NLIHC Prompts FEMA Again on Hurricane Refugees

WASHINGTON, DC-The National Low Income Housing Coalition, along with close to 90 other groups, has written FEMA director R. David Pauliso–again–about hurricane refugees on the Gulf Coast still homeless more than a year after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma came ashore.

This letter was in response to a Nov. 29 ruling by US District Judge Richard Leon, which found that FEMA must resume rental assistance payments as well as provide three months retroactive payments to certain people who had been cut off from housing assistance by the agency. The notice provisions the agency sent out warning aid recipients of its decision to stop rental assistance were “unconstitutionally vague and uninformative,” the judge found. FEMA is appealing the decision.

“We have every expectation that you will implement, with all due speed, Leon’s ruling in Acorn vs. FEMA,” said the letter signed by NLIHC president Sheila Crowley. “The undersigned National and Gulf Coast organizations stand ready to assist you in spreading far and wide the news of some displaced households’ reinstated and retroactive benefits.”