MONDAY, JUNE 29, 2009

Recovery Corps issues first report of a new series examining Louisiana's housing crisis

BATON ROUGE, La. -- The Louisiana Family Recovery Corps released on Monday the first report of a unique five part series entitled Broken Homes: First-Hand Accounts of Living Through Louisiana’s Housing Crisis.

The series focuses on real stories from Recovery Corps clients as they try to recover from the impacts of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The initial report focuses on the lack of affordable housing stock in Louisiana and how it has negatively-impacted recovery in the state, specifically among those still living in temporary housing who have not yet fully recovered. The report also provides proposed solutions to help ease the crisis and remove some of the barriers faced by those still rebuilding their property and their lives.

The report can be viewed and downloaded here.

“Housing is one of the critical issues that faces our state today,” said Dr. Monteic A. Sizer, President and CEO of the Recovery Corps. “From the lack of affordable housing to insurance obstacles to contractor fraud, there are many elements that make this such a complicated issue and such a daunting barrier for those citizens still struggling to recover after nearly four years of trying to restore their lives.”

Even prior to the landfall of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Louisiana faced a major lack of affordable housing, especially for those families and individuals who are among the state’s most vulnerable citizens. This problem led to extensive homelessness and a large segment of the population living on the brink of homelessness in most of the state’s metropolitan areas.

The impacts of the hurricanes only served to allow what was once considered a mere housing shortage develop into a full-fledged humanitarian crisis.

More than 122,000 homes in Louisiana suffered major to severe damage or were destroyed by Katrina and Rita. Additionally, more than 84,000 rental units statewide also suffered major to severe damage or were destroyed by the storms. Many of these homes and rental units damaged or destroyed were in the greater New Orleans area, a place with a high concentration of some of the state’s most vulnerable populations.

That disaster was followed by a second housing disaster -- the slow pace of state and federal housing rebuild and case management programs in adding and repairing housing stock and transitioning those families who rely on transitional housing assistance into self-sufficiency in order to be able to break their reliance on governmental support before the end of the housing programs.

No matter how the blame is spread, the fact is that thousands of families in Louisiana still rely on government housing assistance nearly four years after the landfall of Katrina and Rita. And, while some progress has been made in recent months, available affordable housing in Louisiana is still not nearly at the levels needed to serve the population that will soon be transitioned out of government assistance programs and lose any type of government housing assistance.

“While we continue to point out some of the challenges we face as a state, this series will also focus on solutions to many of the various elements of the housing crisis,” Sizer added. “Anyone can point out problems, but we hope the solutions proposed will help ease some of these situations and provide new opportunities for impacted Louisiana citizens that will allow the state and its people to kick-start the recovery process and again show real signs of moving forward.”

ABOUT THE RECOVERY CORPS
The Louisiana Family Recovery Corps is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation based in Baton Rouge, La., and formed in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The Recovery Corps’ mission is to facilitate human recovery for the State of Louisiana in the aftermath of disaster, both natural and man-made. The Recovery Corps has partnered with human service and non-profit organizations throughout the state and the country to deliver assistance as effectively and efficiently as possible, allocating more than $80 million to recovery efforts and assisting more than 30,000 households since January 2006.