WASHINGTON, DC-The National Low Income Housing Coalition has deemed President George W. Bush's plan for providing housing to low-income residents left homeless due to Hurricane Katrina insufficient. The group released preliminary numbers on the amount of low-income housing units obliterated by the August 29th disaster.

On Friday the President proposed the Urban Homesteading Act as a means of providing temporary and permanent housing for the displaced low-income residents. "Under this approach, we will identify property in the region owned by the federal government and provide building sites to low-income citizens free of charge, through a lottery," Bush said during his national address to the country. "In return, they would pledge to build on the lot, with either a mortgage or help from a charitable organization like Habitat for Humanity."

NLIHC commended Bush's efforts, but concluded that the plan is unsatisfactory as it, by nature of a lottery system, creates winners and losers and will not fully embrace all low-income families who lost housing. Additionally, the organization notes, the proposal assumes that, ultimately, homeownership is the most reasonable option for the displaced; discounting that rental housing is necessary to sufficiently overcome the re-housing challenge.

"In all Katrina-affected areas of the Gulf Coast 302,000 housing units were destroyed or damaged in the storm," NLIHC's draft damage assessment concludes. "Seventy-one percent of the housing stock destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Katrina was affordable to low-income households and 30% were affordable to very low-income households. Forty-seven percent of the housing units in the entire Katrina-affected area were rental units." NLIHC recommends, alternatively, that the government increase choices for the newly homeless low-income residents--allowing them to relocate or rebuild in their hurricane ravaged communities, or to pursue rental housing or purchased homes--and make available replacement housing superior to the housing that was lost.