NEW ORLEANS – No less than a half-dozen reports on the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort are being released to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the storm – and nearly all criticize the sluggish pace of the response.
The reports document a host of problems, from the still-unfinished levees to the plight of small businesses and the city’s continuing racial divide.
“It’s a pretty bleak picture,” said Minor Sinclair, who heads the U.S. regional office of Oxfam America, a charitable organization.
Many of the reports focus on the failure of federal dollars to reach their intended targets. Oxfam’s report points out that although $17 billion has been approved by Congress to rebuild homes in Louisiana and Mississippi, not one house has been rebuilt with that money in either state.
A report from the Democratic members of the House Small Business Committee found that 80 percent of small businesses on the Gulf Coast have not received loans promised by the federal government. The Small Business Administration has approved loans in excess of $10 billion, but only $2 billion has found its way to business owners.
Three reports found that the lack of federal aid disproportionately affects black residents and the poor.
In Louisiana and Mississippi, blacks are more likely to be renters than whites, two reports noted, citing census data. Though a large proportion of the dwellings destroyed by Katrina were occupied by renters, only a fraction of the federal housing assistance has been earmarked for rental units, according to several of the studies.
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