Heartbreak Hotels
To listen to the media, thousands will instantly become homeless now that cold-hearted FEMA has FINALLY stopped picking up the hotel and motel tab for Katrina's victims.
THOUSANDS!
Well, yes. But not really.
Many have requested and received another extension. It's only for a couple of weeks before once again they're faced with one of two choices: leave or start paying for it yourself.
Others have refused to even answer the door or the telephone (telephone?) when FEMA tried to GET them to apply.
I'm wondering why, months after Katrina, so many are still in hotels.
I can understand it in the hardest hit areas along the Gulf Coast. I can even agree that for some they have no place else to go and finding a job COULD be a problem because so many businesses have been totally wiped out.
Others, and not just in the Gulf Coast area, might have health problems or could be so old that they just can't work.
But, uhh, FEMA does have an application process for transitional housing that those still in hotels could have applied for.
Some may have. FEMA's got quite a backlog.
And along the Gulf Coast's hardest hit areas, there just might not be any transitional housing available right now.
But, if people have so much time and are healthy enough to participate in rallies in New York, Houston and other locales to demand that FEMA (in reality meaning you and me) continue paying their hotel bills, shouldn't they be able to get a freekin' job and start paying their own way?
Anyone want to take a stab on how much is being spent on these rallies? Buses, meals . . . the salaries being paid to professional protestors?
posted by doyle at 7:23 PM
6 Comments:
Well, lessee, our unemployment rate is about 4.5% at the moment (which is to say, about half what it is in the rest of the developed world) and pretnear everyone who wants a job can get one.
However, I'm guessing the unemployment rate amongst Katrinaoids is (roughly) 115%, or about the same as some third-world shithole like Haiti or Ethiopia or Bangladesh. Or pre-God's-Wrath New Orleans, in which only corrupt city government officials, hookers, and the 15 minimum-wage employees at the downtown McDonalds could be said to have been "employed", at least as English-speakers understand the word.
In short, these useless maggots should feel right at home, shuffling off into the sunset and living off of the occasional tourist that wanders into weapons range.
My vote is to load 'em up in military transports and drop their lazy asses back into the 9th Ward. I daresay living conditions haven't deteriorated THAT much since the French stuck us with the place.
Google "fema trailers empty". I don't know what the problem is, there are plenty of empty trailers for them... But they could at least pay rent... ;)
"these useless maggots"
Let's not generalize...
9000 trailers sit empty in Arkansas...'cept they're needed in the Gulf Coast Region.
FEMA has failed to meet it's own delivery estimates for trailers, due in part to their own incompetence and also because of local officials not approving site selections.
You guys ought to do your homework before casting stones.
http://nytimes.com/2006/02/09/national/nationalspecial/09trailers.html?hp&ex=1139547600&en=444c6fae19f54a47&ei=5094&partner=homepage
http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_039123957.html
And sorry for abusing that apostrophe in "its". The two url's are to a NYTimes story about the failure to get trailers where they're needed and to a KUTV story about the trailers sitting unused in Arkansas.
I followed Pam's suggestion and got quite an eyeful.
In some cases the trailers are still sitting in staging areas because where they're needed most is still such a mess they can't be brought in. In other instances, the sites selected have no infrastructure in place for water and sewer yet. Other times, local elected officials are creating obstacles because the people already living there -- their constituents -- are raising holy heck because they don't want trailer parks in their neighborhoods. NIMBY.
That's not just NOLA or LA but Mississippi, too.
There's plenty of blame to go around and when it comes to generalizations, I'm not going to fault only FEMA. I'm also not going to generalize and automatically include every person FEMA has been providing assistance to or who's been yammering away in front of a microphone, as helplessly caught up in circumstances beyond their control.
Some are able to work and pay their own way. They just don't want to.
"You guys ought to do your homework before casting stones."
You're under the impression that we're talking about trailers here. I, for one, am not.
I'm talking about useless humans, most of whom have been raised by the welfare state and are, as a result, incapable of doing a single fucking thing for themselves except piss and moan because no one is lined up to "he'p 'em out" for yet another few months. Let's be crystal clear here. I didn't want to support the maggots when they infested New Orleans. I fail to see why I should suddenly want to now that they've leeched onto the FEMA tit and sucked it dry. As to the "spare" trailers, they can burn them to the frames where they're at for all I give a shit, or weld 'em all together and drag 'em into the ghetto so that moron Negro Nagin has someplace to hold court that doesn't interfere with real government operations. FEMA is NOT supposed to be in the housing business in the first place -- they're supposed to COORDINATE emergency response which, since it involved the corrupt freakshow of Louisiana and New Orleans, meant coordinating a looted budget, a plan that was written by a crew of Jerry's Kids and political hacks that make the Mafia look like a spring picnic.
Fuck 'em, boot their asses outta there, that's my vote.
As to my "homework," I happen to have done it day before yesterday when I filled out the 1040 form. They wouldn't allow me to elect to use the money that they're hoovering out of my wallet to buy new roads and exploding objects to kill raghaids. Instead, most of it's going to "entitlement" programs. Like $80.00 per day for hotel rooms to house dumbasses who can't figure out why living below the water line in a hurricane zone might not be that good a deal, even if dat welfare check shows up every week.
Not that I have any strong feelings about it one way or the other...
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