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This is at a town hall event in New Orleans that was supposed to be about public housing.

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/17714.html

Wow. They desperately need leadership in that city and in that state.

Aww, boo hoo. The poor people who live in government housing are going to lose their free house. Oh well. Try living on your own instead of off the government.

I'd also like to see exactly how it was decided who would be allowed into the meeting. I wonder if it was first come, first served, which it has been at every city council meeting that I've ever been to.

Wow... I am sure that acting like this will help them keep the houses from being demolished.... NOT!

What people fail to realize is that there is a housing shortage in NO. Tearing down public housing or any decent housing that can be used is not reasonable, at the moment. More affordable and decent housing needs to be built before any gentrification or regentrification projects can be started.

Brad Pitt will save NO.

The U.S. gov't has emergency programs geared mainly to help home OWNERS, not home RENTERS. It's as though their legal attitude is that if you didn't lose the house you owned, you didn't lose ANYTHING OF VALUE. These renters may have lost everything they owned, but by gov't aid standards, they lost nothing. When the gov't brought in trailers to serve as temp housing, it showed their lack of comprehension of the problem. These thousands of renters have no other place in the area they can afford to move to since the rentals have been razed and are gone. Since they fell to "rising water" the owners are not going to get whatever insurance they may have had on these decades, maybe century old homes. To rebuild them at 21st century cost means rental charges these former residents can never hope to pay. For these unfortunates, the "temp trailer" is as close to a permanent home as they are EVER likely to be able to afford. The only way to get rid of these temp trailers is for some combination of gov'ts to build affordable rental housing, and so far there has been no interest in moving toward this solution. They seem to just be hoping these poor will just "go away".
Since most of the nice Gulf Coast homes in MS, LA and AL that were destroyed were owner occupied, the gov't aid works well, and you will see them rebuilt relatively quickly while the NOLA renters remain neglected in their trailers.

It's been over a year since Katrina. If you're not back on your feet, then you're not trying, especially with the amount of money we pissed into that city.

dfarr Wrote:It's been over a year since Katrina. If you're not back on your feet, then you're not trying, especially with the amount of money we pissed into that city.

There are no words to describe your comments. SMH

I know that this may surprise some people but for those renters... THEY SALE RENTERS INSURANCE EVERY DAY!!!!!

I am so sick of this! I have been dirt poor and we sacrificed by working multiple jobs. We also never went without health insurance, car insurance, nor renter's insurance. We took a 75% pay cut two years in a row while both myself and my wife were in graduate school. By the third year... we were well below the poverty line. We worked our rears off at multiple jobs and went to school. I didn't get a penny from parents. We didn't get help from the government... we still made it. We drove and old car. We didn't have cable. Our entertainment was the dollar movie. We packed our lunches and did not eat out.

So... if someone hasn't rebuilt their life after Katrina, what have they been doing? The amount of government assistance that has flowed into that area should have people back on their feet. The amount of financial assistance from churches that continues to flow into the area is astonishing. To be honest with you, all of that assistance is probably doing more harm than good.

Part of me thinks we should have just flooded the rest of the city and started over somewhere else.

cb4029 Wrote:

dfarr Wrote:It's been over a year since Katrina. If you're not back on your feet, then you're not trying, especially with the amount of money we pissed into that city.

There are no words to describe your comments. SMH

Correct is probably one you're looking for.

I think it is indeed remarkable when a person can buy a car, pay rent, have uninterrupted medical, automobile, and renters insurance, all while taking a 75% pay cut and pay for two persons to go to grad school without any use of parental of gov't funds- all while making minimum wage at multiple jobs. that was indeed remarkable. You have my greatest admiration as I could never have done it.
BTW, Renters insurance probably carries the same exclusions for "losses due to rising water" that applies to the house insurance the 9th Ward home owners (who likely lived elsewhere) carried. It is probable that no insurance companies paid ANYTHING to those flooded out in NOLA.

BAMANBLAZERFAN Wrote:I think it is indeed remarkable when a person can buy a car, pay rent, have uninterrupted medical, automobile, and renters insurance, all while taking a 75% pay cut and pay for two persons to go to grad school without any use of parental of gov't funds- all while making minimum wage at multiple jobs. that was indeed remarkable. You have my greatest admiration as I could never have done it.

Wow... it is remarkable and we did it. Why I am going to take the time to show you this I don't know but I actually pulled the w2's.

I also did not say I was making minimum wage. The first year of my graduate program (which was a 96 hour degree) I worked at the library for 20 hours a week and my wife continued to work full time after missing 7 weeks while looking for a job. The second and third years of my program she was also a full time student and she worked 12-24 hours a week and we paid for her insurance on the side. I added a second job as a school bus driver which paid $10 per hour and provided my medical insurance. We paid my wife's insurance on the side. I also valet parked cars on the weekend. So... I had three part-time jobs and my wife worked between 1 and 2 twelve hour shifts per week depending upon her class load.

It is easy to take a 75% pay cut when you had real jobs before this. Prior to beginning my graduate work I was a congressional aide and my wife was a nurse who worked as much overtime as she wanted. We made great money. We took the hit two of those years and the third year it went down a little again... but just a little.

I had zilch government assistance but I did receive a scholarship (non-government) for partial tuition for all three years. My wife had student loans for her 2 years of school. I might add that we paid those back in three years but then again, we were living in the boonies on the Dominican/Haitian border... what could we spend our money on?

So... all of that said, I don't care if you believe me or not. We did it and it is possible but you have to be willing to work hard and eliminate unneeded spending.