My name is Gerald Britt, Executive Director of Central Dallas Ministries, and a leader
with Dallas Area Interfaith. Dallas Area Interfaith and the other organizations
represented are here to call for FEMA to extend the group housing voucher program an
additional six months for New Orleans evacuees living in the North Texas area. This
extension has been provided for evacuees living in Houston and El Paso, and as the
region with the second highest number of Katrina survivors, we have the same need.
Hurricane Katrina was a disaster of historic proportion. The effects of this storm, has
displaced well over 250,000 people. Federal and local officials have admitted for
months, that the citizens affected by Katrina were failed on any number of levels. Refusal
to provide this extension only continues to compound these failures. The New Orleans
evacuees among us, must be provided the opportunity to establish new lives, focus on job
training, health care needs, the needs of their children, and create lives for themselves in
new surroundings.
Many of these families have already moved 3-4 times in the past 6 months. Many have
not been able to secure employment and those who are employed face a deluge of back
bills and cannot make ends meet without housing assistance. It is neither reasonable nor
right to think that families, who were among the poorest in our nation, can re-establish
themselves in six months without the type of assistance these vouchers provide. Failure
on the part of our council and commissioners to request this extension, would increase
the insecurity, instability and vulnerability of whole families who cannot transition from
the housing assistance program and secure independent housing by March 1. We do not
understand the political or practical wisdom that seeks long term solutions without this
vital interim step. While we applaud the focus on permanent housing and job training, all
of these efforts will be frustrated if we allow more of the evacuees to fall into
homelessness, hopelessness and despair. It is time for us to face the fact that many former
New Orleans residents are now new Dallasites, and we should take all necessary steps to
help them live with dignity.
We call on the City Council of Dallas and the County Commissioners Court to formally
request this extension of the program, because we cannot allow FEMA to treat this as a
short-term disaster. This is a long-term resettlement issue, and we need the strategies and
resources to keep this from being a greater tragedy than we have already seen.