Real Estate Briefs February 8, 2006

Millions find temporary relief in FEMA

By Daily Press staff

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After funding more than 3.3 million hotel/motel room nights in order to provide tens of thousands of families with emergency housing, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is winding down the program and continuing its efforts to transition those displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to longer term housing solutions, officials said.

Since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, FEMA has paid more than $522 million for hotel and motel rooms as part of the more than $6 billion in financial and housing assistance provided to nearly 1.5 million victims. With a peak of 85,000 rooms occupied in one night, thousands of families used FEMA’s transitional hotel program on their way to longer-term living, officials said.

The short-term lodging program was initiated as a key component of FEMA’s temporary housing strategy to help individuals and families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Many evacuees sought immediate shelter in mass shelters established in the impacted states and relocated to communities throughout the country as part of the nation’s largest airlift in its history. The mass overnight shelter population peaked at 273,000 on Sept. 5, 2005.

More than 75 percent of the 26,000 evacuees still living in hotels and motels contacted FEMA to receive an authorization code prior to the publicized Jan. 30, 2006 deadline. In order to receive the authorization code and hotel/motel room extension, callers were required to confirm their status as a hurricane evacuee and register with FEMA if not already. Of those remaining in hotels and motels, nearly 24,000, or 92 percent, are in six states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

FEMA provides long-term housing assistance through rental assistance as well as direct housing such as travel trailers and mobile homes. More than 750,000 households have been provided housing assistance since Katrina made landfall, which includes 70,000 families living in FEMA-provided manufactured homes placed either on individual properties or in group sites in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Assistance also has been made available through states and the District of Columbia that received presidential emergency declarations to support the sheltering needs of evacuees. In 32 of those 44 states, apartment leases were entered into on behalf of evacuees by their host state or an entity partnered with the state. The organized apartment placement programs have placed approximately 60,000 families in addition to the leases entered into by evacuees using rental assistance from FEMA, officials said.

FEMA also is referring hurricane evacuees to federal housing options that have been made available by other federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Housing Development and Fannie Mae. In addition, individuals not eligible for FEMA housing assistance because they were not homeowners or renters before Hurricane Katrina or Rita may be eligible for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program.

Hurricane Katrina has already resulted in the largest allotment of financial and housing assistance under FEMA’s Individuals and Households Assistance Program (IHP) in the agency’s history with the nearly $5 billion, tripling the assistance provided following California’s Northridge Earthquake in 1994. Hurricane Rita, which has surpassed the $1 billion mark for IHP allocations, is approaching the $1.1 billion provided to victims of the four major Florida hurricanes in 2004 combined.

FEMA manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates mitigation activities, works with state and local emergency managers, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program. FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.



Housing for Latinos doesn’t make the grade

By Daily Press staff

LOS ANGELES — Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles gave housing market opportunities for Latinos in Los Angeles County a “D” grade in the “2006 Latino Scorecard — Road to Action,” a publication recently released by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

The “2006 Latino Scorecard” is an update of the study published in 2003 and tracks how Latinos living in Los Angeles stand in five key areas: health, education, economic development, public safety and housing.

“The Latino Scorecard is both a resource and a call to action for civic, social and business leaders to change Los Angeles institutions to better serve the Latino community,” said Fernando J. Guerra, director of LMU’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles. Guerra, who also is a professor of political science and Chicana studies at Loyola Marymount University, spearheaded the housing research alongside associates Matt Barreto, Mara Marks and Donald Morgan.

The team gave the housing industry an overall “D” grade on the basis of four components: accessibility, availability, affordability and quality. This reveals that there has been no significant improvement since the last study. Although Latinos have risen into the middle-class, the achievement is not reflected in the homeownership rates. In comparison to other ethnic groups, Latino levels of homeownership are low, few receive new home loans, and many tend to live in small overcrowded deteriorating housing units.

According to the study, in order to improve the quality of life for the region’s largest ethnic subgroup, policies must be prioritized to address the issue. Some of the policy recommendations proposed include: building more houses, improving access to capital/loans, promoting inclusionary housing, and enforcing current codes without taking units off the market.