Monday, October 22, 2007

Housing funds for the port?Many of Mississippi's poor still await financial help with Katrina damage. But Gulfport has other plans for HUD money.

Author: Jenny Jarvie, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Publisher: Los Angeles Times
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GULFPORT, MISS. -- Most days, Luvenia Thomas sits in a wheelchair outside her dank bungalow on 21st Street. She says she cannot breathe inside. More than two years after Hurricane Katrina tore up her roof and flooded her home, brown water stains darken her ceilings, and her floors are bare. She has pulled up most of her carpeting, but still she says she cannot rid her home of mold. "I don't know what to do," said Thomas, 54, who is disabled and living on a fixed income. She has not been able to receive state assistance because the damage was caused by wind rather than flooding. "The roof needs fixing, the walls need fixing, the floors need fixing. The whole house needs fixing." In low-income neighborhoods across coastal Mississippi, many homeowners are still patching their roofs with blue tarp, positioning plants to collect drips from living room ceilings, and taping paper over window cracks. Most say they have yet to receive financial assistance from Mississippi officials. Advocates for the poor have long argued that Mississippi has skewed federal hurricane recovery funds toward the wealthy. But criticism has become particularly charged since the Mississippi Development Authority announced plans to divert $600 million in federal housing funds to restore and expand the port of Gulfport.

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