Order Shows FEMA Aid Shortcomings

Spokesman Jim McIntyre cited the difficulty of producing the data from antiquated computer systems and referred requests to FEMA's heavily backlogged Freedom of Information Act Office. FEMA also declined to provide an official to comment for this report, citing pending litigation.

But periodic updates show that by May, only one-third of households that had received rental aid sought recertification, and of 246,786 that requested it, 75 percent, or 180,636, were approved. By Oct. 19, less than 5 percent of the 720,590 households that had received assistance remained eligible for aid nationwide, or 33,889 families. (Another 108,088 families are in FEMA-provided trailers near their homes.) Analysts estimate that each household includes nearly three people.

By summer, four out of five recertification requests were denied, said Heather Godwin, a lawyer with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. Advocates and court records show that FEMA refused, against agency rules, to give aid to more than one member of a family, even if they were separated across the country; that the agency concluded erroneously that many homes were not severely damaged by the storms; and that FEMA relied on computer systems that were unable to keep track of applicants' documents and were plagued by overloaded workers' data-entry errors.

Other bureaucratic measures, designed to combat abuse, required applicants to provide written documentation of pre-storm housing payments, which was unavailable to some evacuees, or to meet inspectors even if they were living miles away.

Applicants sometimes got unclear or contradictory notices and advice from FEMA, resulting in what U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon concluded last week was a "Kafkaesque" process.

Liberal analysts also cite other indicators that aid cutoffs are leading to de facto relocation decisions as poor families, unable to get back to New Orleans, begin to seek local aid where they are. In Austin, the wait list for public housing has grown from 8,200 to 10,000 families, Godwin said.

In New Orleans, people working to curb homelessness say that an emergency-housing program funded to help 45 families drew 300 applicants this summer and that programs are seeing as many clients in two months seeking help as they usually do in a year.

Barbara Sard, housing analyst for the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, noted that more than 50 percent of the 35,000-plus evacuee families that ended up in Houston remain on FEMA rental assistance. But less than 2 percent of evacuee families who landed elsewhere in the country retained eligibility.

Part of the reason is that Houston took in some of the poorest evacuees. But the city, led by Mayor Bill White, has also pushed hardest to help and advocate for its storm victims. In October, the city lobbied FEMA to extend rental aid to 15,000 families through March, noting the failure of the agency, the city and applicants to navigate FEMA's recertification rules.

"It certainly suggests to me that it isn't so much about the people as it is about the process. . . . These people were visible because they had the local government behind them," Sard said. "How many people didn't reapply because they thought they weren't eligible, because they couldn't get through the phone system, because they didn't have a piece of paper that said what they had paid for rent before? . . . FEMA set up a nonsensical, impossible system."