers -- and the New Orleans economy that depends on them."
"Low- and moderate-income families must spend most of their income, unlike wealthier families who can save and invest. So taxes on purchases fall heaviest the lower you are on the income ladder."
Her displacement, followed by her struggle to get back on her feet in the four years since, has given her a unique perspective on poverty in America.
"'I visit a lot of schools where 95 percent of the kids are on reduced or free lunch,' he says. 'Those schools are full of good kids. We just need to give them a chance to get out of abject poverty.'"
"The organizations have teamed up in Lafayette, La., the past two years for Blitz Build, during which thousands of work hours culminated in 19 houses being built for families left homeless after Hurricane Katrina's destruction."
"...[R]enters in the city's largely low-wage, tourism-industry work force aren't likely to make enough money to afford current market-rate rents in New Orleans, which rose 44 percent between 2004 and 2007, according to the Data Center."
"The BDF's junior program originally targeted youths in the 7th Ward, but it has drawn players from across the city. The program's specific purpose is 'reaching low-income children who lack easy access to the game of golf.'"
"Another factor that could show up when the scholarship students in private schools are tested is whether being in a class with children of higher economic status would affect their scores. Most of the vouchers went to children of low-income students."
"...[I]n 2006, when the state's Road Home program promised him and his wife [of modest means]... a way to fill the gap between the low pre-Katrina value of their home and the higher cost of rebuilding it after the storm, Dunkley... expected the government to deliver."
"William Harris, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will focus his presentation on the plight of low-income, black residents. 'My concern is how do we bring social justice through planning and urban design,' Harris said."
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