HUD Creates New, Expanded Hurricane Disaster Voucher Program

Bush Administration Provides Additional $390 Million to Assist Families with Housing

Press release

By: Donna White

Date: February 14, 2006

Source: United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. " HUD Creates New, Expanded Hurricane Disaster Voucher Program." February 14, 2006 <http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr06 -017.cfm> (accessed June 26, 2006).

About the Author: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the primary government agency responsible for ensuring equal access to housing and for improving the quality of affordable housing in the United States.

INTRODUCTION

In September 2005, after hurricanes Katrina and Rita decimated areas along the U.S. Gulf Coast, federal agencies scrambled to deploy relief programs effectively. Hampered by dated, inefficient bureaucratic structures, the U.S. Department of Housing and Development (HUD), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and their state counterparts had difficulty coping with the housing crisis that resulted from thousands of homes being badly damaged or completely destroyed. HUD and FEMA were suddenly thrust into a situation that required unprecedented levels of cooperation between the two agencies, and the strain on the existing system was immediately apparent. President George W. Bush seemed oddly hesitant about how to react—a hesitation that some observers have attributed to his administration's ideals about limiting the federal government's involvement in state affairs.

The Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program (KDHAP), designed to provide up to eighteen months of housing assistance for displaced families, was a joint initiative of FEMA and HUD. KDHAP was unveiled on September 23, 2005. On September 24, 2005, Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf Coast with unanticipated force. KDHAP had to be rewritten to accommodate the victims of Rita, and this, too, took time and bureaucratic reshuffling.

In the months leading up to the February 2006 release of the annual budget, fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party debated about which federal programs should be cut in order to provide more funds for hurricane relief. House Speaker Dennis Hastert endorsed the recommendation of House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle's (R-Iowa) to amend the FY06 Budget Resolution and cut billions of dollars in mandatory and discretionary spending, but there was dissent within the ranks of the party as to where the funds should ultimately come from. The FY07 Budget Message of the President contained no mention of disaster relief, focusing instead on military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and calling for reduced spending on programs deemed inessential by the Bush administration.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Washington— The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has used the $390 million supplemental appropriation President Bush signed recently to replace and expand its current rental assistance program that aided families who lost their homes to hurricane Katrina.

The Disaster Voucher Program (DVP) extends eligibility for assistance to families who lost their homes to both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program (KDHAP) only assisted Katrina evacuees.

"There are still families who desperately need housing," said HUD Assistant Secretary Orlando Cabrera, who heads HUD's Office of Public and Indian Housing. "We are confident this funding and the changes to our original hurricane rental assistance program will help even more families find stable, more long-term housing solutions."

Families who were eligible for KDHAP—former public housing residents, Section 8 voucher holders and multifamily projects—are eligible for DVP through September 30, 2007, to provide housing anywhere in the U.S. Families who were homeless prior to Katrina or Rita are also eligible for this assistance. The more than 15,000 families who are registered under KDHAP have been transferred to DVP, without assistance interruption.…

Families who qualify for DVP are no longer required to get a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) number. Instead local housing authorities will register and verify eligibility using existing HUD criteria. The additional funding allows HUD to waive the requirement for income and tenant contribution for up to 18 months. If a family's original housing becomes available prior to that time, under DVP the family is eligible to reoccupy that housing.

SIGNIFICANCE

In a post-hurricane report prepared by the White House entitled "Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned," Frances Fragos Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, notes that disaster relief in the United States has traditionally been considered the responsibility of local and state governments, with the federal government playing a "supporting role." Among the report's recommendations are greater communication between federal agencies and practice scenarios for future combined relief efforts. A bipartisan Senate panel, led by Republican Susan Collins (R-Maine), concluded in April 2006 that FEMA should be dismantled. Homeland Security officials and former FEMA head Michael Brown responded with skepticism, expressing doubt that yet another bureaucratic reshuffling would create more efficiency. Brown pointed out that the proposed new agency would have much the same mandate as FEMA had before its responsibilities were scaled down.

Pursuant to HUD's announcement about the DVP program, a group consisting of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, New Orleans Legal Assistance, New Orleans School of Law/Loyola University, National Housing Law Project, National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness, Poverty & Race Research Action Council, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition drafted a letter, dated March 10, 2006, to Alphonso Jackson, secretary of HUD. The letter raises concerns about how eligible families would learn about their status and why certain families previously eligible for assistance would lose their eligibility under the new program. It questions the new, dual funding pattern that would sustain the program—funding that would only last until September 30, 2007, unless it was renewed. The overarching worry seems to be that hurricane victims that had been eligible for relief under FEMA programs created specifically for them would get lost within HUD and local Public Housing Authority (PHA) bureaucracy. In spite of widespread FEMA-bashing in the media and among the general population, it may be that the victims themselves were grateful for what protection the beleaguered agency afforded.

As of July 2006, FEMA maintained that it had helped hundreds of thousands of households, paying for thousands of hotel and motel rooms, providing apartment search services and rental assistance, and distributing thousands of manufactured homes. Critiques of FEMA's performance often overlook the fact that every state has its own version of FEMA—the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, for example, or, in Louisiana, the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness— which further complicated the distribution of resources after the 2005 hurricanes and may do so again in the future.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Web sites

Case Western Reserve University. "Office of Government Relations Legislation and Policy Report." October 2005 <http://www.cwru.edu/pubaff/govrel/oct2005. html> (accessed June 1, 2006).

Executive Office of the President of the United States. "The Budget Message of the President." February 6, 2006 <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/pdf/budget/ message.pdf> (accessed June 1, 2006).

MSNBC. "Senate Panel Recommends Abolishing FEMA." April 27, 2006 <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12505146/> (accessed June 1, 2006).

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "Federal Gulf Coast Response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita." September 28, 2005 <http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?con tent=4867> (accessed May 31, 2006).

U.S. Department of Housing and Security. "HUD Details New Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program—Up to 18 Months of Rental Assistance Available for Displaced Families." September 27, 2005 <http://www.hud.gov/ news/release.cfm?content=pr05–135.cfm> (accessed June 1, 2006).

The Washington Post. "Coast Guard's Chief of Staff to Assist FEMA Head Brown." September 7, 2005 <http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/ 06/AR2005090601677.html> (accessed May 31, 2006).

The White House. "Chapter 2: National Preparedness— A Primer." <http://www.whitehouse.gov/reports/ katrina-lessons-learned/chapter2.html> (accessed May 31, 2006).