[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
HOUSING OPTIONS IN THE AFTERMATH
OF HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 8, 2005
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services
Serial No. 109-67
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
MICHAEL G. OXLEY, Ohio, Chairman
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
DEBORAH PRYCE, Ohio MAXINE WATERS, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
SUE W. KELLY, New York, Vice Chair DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
RON PAUL, Texas JULIA CARSON, Indiana
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JIM RYUN, Kansas GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio BARBARA LEE, California
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
Carolina HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois RUBEN HINOJOSA, Texas
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
VITO FOSSELLA, New York WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
GARY G. MILLER, California STEVE ISRAEL, New York
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio CAROLYN McCARTHY, New York
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota JOE BACA, California
TOM FEENEY, Florida JIM MATHESON, Utah
JEB HENSARLING, Texas STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida AL GREEN, Texas
RICK RENZI, Arizona EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania MELISSA L. BEAN, Illinois
STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin,
TOM PRICE, Georgia
MICHAEL G. FITZPATRICK, BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
Pennsylvania
GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
CAMPBELL, JOHN, California
Robert U. Foster, III, Staff Director
Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio, Chairman
GARY G. MILLER, California, Vice MAXINE WATERS, California
Chairman NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana JULIA CARSON, Indiana
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North BARBARA LEE, California
Carolina MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
RICK RENZI, Arizona ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama
STEVAN, PEARCE, New Mexico EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas AL GREEN, Texas
MICHAEL G. FITZPATRICK, BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts
Pennsylvania
GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
CAMPBELL, JOHN, California
MICHAEL G. OXLEY, Ohio
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on:
December 8, 2005............................................. 1
Appendix:
December 8, 2005............................................. 53
WITNESSES
Thursday, December 8, 2005
Garratt, David E., Acting Director, Recovery Division, Federal
Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security... 12
APPENDIX
Prepared statements:
Oxley, Hon. Michael G........................................ 54
Ney, Hon. Robert............................................. 56
Garratt, David E............................................. 58
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Hon. Robert Ney:
Joint statement from the National Community Development
Association, et al......................................... 72
Letter from the National Multi Housing Council and the
National Apartment Association............................. 78
Hon. Barney Frank:
Statement from the National Low Income Housing Coalition..... 80
Letter from the National Association of Housing and
Redevelopment Officials.................................... 81
Hon. Al Green:
Three letters from Hon. Bill White, Mayor, City of Houston,
Texas...................................................... 84
Hon. David Scott:
List of News Headlines....................................... 93
HOUSING OPTIONS IN THE AFTERMATH
OF HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA
----------
Thursday, December 8, 2005
U.S. House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Housing and
Community Opportunity,
Committee on Financial Services,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., in
room 2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Robert W. Ney
[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Ney, Baker, Neugebauer, Davis,
Waters, Velazquez, Carson, Lee, Scott, Frank, Davis, Cleaver,
and Green.
Also present: Representatives Melancon and Watt.
Chairman Ney. The Housing Subcommittee will come to order,
and the hearing today is on the housing options in the
aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The Housing Subcommittee meets this morning to discuss the
Federal Government's response to the emergency housing needs of
residents affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita;
specifically, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA,
hotel program for evacuees and the role of the HUD housing
programs in response to disasters.
Also, we had hoped, I had personally hoped to include the
Department of Housing and Urban Development in today's panel,
but due to some scheduling conflicts, they were unable to
attend. However, I was assured by the HUD Secretary last Monday
that the Department would be able and available to participate
in another hearing on this matter. I think it is going to be
critical. The Department is going to have to make someone
available to be here to discuss this important issue. So we are
going to continue--
Mr. Frank. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Ney. Yes, Mr. Frank.
Mr. Frank. I wonder if at this point I might be recognized
for 2 minutes.
Chairman Ney. The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. Frank. As you know, and I gave you notice, and I
appreciate very much the efforts that you and the Chairman of
the Full Committee have made to have a HUD representative, but
it is unthinkable that we should be without a HUD
representative on a housing policy matter. It is also a
disadvantage--and I appreciate FEMA has been very forthcoming.
I have some criticisms of how they have done this, but they
have always been responsive to our request for meetings. I wish
I could say the same thing for HUD. Not having HUD and FEMA
here at the same time is already a disadvantage because there
is a collaborative effort here, we hope. But the failure of
HUD--and I understand you have made several efforts, and
Chairman Oxley has made several efforts. The Secretary was
given a week's notice. It wasn't a demand that he personally
come but that a responsible official come. I know you tried
through the staff, diligently, to schedule something for next
week. And the notion that HUD would refuse to come and has not,
by now, given you a firm date is an outrage.
And I therefore would note that Ms. Waters, the ranking
member of the subcommittee, and I have submitted a letter--
which I believe you have--yesterday to you. Let me just read
it.
``We are writing to request that you convene a business
meeting of the Housing Subcommittee at the earliest opportunity
and prior to the end of the current Congressional session so
that members of the subcommittee can vote to authorize and
issue a subpoena to HUD Secretary Alphonzo Jackson. I am very
disappointed that we have to come to asking you to do this, but
it is just an outrage, a Constitutional outrage, for the
Secretary of the relevant department not to come and speak
about these issues.''
And because while FEMA has some responsibility, we have a
longer-term responsibility; we have the question of the
interactivity of HUD section 8 vouchers and what has been going
on. And so I just want to note this, Mr. Chairman.
And as I said, this is no criticism. Indeed you and the
Chairman of the Full Committee have been very cooperative on
this. FEMA has been cooperative. I have never seen anything in
25 years here, like the failure of the Secretary of HUD either
to come himself or send a representative to talk about what has
got to be one of the most important issues facing that
Department.
So I thank you for your attention to this. And if you can
get a response from him without us having to subpoena him, that
would be preferable; but we will press this notion of a
subpoena if that is what it takes, sadly, to get a HUD
representative.
Chairman Ney. Thank you.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would like to have a moment
on this myself, because I really believe that this is an
extraordinary dereliction of duty. It is an insult to this
committee. It is an insult to the entire House of
Representatives that not only did Mr. Jackson refuse to come
and refuse to respond, but of all the employees that HUD has,
you mean to tell me we cannot have one representative from that
one agency--that obviously has more substantive need to
respond, particularly with Katrina and with Wilma, with Rita,
the historic devastation that those storms have done. I mean,
this is just unacceptable. And I think it is obviously a signal
of a huge meltdown on the part of this entire Administration in
terms of its inability, unwillingness, and insensitivity, to
respond to the pressing needs of people who have been
devastated.
We have had victims from Katrina up here literally crying,
begging for help from day one with the storm. And consistently
this Administration, this government, has failed them. This is
despicable. And it should not go unnoticed. And we must hold
this government to a higher standard in responding to its
people. The people in the Gulf area and the people of America
deserve better than what this Administration has given them,
and the failure of the Housing Secretary himself not to be here
is appalling and unacceptable.
Chairman Ney. Thank you. I am going to go ahead and finish
my statement, but I appreciate the comment of the gentlemen.
Again, I talked to the Secretary, and I have talked to
Chairman Oxley. I talked to him last night, and I see no reason
why somebody can't be here from HUD. And I will tell you that
somebody has to be here from HUD, and that is going to cost us
another day of a hearing as we come back this week--I don't
think we are going to be back the week after that, so it is
kind of important. If we don't get the comments and find out
what is going on--and maybe some things went right and maybe
some things went wrong--then, as I understand it, on a date in
January when we are not here, this whole thing is going to take
place of where people are going to be or not paid, or in hotel
rooms or not.
So after talking to Chairman Oxley last night, I fully
expect that somebody will be here that can converse on this
issue. Again, it is going to cost an extra day. I apologize for
that, but somebody will be here. I will correctly assume that.
So again, along with the Louisiana and Alabama and the
Mississippi Gulf Coast, Federal and local governments now face
a huge task of coordinating relocation of thousands of
individuals and families whose lives have been uprooted by
these hurricanes.
In September we had a meeting and we brought together
groups from across housing spectrums. Most members of the
committee on both sides of the aisle were at that meeting. And
this was, I think, one of the first steps in trying to get a
handle and respond to how we were going to deal with this.
On September 23rd, the Department of Homeland Security and
the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced two
distinct programs to address the housing needs resulting from
Hurricane Katrina. FEMA is the lead agency in administering
disaster assistance, and the majority of those in need of
housing assistance will be helped through FEMA's Individual
Households Program, IHP. Those that do not qualify for FEMA
assistance, including formerly HUD-assisted evacuees and those
homeless prior to Hurricane Katrina, will qualify for
assistance under HUD's Katrina and Disaster Housing Assistance
Program. FEMA is providing funding to HUD through a mission
assignment for the program.
I was pleased to see FEMA's announcement last month that it
was extending direct Federal emergency assistance reimbursement
for hotel and motel rooms occupied by people who had to be
evacuated.
As I understand from many interested parties with varying
perspectives on the merits of the hotel program, it appeared
that significant research and analysis was necessary to
understand the true impact of this; how many people were
affected, where they are at and what options they have,
especially in the area of housing. If they are trying to get a
job, they have to have a place to stay.
So given the complex ramifications of abruptly ending this
program, it became increasingly clear that more time is
necessary to work with State, local, and Federal partners to
ensure these families can become somehow self-reliant again and
reclaim some normalcy to their lives.
And I look forward to this hearing; and with that, I am
going to yield to Mr. Frank.
Mr. Frank. Thank you. Let me yield to, if I could, first
the gentleman from Texas, who represents the city of Houston,
and who has some important correspondence that was submitted to
us for the record from the mayor. Houston has been one of the
cities that has done an excellent job of trying to help out.
The mayor has done a great job, and Representative Green has
been very active with that and has been one of the point people
for us on this. So if we could just recognize the gentleman
from Texas to make that submission.
Chairman Ney. The gentleman from Texas is recognized.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Chairman Ney. And I would like to
thank Ranking Member Frank, also subcommittee Ranking Member
Waters. And I would also like to, if I may, just briefly say
thank you to you, Mr. Garratt, for being here. You are in a
tough position today. And you are in a tough position because
we live in a world where it is not enough for things to be
right, they must also look right; and it doesn't look right for
us not to have the representation from HUD in attendance.
Now having said that, I do have letters from the Mayor of
the City of Houston, Mayor Bill White, and these letters are
addressed to the Chairman--pardon me; yes, the Chairman of HUD,
the Honorable Alphonzo Jackson, the Secretary of HUD. And I
would like to, with your consent, Mr. Chairman, enter these two
letters into the record, if I may.
Chairman Ney. Without objection.
Mr. Green. And Mr. Chairman, would it be appropriate for me
to make additional statements now, or should I wait until my
turn?
Chairman Ney. We will go to Mr. Frank and then come back.
It is still Mr. Frank's time.
Mr. Frank. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I begin my statement I would like to also submit for
the record a statement from the Low Income Housing Coalition,
and let me just quote from it:
``In the 3 months since Hurricane Katrina, the Federal
Government, which is required by law to assist people displaced
by natural disasters, has been unable or unwilling to develop
and implement a coherent, functional, consistent plan. The
result is continued instability and trauma for tens of
thousands of people who are unable to begin to rebuild their
lives.'' This is on behalf of the Center of Budget and Policy
Priorities; the National AIDS Housing Coalition; the National
Alliance to End Homelessness; the National Law Center on
Homelessness; the National Low Income Housing Coalition; the
National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness in New
Orleans; and Unity for the Homeless.
I would also submit statements from the National
Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, and the
National Multi-Housing Council, again lamenting the shortfall.
And I would ask the--
Chairman Ney. Without objection.
Mr. Frank. Now, as I said, I have serious concerns about
HUD, and we ought to be clear that HUD should not gain from its
absence. I have many criticisms to make of FEMA, but I am more
critical of HUD, and obviously by being responsible and coming
forward, FEMA exposes itself to these criticisms. And we ought
to be very clear that HUD has also been, in my judgment, even
more culpable.
In particular, there were early requests from HUD to cities
that have section 8 waiting lists to take people who were
evacuated and put them ahead of people under section 8 waiting
lists. Pitting poor people in distress against each other is a
despicable situation, to quote my colleague from Georgia. And
that was especially the case, because at that time FEMA had
been given $62 billion. And for HUD to be urging administrators
of housing authorities who had section 8 waiting lists to cut
into this already badly stretched section 8 program was a
mistake. And I hope--and I have been talking to the
appropriators. That appears to have stopped going forward, but
it does seem to me appropriate for the housing authorities to
be reimbursed for that so we don't have that loss. I think
there is enough money, and we have asked the appropriator in
his reprogramming to do that.
But now as to FEMA. First of all, I have to say that this
announcement on November 14th that people would have to move
out of hotels on December 1st was one of the most heartless
things I have ever seen a government do that did not involve
absolute loss of life. FEMA did, 9 days later, correct that,
but what distress was imposed on already saddened people. And
the very fact that somebody so thoughtlessly would have done
that, you know, I--and in some cases, the gentleman from
California who has now joined us, the Ranking Member--have sent
a number of letters to FEMA. I don't believe we have gotten any
answers.
On October 7th, I said to FEMA, look, you have got a
deadline coming up. Could you please tell people what is going
to happen at the end of the 3 months? They waited 5 or 6 weeks
to do that, and they gave people who were deprived of their
homes, who were homeless, in many cases without any income,
without a lot of resources, they gave them 2 weeks' notice that
they were going to have to move out of their hotels. Then they
held it off until January 7th. That is just outrageous.
Secondly, we have this insistence that people rent
apartments for 3 months. Does everybody in FEMA own a home? Has
no one in FEMA ever rented an apartment? Does no one in FEMA
understand the difficulty of getting a 3-month lease,
particularly when you are homeless? Now, compound that with the
fact that in some cases cities were willing to step up--the
gentleman from Texas just read to us from the Mayor of Houston.
Mayor White has been superb. People in Atlanta have been
helpful, and other cities. They were willing to help out, they
were willing to be kind of be the go-betweens, they were
willing to sign the leases. It is hard enough to get a landlord
to give you a 3-month lease; maybe if the mayor or his people
asked, they might do it. And they were doing that, to their
credit.
First, many of them signed 1-year leases. HUD, without--
FEMA, without adequate notice to them, has since told them that
they won't honor the full year lease. And there was nothing
that I saw in advance that led them to think that. They looked
at the Stafford Act, which seemed to authorize up to 18 months.
So there is a kind of retroactivity problem here. And at the
very least, where you had a city put itself out that way and
sign a 1-year lease, shame on us if we try to stick the city
when you are sitting on a $62 billion appropriation.
Secondly, why repudiate the cities now? You have told the
cities that you won't take their help anymore. You know, I can
understand that--I mean, if George Forman was in a fight and he
told me he didn't need me, I would understand that he could
probably handle it without me. But you are not George Forman.
You are not doing a good enough job by any means to refuse help
from cities that are ready to step in. Again, we are talking
about people, some of whom were at a low-income status, people
who were working hard to deal with life. They were hit with
this terrible disaster through no fault of their own. Their
lives were further disorganized by the inadequate government
response. They were put in hotels. They don't have resources.
Some of them may be far away from home; they don't have jobs.
And a city is willing to help them rent an apartment for 3
months, and you say no? I hope you explain to me what possible
reason you could have for refusing the willingness of local
governments to do this.
Finally, we still have people in an uncertain situation.
They are being told 3 months; 3 months, we don't have any clear
criterion for what they need to do to continue beyond the 3
months. Why not give them a year? Look, people aren't
voluntarily staying away from their homes. People aren't loving
living in hotels. You don't have to worry that they are going
to cheat you by staying there longer than they need to. Why not
give them the year, and then if they can find something else,
let them out. Again, with this $62 billion, why not err--if it
is going to be an error, why not err on the side of a little
bit of compassion and charity instead of subjecting these
people to this kind of constant every 3-month turmoil?
And finally, one last point. We continue to have a great
deal of uncertainty about the mobile home recreational vehicle
trailer situation. One of the things I will be doing is
submitting to you: Can you tell us who is in what category and
where they are? I am told there are 800 mobile homes, 36,000
recreational vehicles. We are told there are 25,000 mobile
homes that have been delivered to FEMA to staging areas. The
Mobile Home Institute and Manufactured Housing Institute has
told us that. What is the status of those? What is holding it
up? I understand you can't put them all in there right away.
Frankly, I think you were unfairly criticized by some. Some
people said the mobile homes are terrible. Well, they are only
part of the solution; they shouldn't have been the whole
solution. And we appear to have gone from too much reliance on
them to not enough.
But the fundamental point I want to leave with is this: Do
not treat these people who have been through so much trauma,
who have had through no fault of their own so much taken away
from them, do not treat them with the kind of microscopic
scrutiny that this government hasn't applied to contractors in
Iraq or contractors anywhere else. Let's understand the status
of these people; let's work with cities that want to help, and
let's show a great deal more compassion than has been shown so
far.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Ney. The gentlelady from California, our ranking
member.
Ms. Waters. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members.
First, I would like to thank our active FEMA director. And
I want to preface my statement by saying any harsh comments
that you may hear today are not personal. We are pleased that
you are here. We are very upset that HUD is not here and HUD
has left you to face the music alone. And you are in a position
where the previous director of FEMA failed his country and the
people of the Gulf region, and so you are what we have to deal
with today. And we are very, very frustrated with FEMA. We are
very, very upset that we are constantly bombarded with
questions, with complaints, with dissatisfaction from the
victims of Katrina.
The first thing you need to know is this: Nobody really
understands how you work. We have been trying to get
clarification for every written request that we have made to
FEMA. We have not to this date gotten a response. We can't find
out how many trailers you have, where they are located. We
don't know where the people are in the United States, and how
many. The Mayor of the City of New Orleans was here yesterday;
he cannot get from FEMA where the people are from his city,
where are they located? Where are they living?
We were passing out baskets for Thanksgiving in Los
Angeles, California, to people from New Orleans who were living
in hotels, who were crying in line because of the information
that was disseminated from FEMA that they were going to be put
out as of December 1st. We know that you came back and you
changed the date. Now they will start crying, I guess in
January, because that is the purported date.
Then when we called FEMA, FEMA tells us, well, that is not
really a hard-and-fast date. We are going to take it on a case-
by-case basis. What are the rules? When someone calls FEMA and
their time is up, what are the rules? What rules are people
playing by? What are the questions? Where are the forms? What
do they look like? What constitutes the reasons by which they
will be extended or denied? We don't know that. We cannot get
our workers and our officers trained to be able to be of
assistance to people all over this country. We need some
answers.
What is the interaction between FEMA and HUD? We have real
questions about housing assistance, because this is the most
desperate--these are the most desperate needs that we are
confronted with.
I would like to spend some time asking you about
contracting and how you are contracting. Are we still in the
low-bid contracting game? What happened to the Big Four that we
were contracting with, the Ford Corporation, the Shaw
Corporation, Halliburton? Have we figured out--I don't know
whether or not--where we are with affirmative action in times
like this?
But since I don't have a lot of time and we are just doing
our opening statements at this point, I just want to try and
communicate to you how dissatisfied we are, how upset we are,
how embarrassed we are about FEMA. FEMA does not work. It is
not working. And maybe it is not your fault as an acting
director who stepped in, but what are your recommendations for
how we can do better? Why can't we get this relocation right?
Why can't we--we started talking about manufactured homes and
trailers right at the beginning of all of this, because we knew
that people couldn't stay in the shelters forever. We knew that
we had to have some transitional housing. We knew a few things.
We talked to FEMA about not putting up extensive ghettos where
you could spread out the trailers on small lots. We have had
people who have come forward with private lots and offered to
give their lots, volunteer their lots; they have not been
accommodated. And then you pass this off by telling us, well,
that is really not your responsibility; it is up to the cities,
it is up to the States, to talk about location.
The buck has to stop somewhere. And so we are going to have
a lot of questions for you today.
And again, I want you to know that we are not happy with
HUD either. And I think it has already been identified by Mr.
Barney Frank that we are going to try and subpoena HUD. And I
have suggested to some of my colleagues that if HUD doesn't get
over here, I am going over to HUD. I am known to do those kinds
of things. I am going over there, and I am going to ask some
people to go with me. And as a matter of fact, it is time for
me to come see FEMA and see what you people do, how you are
organized, who is responsible for what. I am just sick and
tired of looking stupid and dumb when people ask me questions.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Ney. I thank the ranking member.
I want to submit for the record, without objection, two
statements, one from the National Community Development
Association, the other from the National Association of Housing
and Redevelopment Officials--and hearing no objections--for the
record.
The gentlelady from New York, Ms. Velazquez.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to be on the record to express my
disappointment and my frustration with the fact that the
Secretary of HUD, Mr. Jackson, refused to appear before this
committee to help us understand the lack of response or the
ineffective leadership and mismanagement of the disaster
response from the Federal Government.
You know, if there is a time when this Administration can
show the world and Americans what they mean when they talk
about compassion and conservatism, it is today. And I am tired
of hearing the Administration's response to criticism, saying
that this is an unprecedented disaster. Yes, it was an
unprecedented disaster, and this is why we need an
unprecedented response that the people who are suffering and
who have lost everything are not getting from this government.
On October 18th, I sent a letter to the White House--and
maybe you can answer for the President today--expressing
concern about the Administration's wasteful spending on
uncoordinated efforts to house Katrina victims. The letter
questioned taxpayer spending on cruise ships, trailers, and
hotels when other more cost-effective, long-term housing
alternatives exist. The letter also questioned why the
Administration refuses to create an entity to coordinate the
Federal Government's housing functions.
And, Mr. Garratt, the response to this crisis has been
ineffective, inadequate, and clearly is not working. I would
strongly suggest to you, accept the fact that you have made
mistakes, go back to the drawing board and come up with a
strategy that will bring hope to the people who are suffering
so much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Ney. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
outstanding job that you have done, for your persistence, your
hard work in doing everything you possibly could to get HUD
here. It is certainly--he is not here, and he is not here at a
great disappointment to you as chairman. And I know that
personally. And I just want to make a point on the record to
let everybody know how hard you worked to try to get him here
and how disappointed you are, as all of us are as well. So I
want to thank you for your efforts on that.
I can't say enough now just how mad I am about this entire
situation. And this meeting, this gathering here this morning,
is fully demonstrative of the sadness and the shame of the
situation. This committee room should be packed. Every single
member of this committee ought to be here. It tells you
something. Not only is HUD--HUD's absence from this is symbolic
of this entire country's--and this Administration's
especially--attitude about this problem. And you know, I am
beginning to wonder why. Is it because these are poor people?
Is it because most of these people are African Americans? These
are serious questions, and we have got to find some answers to
them.
On the day before yesterday, there was a hearing on these
very issues by another committee. And I cannot erase from my
mind the pain and the anguish on the faces of those victims
coming up here from New Orleans and Mississippi. It is
inexcusable for this HUD Secretary not to be here.
Now, I just want to submit for the record here--and I think
it is very important. And we have traced just a news headline
litany that I think expresses the attitude, because we are
going to have to get to the bottom of this. We are going to
have to find out why this government is not responding to this
most serious issue, when hundreds of thousands of their
citizens are in such great need. If we can go over to Iraq and
tear down a country and rebuild that country, the least we can
do is the same for our own people.
Chairman Ney. I just want to note that the time is expired,
but the gentlelady has to go to a markup, so I want to make
sure--
Mr. Scott. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to make sure that everybody understands the
seriousness of this issue. And in view that the lady has to
leave, I will reserve some of my other comments for the
question and answer period. Thank you.
Chairman Ney. The gentlelady from California.
Ms. Lee. Thank you very much. And I will be very brief. I
just want to associate myself with the remarks of all my
colleagues here and say a couple of things, Mr. Garratt.
First of all, let me just say with regard to Secretary
Jackson's absence here, I think it is really a slap in the
face. I think it shows the rest of the country now exactly what
this is about and why there is such a gap in terms of--an
attitude gap, a gap in coordination, a void in terms of the
delivery of services that people deserve. And it shows us that
this government has probably--on this, and God knows if there
are any future disasters--it melts down, actually in a time of
need. And it is just downright shameful that the Secretary of
HUD won't come to a housing subcommittee. And for the life of
me, I don't know if this is just an attitudinal problem, I
don't know if it is one of his schedule, I don't know if it is
just one of the facts that he just doesn't want to come
forward. I mean, I have no clue why he is not here, but I would
hope that someone, our chairman and our ranking member, that we
get him here; because people who have been victimized through
no fault of their own have a right to know what their
Department of Housing and Urban Development is doing and what
type of expectations they should have.
Secondly, let me just say, what has happened with FEMA in
this whole disintegration, I think, has been horrible and
disastrous, and the anxiety--and we have probably about 1,200
residents in our area--the anxiety that has been created. Just,
for example, when people were notified that they would be put
out of the hotels and motels, this was right before the
holidays. The insensitivity just to let that word go out
worries me in terms of what kind of culture you have over at
FEMA that would allow this edict to even go out. I think that
that was just an example of the kind of problems you have at
FEMA that really, unfortunately, resonate with people and
impact people who have been traumatized, who have a lot of
anxiety, and who don't know what is going to happen next. I
would think FEMA would be trying and working in every way
possible to minimize this anxiety and to talk about and make
sure that people knew that this transition would be as painless
as possible and that FEMA was working with HUD to help make
sure that people get home as quickly and as safely as possible.
But the direct opposite messages are coming out, and so I
am not sure what is happening. I think Congresswoman Waters is
right; we need to figure out just what the deal is over, inside
of the agency that would allow such unbelievable kind of
messages.
So, Mr. Chairman, I just thank you. Thank you, Mr. Garratt,
for being here. And as soon as we finish with our markup, I
intend to be back and we will produce some of the answers to
those questions.
Chairman Ney. I thank the gentlelady.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green.
Mr. Green. Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman. And again, thank
you to Ranking Member Frank and subcommittee Ranking Member
Waters for holding these important hearings.
Especially as we approach the holiday season, we want to
make sure that the persons who are victims of Katrina and Rita,
these hurricane evacuees, that they know that we are sensitive
to their needs.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say a kind word about the City of
Houston, because the City of Houston at a time of need opened
up its arms, its hotels, and its apartments, to the evacuees. I
would like to compliment Mayor White, our county Judge Eckles,
for the outstanding work that they did. And I mention them
because at the time that they were being resourceful and being
helpful, they didn't ask about section 403, section 408. They
saw a need, and they met the need. Probably the only rule that
was of paramount importance to them was the golden rule: Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that is
what our city did.
And it is regrettable that we now have this consternation
developing with reference as to whether there will be
reimbursement for leases that are longer than 3 months, because
at the time these leases were negotiated, there was no
indication that they would be but for 3 months. This not only
creates a financial concern for the City of Houston, but it
really does create anxiety with the evacuees. I think that we
somehow have missed out on the whole notion of loving our
neighbor as we love ourselves, just treating people right.
This has become a major problem for this country, and here
is why; because after 9/11--and it was a dastardly thing that
was done--we treated the families, the victims, right. We did
the right thing. With the savings and loan debacle, we did the
right thing. It doesn't look right for us to do anything less
than the right thing for the victims of these hurricanes.
If we don't act prudently and expeditiously, the world is
going to start to draw conclusions about the victims that they
saw on television juxtaposed to the victims of 9/11 and the
savings and loan debacle.
So I beg that you would please understand that, having
answered the clarion call for help, the City of Houston and the
evacuees ought to be treated fairly.
I yield back the remainder of my time, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Ney. Thank you. The gentleman, Mr. Cleaver.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member
Waters, Ranking Member Frank.
Though it is redundant, I too must render or state my
disappointment and even disgust with the failure of HUD to show
up for this hearing. I will say it again; it is almost as if
the Federal Government is suffering from ADD, attention deficit
disorder. We just can't stay focused on a problem very long. We
are at best, it seems, a 12-week Nation.
For HUD to miss this hearing sends a statement across this
country that is difficult for any of us to explain. HUD's
failure to show is like Moses failing to show up for the
crossing of the Red Sea. It is like Manning failing to come out
of the locker room after half-time. And this is the second half
of this tragedy.
And I know that we have all kinds of hearings scheduled
here in the House, and no committee operates in respect of
another committee's time, and so many of my colleagues are no
doubt in committee hearings at this time. That is my hope; that
they are either at hearings or at funerals. The reason is that
I cannot imagine--and none of you can't either, I don't care
what your political pedigree might be--having this hearing 8
weeks ago without having every member of the committee here,
the HUD staff, and even a phalanx of staffers from FEMA,
standing room only. They would have been here. There would have
been cameras everywhere, people bumping into each other,
fighting for space. But not today.
The agency commissioned with the responsibility of dealing
with housing is not here. The biggest issue facing New Orleans
is housing, and the Federal agency responsible for dealing with
housing didn't show up. This is, as one of my colleagues said,
an embarrassment. The Los Angeles times carried a story on
Tuesday, ``Giving Up on New Orleans.'' There are people from
New Orleans who believe, with a lot of good reason, that this
Nation has given up on New Orleans. And it is a shame that I
have got to talk with you, but you know, if only one chicken
shows up, that is the one you feed.
And so I am sorry; I mean, I am not mad at you, I am happy
that you are here. But unless somebody else--could we get a
substitute for HUD, somebody to just sit at the table with a
HUD sign? I mean, because I feel badly about talking to you.
You didn't do it, although I wish you had had a few more
staffers with you just to make us feel better that it was
serious. But this bothers me. I have got some questions about
FEMA later in the hearing, but I had to register, Mr. Chairman,
my disgust. And I appreciate very much you being here. Thank
you.
Chairman Ney. Any other members have any other statements
or--any other members?
If not, with that we will go on to welcome David Garratt,
who is the Acting Director of the Recovery Division at the
Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters here in
Washington, D.C. The Recovery Division is responsible for
planning and executing the Federal Government's recovery
efforts for major disasters and emergencies. Mr. Garratt has
participated in over 30 Presidentially declared disasters or
emergency operations, including the World Trade Center-Pentagon
terrorist attack of 2001.
We welcome you. I am sure you are happy to be here today,
too. We appreciate you coming.
Chairman Ney. With that, Mr. Garratt, thank you.
STATEMENT OF DAVID E. GARRATT, ACTING DIRECTOR, RECOVERY
DIVISION, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Garratt. Thank you, sir.
Good morning, Chairman Ney, Ranking Member Frank, and
subcommittee members. I am David Garratt, the Acting Director
of the Recovery Division at FEMA, and I am representing
Secretary Chertoff and Acting Director Paulison. It is an honor
to appear before this subcommittee to summarize and discuss our
emergency sheltering and housing efforts in support of
Hurricane Katrina and Rita victims.
We at the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA
appreciate your interest in the housing challenges presented by
the scope and scale of these unprecedented disasters, as well
as the resources Congress has provided to help us tackle those
challenges and accomplish our mission.
I think we all recognize that these hurricanes, and Katrina
in particular, have thoroughly tested the capabilities of FEMA,
the Department, and the Nation, including the many States and
communities nationwide, who are hosting displaced evacuees from
the affected Gulf region. And yet, while these events have
tested our plans and processes as never before, FEMA's
sheltering and housing assistance programs have provided and
facilitated the means for hundreds of thousands of evacuees to
quickly secure interim accommodations and continue to fund and
facilitate aggressive strategy to transition those individuals
and families into longer-term housing solutions.
What we want to stress at this hearing and to disaster
victims across the Nation is that now is the time to begin
reestablishing and rebuilding your lives. We have been and
remain committed to helping households recover and reestablish
themselves. And I would like to outline the assistance programs
under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency
Assistance Act that FEMA is authorized to provide in support of
those housing and sheltering needs.
Under our Public Assistance Program authorized by section
403 of the Stafford Act, FEMA is authorized to reimburse States
for emergency protective measures, including emergency
sheltering. Typically these costs are reimbursed only for those
States directly affected by the disaster. However, the scale of
the evacuation prompted by Hurricane Katrina required a more
expansive approach. Accordingly, to encourage States outside
the affected area to accept the hundreds of thousands of
evacuees from the Gulf region, the President responded to
gubernatorial requests by declaring emergencies for 43 States
and the District of Columbia. These emergency declarations had
the effect of reassuring those States that their sheltering
costs would be reimbursed, as well as provided the means for
States to transition these evacuees out of shelters and into
longer-term temporary housing.
This latter capability has provided an invaluable bridge to
our longer-term housing strategy, as it allows jurisdictions,
on a reimbursable basis, to arrange short-term lease apartments
for evacuees, allowing them to move out of transitional
environments, such as hotels, and into more stable temporary
housing. The long-term goal is to bring these individuals into
broader FEMA housing assistance programs that have more
consistent guidelines and levels of assistance.
While section 403 supports sheltering activities, FEMA's
housing assistance authority is covered under section 408 of
the Stafford Act. FEMA provides the following forms of housing
assistance under our Individuals and Households Program, as
authorized under section 408, rental assistance, home repair
assistance, home replacement assistance, direct housing, and
other needs assistance to meet serious needs and necessary
expenses, to include personal property losses.
The scope and scale of devastation from these two
hurricanes eliminated the home repair option for many
households. Of course, home repair does not apply to renters,
who have the same need for temporary housing assistance. For
both these types of households, FEMA offers two forms of
interim housing assistance: rental assistance in the form of
financial assistance paid directly to an eligible applicant,
and direct housing assistance in the form of a dwelling
provided by FEMA to an eligible applicant.
We have been collaborating closely with HUD from the outset
of this event, working together to determine the best possible
means of joint cooperation to benefit those most in need of
housing assistance. In particular, I would like to cite the
assistance of Mr. Hank Williams, a senior HUD official who
joined our Housing Area Command in Louisiana early on, and led
an intergovernmental and public/private housing group in
developing housing solution strategies for the Katrina-Rita
impact area. We greatly appreciate the support and expertise
that Mr. Williams and HUD contributed to the development of
effective housing strategies for the region.
HUD also made repossessed houses available to FEMA-eligible
disaster households. It has placed hundreds of disaster victims
in houses in the four-State area, including 207 families in
Texas alone.
HUD, through their Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance
Program, or KDHAP, is copartnering with FEMA in the
transitional housing assistance program. The KDHAP, funded by
FEMA and administered by HUD, is specifically for those
disaster victims who were in HUD-assisted housing programs
prior to the hurricane, or are ineligible for FEMA housing and
assistance, such as predisaster homeless citizens who did not
have a previous permanent address. Such victims are being
assisted through HUD's KDHAP.
While finding temporary housing for so many displaced
households has been and will continue to be a challenge, FEMA
and its partners at every level of government and within the
private sector will continue to work together to find
solutions.
In summary, as of early December, FEMA has spent over 4.3
billion on housing for disaster victims. This relentless
recovery phase continues. So, too, does our commitment to the
victims of these disasters and to the States and cities who are
helping house and care for them.
At the same time, we continue to seek and develop
alternative housing solutions in the impacted areas to afford
as many displaced victims as possible the opportunity to return
home as fast as possible.
Thank you. I would be happy to answer any questions that
you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Garratt can be found on page
58 of the appendix.]
Chairman Ney. Thank you for your comments, and I recognize
Mr. Baker.
Mr. Baker. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your indulgence. I
regret I was not here to make my opening statement, but I did
want to express my appreciation to you for this hearing.
I will say that of the calls I received in the days after
the storm made landfall, yours was the first offering
appropriate assistance in whatever direction that might be
taken at the time to respond to the circumstances. So I want
the record to be clear that this subcommittee chairman has done
excellent work in responding to the identified needs.
I also want to make clear that we are, at this moment, in
continuing discussions with members of the delegation relative
to the finalization of H.R. 4100, which creates a government
corporation to assist in the resolution of the devastated
housing within the Katrina-Rita impact areas. We are very
close, and I am hopeful that when we return next week, given
all members of the Louisiana delegation's willingness to sign
on to the proposal, that we could have assurances and
assistance from members of this committee in urging
consideration of that proposal as a component of the broader
Katrina relief package that I believe will be considered on the
Floor next week.
Unfortunately, I read yesterday in a local wire service
publication, The Daily Report, that the first calls are now
being made to the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions,
complaining about demand notices being issued for 4 months'
back payments, plus interest, for homeowners who are not now
even able to return to their property. With the Congress not
returning until February, I am very distressed that tens of
thousands of notices will go out to individuals without an
identified method by the Congress to respond to what I hate to
say will be a cataclysmic financial problem.
The banks who are taking this action are certainly within
their legal authority to do so, and may, in fact, have a
fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and to
regulators to take these actions, but the banks will be in no
better position than the individuals. Once the banks acquire
the property through the foreclosure process, they are going to
have parcels scattered all over the area, not contiguous. They
will have a liability on the lot, which is a devastated
structure, which they will have to pay to remove, and then only
have improved property to liquidate to try to remedy the
partial mortgage obligation.
I have learned that it will not be unexpected to see a very
significant number of Louisiana institutions forced into a
financial condition that will not warrant continued operations
for lengthy periods of time--I am saying that as carefully as I
can. But these are extraordinary circumstances, and they are
extraordinarily bad.
Mr. Chairman, again I want to emphasize my deep
appreciation to you for your leadership and insight into these
matters, and make clear to the members of the committee I have
a deep and abiding interest in this matter, but I do find it
absolutely necessary at the time, working with members of the
Louisiana delegation, to try to get the elements of H.R. 4100
finalized, so I can return to this committee and to the
Financial Services Committee with an offer for its
consideration, I hope, next week. And I thank the gentleman for
his courtesy and yield the time.
Chairman Ney. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
I think that FEMA is in unchartered waters, and I thank you
for coming here today. I think FEMA itself, again, is in an
area of unchartered waters. Now, we have had disasters, and we
evacuated in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, 7,000 people last year,
out of a county of 70,000. But that was temporary. And then the
water went down, and they came back in, so it wasn't long term.
And we had people who also had some horrific damage. But this
is a long-term situation of immense magnitude.
I think, just reflecting back, that maybe the Congress
should look at how funds are distributed, or maybe the funds go
from FEMA or they go over into HUD, I am not sure.
I also do feel at times that this is done in a vacuum. I
cannot hang that on you. You are not running the top of the
food chain with the ship. But you read in the newspaper, well,
people are going to leave on such a date, and then it got
extended, and now it is going to be in January. And even if the
Congress is not in session, I still think that FEMA and HUD
have to communicate with Members of Congress and also with the
committees of jurisdiction, because, again, I just think
sometimes things are done in a vacuum. Now, maybe they are done
in a vacuum, and they are good things, but maybe some of the
things are not working.
But right now, I would like to know, to the best of the
knowledge you have of how this is working, what is the exact
coordination between HUD and FEMA? This decision of people to
have a date certain to leave, was that decision made by FEMA
only, by HUD, in joint communication? How are the decisions
made, for example, on the issue of the hotel rooms and things?
Mr. Garratt. We are collaborating very closely with HUD on
a regular basis, both in terms of the transitional housing
strategy that we have unveiled and in the longer-term, long-
term recovery basis. HUD is a member of ESF-14, which is the
long-term community recovery ESF (Emergency Support Function),
and they are a regular participant in that, again, as well as
participating with us in our normal assistance programs to
individuals.
In terms of the hotel-motel issue, that was a decision that
was made principally by FEMA. HUD was not a collaborator in
that decision. And although you indicated that you thought that
that was probably a decision that was up above my level and
that I could not answer that, in fact I am the individual who
issued the guidance for that particular date, so the buck stops
with me regarding the hotel dates that have been established,
both the original December 1st date and the new December 15th
and January 7th dates.
Chairman Ney. Thank you. On the issue of January 7th,
aren't States or locals supposed to submit some type of plan to
FEMA?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir, they are.
Chairman Ney. Does that go to FEMA and HUD, or just FEMA?
Mr. Garratt. It is just going to FEMA. It is going either
to the Federal coordinating officer or, in the absence of the
Federal coordinating officer, the regional director.
Chairman Ney. I see here in the notes that 10 States--
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Chairman Ney. Would receive further extensions to January
7th. That gives them time to, I think, outline their plans or
how they are going to deal with this; is that correct?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Chairman Ney. Okay. How does a State know when their plans
are approved?
Mr. Garratt. That approval will be provided--I expect that
feedback to go back to the State almost immediately. In fact, I
expect that the States are collaborating closely with the
individuals who will be approving those plans. So I would
expect that to be almost immediate.
Chairman Ney. I had a chance yesterday to meet the Mayor of
Gulfport, Mississippi, who is up here trying to, obviously,
help his town. We talked about New Orleans a lot, but is the
same situation occurring and, if it is, to what extent with
Mississippi and other areas? Or is that not the case in other
parts beyond New Orleans?
Mr. Garratt. In terms of--
Chairman Ney. People temporarily housed in hotels.
Mr. Garratt. Our biggest problems are the States of
Louisiana and Mississippi. Both of them have individuals in
hotel rooms, and, again, there is a lack of available housing
stock in both of those States.
We have been working hard with both States to get travel
trailers and mobile homes in there. As a matter of fact, I
think, just recently, we hit the 40,000 mark for manufactured
homes. So in the last 3 months, we have managed to push and
install 40,000 travel trailers and mobile homes into those
States. That far exceeds anything we have done in the past in
Florida or elsewhere.
So we are making some good progress, but we are still a
long way away from where we need to be to fully accommodate the
hotel and motel populations in both of those States--
Mississippi to some extent, Louisiana to a much greater extent.
Chairman Ney. I think the issue of normalcy of people,
people, for example, have come up to Ohio, have come to our
area or Columbus. They don't necessarily want to be there, but
they have some semblance of normalcy because they are in some
type of home, and the children are in some type of school. But
the people who do not have the ability to travel or the
resources or the connections or friends or relatives, I assume,
are a lot of the people who are in the hotel rooms; correct?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Chairman Ney. Now, has it been explored as an option to
have available manufactured housing or some type of trailer or
something of that nature--and you said it is 40,000--for those
people to be back into their home area, maybe where they had a
house, and there is a vacant lot, and they could be there? Or
will the infrastructure not handle that at this particular time
in certain parishes? Do you have any handle on that?
Mr. Garratt. It is a determination that is being made on a
parish-by-parish basis. There are certain parishes where the
infrastructure does not exist to support placing homes on
individual's lots with the available hookups. That is, in fact,
our preferred method of dealing with this, at least at the
front end of this, is placing those on lots. And the vast
majority of the travel trailers and mobile homes that we have
pushed into the area to date have been placed on individuals'
private lots next to their homes so they can stay there while
they are working there.
Clearly, we are trying to improve that capability. We are
in fact going to help out Entergy in the Orleans Parish which
has had a problem bringing in assistance to help them complete
hookups, and we are going to be using our own contractors to
help them with some of the hookup activities that they are
going to be engaged with just so we can help facilitate getting
additional travel trailers and mobile homes in there. So we are
trying to get solutions to some of the problems they are
facing. But, at the end of the day, we are still looking at
close to 120,000 travel trailers or mobile homes at this point
in that affected area.
Chairman Ney. That you need.
My time has expired so we will move on. I know members have
some question.
The gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. Frank. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, can I ask
unanimous consent--we have been joined by our colleague from
Louisiana, Mr. Melancon. Can I ask unanimous consent that he be
allowed to join us?
Chairman Ney. Without objection.
Mr. Frank. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Garratt, I am going to be submitting a series of
questions. I must tell you, the gentlewoman from California and
I have sent a series of letters. We haven't gotten much in the
way of answers, and I can't ask them all now, so I will be
submitting you some questions. I will submit them for the
record.
Let me just ask, I want to focus on the rental of regular
apartments, because, obviously, we all agree that would be a
very good thing if we could get them there. Why the decision to
cut off the intermediary role some cities have been willing to
play, Houston, Atlanta and others? They were willing to be
helpful. Why are you rejecting their help?
Mr. Garratt. Sir, I am not familiar with the--
Mr. Frank. Well, let me explain. We had the situation where
several municipalities have agreed to be the intermediaries,
rent the apartment for the individual and then get the
reimbursement. They have been told that, as of January--I
believe, as of March 1st, they can no longer play that role,
even for people who would still be eligible.
Now, again, we are talking about people who may not be
terribly knowledgeable about the rental market, and you have
this 3-month problem, which I also want to talk to you about,
which is a separate issue. But I don't understand why, if the
City of Houston, the City of Atlanta, as my colleague from
Georgia reminds me, and others that want to be helpful and be
the intermediary, why are you rejecting that?
Mr. Garratt. I don't believe we are rejecting that, and I
think this sounds like it is the result of a misunderstanding
rather than a rejection of State or city assistance on the part
of FEMA. In fact, we look forward to it, and the cities getting
involved.
Houston in particular has been a model in terms of dealing
with the population that they have. They have been moving
upwards of 500 families a day out of hotels and motels and into
apartments. So they have been a model for the rest of the
country in terms of how to address and handle that, and they
have been maintaining that pace for a number of weeks now.
This is the way that it works in terms of our relationship
with 403 and 408 to renting apartments. We provided 403
assistance to the States, to the cities and told the States and
cities at the very beginning of this disaster, you can arrange
for and lease apartments for up to 12 months for individuals,
for evacuees. As part of that process, we did that because we
recognized that they were not necessarily going to be able to,
in a lot of the cities, obtain apartments for less than 12-
month leases.
Our preference was to get 3-month leases or 6-month leases,
but we authorized it up to 12 months. Even as we were doing
that, authorizing them to secure those apartments using the 403
protective sheltering public assistance funding, we have been
moving to convert and move individuals into the individual
assistance program, whereby we are providing assistance
directly to them or we are going to assume the lease on that
apartment using that 408 money.
So when we encouraged a State or authorized a State or a
city to lease an apartment for 12 months, we incurred an
obligation to honor that contract. Now, honoring that contract
either means that that individual who is in an apartment that
was leased for 12 months will take over the lease on that
apartment, because they are now getting individual assistance--
otherwise it would be a duplication of assistance--or we will
convert that 403 lease to a 408 lease, and then we would pay
that ourselves, again continuing that lease to the 12-month
period. Or if the individual chooses to leave that apartment
once they get their individual assistance, we would ask the
city to terminate that lease, and we would, in accordance with
the contract, pay the termination fees of that contract.
Mr. Frank. What do you mean by termination fee? I mean,
they sign a 12-month lease. Should they go say to the landlord
it is over? What is the termination fee?
Mr. Garratt. Typically, when you sign a lease for an
apartment, if you terminate that lease early, there is a
penalty for terminating that lease early. That is part of the
contractual arrangement. We are willing to pay that penalty as
part of terminating that lease early. In other words, we will
honor the terms of that contract.
Mr. Frank. So let me get this. The cities will not lose a
penny, because you said they were told they could have 12
months, so they will be held harmless for the full 12 months?
Mr. Garratt. They will be held harmless for the terms of
that contract.
Mr. Frank. If they signed a 12-month lease--I still don't
understand. I think it has been helpful to have the cities be
this intermediary. Why don't you keep it up? Why terminate it
now? You say, well, it will be up to the occupant. Why not
continue it for the full term of the lease?
Mr. Garratt. You are talking about the March 1st date sir,
is that correct?
Mr. Frank. Yes.
Mr. Garratt. The difference is the type of programs that we
are dealing with. One is a public assistance program whereby we
are providing funding to a State to then manage this particular
program. The other is an individual assistance program where we
are dealing directly with the individuals. So what we want to
do is terminate a public assistance--
Mr. Frank. Why?
Mr. Garratt. Because it is being done under category B,
Emergency Protective Measures.
Mr. Frank. Excuse me--finish your sentence. I am sorry.
Mr. Garratt. The emergency protective measures are not
designed to be a long-term program. That is what the individual
assistance program is.
Mr. Frank. Let me say, Mr. Garratt, with all due respect,
that is a bureaucrat's answer. ``Why'' is, there is a public
policy reason. ``why'' would be good or bad. ``Why'' is not
because of category A or category B, and it wasn't designed for
it.
Continuity has something to be said for it. You have these
people, again, obviously if people were able in a lot of ways
to get out from under this, they would have done that. But you
have some people still in this situation; the cities are still
willing to help. I don't understand. We can redesign it? And
the difference between 6 months and 12 months, we are not
talking about 40 years.
I don't understand what public policy purpose is served by
saying, okay, no more of the city, now you have to do it
yourself?
Mr. Garratt. Except at that point, sir, on March 1st, what
we hope to have happen is that every individual who is
currently in an apartment that was arranged by a city under 403
will now have been identified. We will have determined their
eligibility. We will have begun providing them rental
assistance and/or providing housing.
Mr. Frank. First of all, if everything we had all hoped to
have happened had happened, this would be a much nicer world.
For you, given the track record, to terminate this on a hope is
a very unwise thing to do. What I would recommend to you
strongly is where you can work it out for the individual, okay.
But what you have announced is a blanket termination. You hope
to be able to make these individual determinations. You have
announced a blanket end.
Let me ask you, what percentage of the people in this
category now, for what percentage has that determination been
made, the individual has the ability, etc.?
Mr. Garratt. What percentage of individuals--
Mr. Frank. Of the people who will be affected by the March
1st cut off, on what percentage have you done the determination
necessary to transfer them into the other program?
Mr. Garratt. I don't have those figures.
Mr. Frank. I don't think you do. I don't think--you don't
have the figures in your head. I don't think FEMA has the
figures. Again, this is what troubles me, this kind of
arbitrary, we are going to end this on March 1st on the hope
that we will have taken care of everybody. What you ought to do
is try to take care of everybody, but not put this March 1st
guillotine hanging over people.
The second question I want to ask you, and I really urge
you to think about that, you know, you were wrong about telling
people, on November 14th, that they were going to be kicked out
in a couple of weeks. You made some misjudgments here. I think
you made another one here by this arbitrary date.
The second question, and I appreciate the time, why a 3-
month, 3-month, 3-month? It is very hard to rent an apartment
for 3 months. I notice the National Multi Housing Council says
in a letter we put in, ``It is shortsighted to expect a
majority of evacuees to be able to return to their homes in the
next 12 to 18 months. The 3-month commitments for housing do
not meet the needs of evacuees, nor do they meet the needs of
housing providers.''
What leads you to say 3 months for the leases here, or 3
months for the rental agreement for people, particularly where
a lot of them are in a particular area? Why would we insist on
this short-term thing, particularly from the beginning? I don't
understand why you didn't do 12 months from the beginning. Did
you really think they would all be out of there in 3 months?
Mr. Garratt. Two issues here. We did establish the 3-month
lease requirement when we published our initial guidance that
identified the December 1st date as the original date by which
individuals--
Mr. Frank. You did that. I am asking you why you did 3
months. I understand that you did that. Why? What is the public
policy reason for only 3 months?
Mr. Garratt. Three months from December 1st would have
brought us to March 1st. That is the date that we wanted to
convert from 403 to 408 individual assistance.
Mr. Frank. Mr. Garratt, again, that is bureaucrat talk. You
want to go from 403 to 408. We are talking about human beings
here. Three months, you know, these are not the most
sophisticated people in the world in some cases. In some cases,
they are. They have been traumatized. Finding a 3-month
apartment, if somebody came to me today and said, look, you
have got 2 weeks to get out of where you are living now, and
you have 3 months to find a new place here in D.C., I would
feel, gee, I am not sure I can work that out. Why in policy
terms only 3 months?
Mr. Garratt. It is not only 3 months, sir. That was our
goal. We said that we wanted it to be 3 months, but we also
authorized exceptions to be made for that. If the city comes to
the--if the Federal coordinating officer comes to the regional
director, and identifies that we can't obtain leases of 3
months, they can be authorized to extend those.
Mr. Frank. It is this extra bureaucratic step to do that.
Did nobody think about the difficulty of getting a 3-month
lease from a landlord?
Mr. Garratt. It is certainly more challenging getting 3-
month leases from a landlord, sir, but it is by no means
impossible.
Mr. Frank. You know what--and I am going to end my
questioning now--you say it is not impossible. It is
challenging. Haven't these people had enough challenges in
their lives without you adding to them? Could you not err on
the side of not posing another challenge to these people?
Mr. Garratt. This challenge is one that we placed on the
cities, sir, not on the individuals. This requirement, this 3-
month lease was a requirement for apartments that they--
Mr. Frank. You are now taking the cities out of it, so now
the challenges will be the individual's going forward for the 3
months?
Mr. Garratt. The purpose of this, again, was we wanted
these individuals as they were approaching the end of that 3-
month lease, March 1st, to begin--
Mr. Frank. To take on the challenge of another 3 months,
because what they have is another 3 months, right?
Mr. Garratt. Individuals can actually lease an apartment
for as long as they would like.
Mr. Frank. You will only guarantee to pay for 3 months, and
a lot of them wouldn't--
Mr. Garratt. We are giving them rental assistance in 3-
month increments.
Mr. Frank. So my last point, yes, you are giving these
individuals, some of whom have no jobs and have lost
everything, the right to go make a 12-month deal with a
landlord with only a guarantee of 3 months rental assistance.
Fat chance.
Chairman Ney. The gentleman from Texas.
Mr. Neugebauer. Mr. Garrett, one of the things that,
through this housing issue, that I have wondered, and maybe you
can enlighten me a little bit, basically, when the disaster
hit, we had different kinds of occupancy, different kinds of
ownership in the areas that are affected. One, we had owner-
occupied structures that were damaged, and those people who
were in those were displaced. And then we had renter-occupied
structures where those people were just renting that structure.
So, basically, it looks like, to me, what we have is different
kinds of affected folks with different kinds of housing needs,
and for us to really have an effective program, we have to kind
of sort through that.
For those folks who were renting those structures, many of
those structures will not be rebuilt or will not be rebuilt in
a fairly long-term basis because there are some unresolved
issues. So what it looks like to me, appropriate Federal policy
there is, as far as it goes for disaster relief, is a
transition period. And I think that is what you are kind of
saying there, is we are doing these in 3-month or 6-month
blocks. But at some point in time, those folks are just going
to have to go find a different place to rent; that we can't
indefinitely continue to provide assistance for those folks
with some kind of a false hope that they are going to be able
to go back and rent a structure that was where they were
before.
The second piece of that then is, though, people who owned
maybe those properties that were being rented and what kind of
disaster relief that they are going be able to receive. As the
gentleman brought up a while ago, some of those properties were
mortgaged. Maybe some of them were not. So that landlord now
doesn't have a tenant but now still has a mortgage, so we have
to give them some resolution of this is what the Federal
response to that is going to be.
Have you begun to quantify and identify folks in categories
like that? Because I think there is this sense that I get--and
I have been down there and I have listened to a lot of the
testimony; I have read it--is that there is a sense out there
that the Federal Government is going to come back in and put
everything back just the way it was, and that is just not the
case, because, long-term, there are many long-term decisions
that are going to have to be made about some of the areas, what
kind of rebuilding will go back in. And I know the gentleman
from Louisiana has talked about creating these zones. But even
in his plan, any realistic plan, it is going to take a long
time to determine what kind of rebuilding is going to happen
and in what form it is going to happen.
So I think what probably would help folks more than
anything in this process is for us to define, this is what is
going to be your benefits, and if you have been renting a
place, we are going to help you transition until you find
another place to rent. But then our commitment ends there,
because we can't indefinitely pay for people's rent until
something magic happens.
I think sometimes managing expectations is more important
than actually managing the process. I think there may be some
unreasonable expectations out there, but I think one of the
things we need to probably do in this process is give the
affected groups, whether they completely like it or completely
agree with it or think it is fair or not think it is fair, but
at some point in time, I think we owe it to those folks to say,
this is going to be the Federal portion of that response.
What is your sense of, for example, in some of those
parishes, how many renters are we dealing with as opposed to
homeowners? Because that makes a lot of difference of what that
response is going to be.
Mr. Garratt. Sir, I don't have those figures, but we do
have the capability of pulling those figures from our system.
We do capture when individuals register whether they were
renters or homeowners, so we can provide that information to
you, and we can break it out by parish as well.
Just a couple of points. Every individual, whether a renter
or a homeowner, is eligible to receive up to $26,200 worth of
assistance. That is the cap on individual assistance. That is
in the form of rental assistance and/or repair assistance, home
replacement assistance and other needs assistance. You can have
situations where we have individuals who are renters who may
not be eligible for home replacement assistance or repair
assistance but who nevertheless are going to hit that cap.
Others need assistance, it is going to cover their personal
property that they had in that rental property, their
transportation, serious medical needs that they may have had,
as well as rental assistance. So they could hit that cap.
Homeowners are also much more likely to hit that cap,
because, in addition to home replacement assistance, they also
have had the personal property losses and also may have rental
assistance requirements.
In practical terms, at a parish level where we have a mix
of renters and homeowners, homeowners are in a better position
right now to get travel trailers and mobile homes, and the
reason is, as we bring travel trailers and mobile homes into
the area, the preferences or the easiest, most expeditious way
of providing assistance is to drop a mobile home or travel
trailer on somebody's property where they have those hookups
already existing. We can hook it up, and that individual, that
family can live there while they try to rebuild their home.
Renters don't have that capability, so renters are going to
need group sites to support renters, and group sites are either
existing commercial sites, which we can find and use, and those
are being gobbled up pretty quickly in the area, those where
hookups are capable, or building a brand new group site to
support a population.
But those group sites also have their own social
challenges. We need to have jobs for the individuals who are in
those group sites. There needs to be a supporting
infrastructure, wrap-around services, security; there needs to
be schools nearby. A lot of issues go into building a group
site and making sure we can support something like that.
But the bottom line here is, at this stage of the game,
travel trailers and mobile homes, we can get those in, get them
put on individual property owners' property a lot faster than
we can set up these larger group sites to support individuals
who in many cases are largely going to be renters.
Mr. Neugebauer. But if you drop a trailer, let's say, on my
property, and if my maximum benefit is $26,200, is there a
rental then on the trailer that comes out of my $26,200, or how
does that work?
Mr. Garratt. No, sir.
Mr. Neugebauer. So I get $26,200 plus the trailer?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir, you could, for up to 18 months.
Mr. Neugebauer. For up to 18 months. So what you are saying
is that, yes, $26,200 is a maximum cap of cash benefits; is
that correct?
Mr. Garratt. That is.
Mr. Neugebauer. But there are other benefits, depending on
what class, whether you are a renter, whether you are--so if I
was a renter, though, the rent comes out of my $26,200?
Mr. Garratt. It does. You have the $26,200 and all of the
individual assistance that you are eligible for under that. You
also have, unrelated to that $26,200, which is this direct-
housing capability, and that is the provision of a travel
trailer, mobile home, or in the case of States outside of the
affected area where we are securing apartments for individuals
under that authority also up to 18 months, and we can place
individuals there as well. These are individuals who have
reached the cap, who no longer can receive rental assistance
and have to turn back to FEMA for housing assistance.
Mr. Neugebauer. Are any of these trailers being put back on
properties that were in the major flooded areas?
Mr. Garratt. We can put trailers on properties in flooded
areas, but there is an eight-step process that individuals need
to go through in order to install a mobile home in a floodplain
or in an area that is susceptible to flooding. It can be done.
It is a rigorous process.
Travel trailers don't have the same requirements as mobile
homes, and we have some latitude with travel trailers to place
them in areas that are susceptible to flooding. But, yes, we do
have that capability.
Chairman Ney. The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentlelady from California.
Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. I am going to try to go
through this very quickly.
I am told that there are a number of homeowners who would
like to get back into their homes, and these are homes that can
be saved. They have mold maybe in them, or they need to remove
damaged furniture, trash, what have you. What assistance do you
have for them?
Mr. Garratt. Assistance in terms of getting back into their
homes?
Ms. Waters. Yes, and helping to remove debris and rubbish.
Maybe there is a fallen tree in the yard. Maybe there is
damaged furniture. You have a lot of contracts that are out to
remove debris. What assistance do you have to these homeowners
directly who say, I want to go back and clean up my house and
move in?
Mr. Garratt. If those individuals have their home
inspected, a home inspector will come out and evaluate their
home, will validate and verify the issues that they want to
have fixed. If they are dealing with--
Ms. Waters. So they have to call FEMA to get an inspector
to come out?
Mr. Garratt. I would hope that everyone who has been
affected by this disaster will register with FEMA. That is the
only way that an individual can get individual assistance from
FEMA. As part of that process, if they were a homeowner, an
inspector will come out, will evaluate their home and will
validate and verify the damages to their home, and that
process--
Ms. Waters. All right, so we need to tell people to just
call and get their number and to identify the problem that they
have to see if you have some assistance for that particular
problem?
Mr. Garratt. Absolutely.
Ms. Waters. All right. On these contracts that you are
letting out, for example on this debris removal, demolition,
etc., I understand that you contract with someone who may
charge you a particular amount. Then they subcontract with
someone else, and they make money. And then that person is
subcontracting with someone else, and they make money. And they
are getting down to where the actual cost of getting the job
done is very cheap, but we have paid--FEMA has paid 3 or 4
times as much money as is needed to get the job done.
Are you aware of the subcontracting that is going on,
particularly from no-bids or the big companies?
Mr. Garratt. I am aware of the first level of
subcontracting that goes on. I am not personally aware that
this has been subcontracted several levels down.
Ms. Waters. How can you find out?
Mr. Garratt. Go back and talk to the individuals and the
joint field offices who are overseeing those contracts.
Ms. Waters. I would suggest, particularly since this is the
taxpayers' money and we all have to be very prudent in the way
that we spend the money, that you know whether or not your big
contractors are charging us a sum that is much more than the
actual cost to get the job done.
I had some figures--and I don't have it before me. It was
something like with the removal of debris, it was $44 per
something, and that they have subcontracted down to the point
where the job is actually getting done for $11 per whatever
that is. So you need to know that, and if that is true, you
need to learn, how do you contract directly for $11 rather than
$44 and save the taxpayers the money, and let us stop getting
ripped off by the big boys, okay? Will you take a look at that?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. Secondly, where are all of the people? What
cities are they in? How much money is it costing in each city,
and why is it that the Mayor of New Orleans, for example, or
Biloxi or these other cities cannot know where their people
are? Where are the lists?
Mr. Garratt. We maintain lists. Anyone who registers with
FEMA, when they register, they tell us two things: They tell us
what was their original address, and they tell us what is their
mailing address. So we have that information on individuals.
And we are, subject to Privacy Act considerations, prepared to
share that with anyone.
Ms. Waters. What Privacy Act considerations? Cite that
Privacy Act that does not allow you to give the mayors that
information.
Mr. Garratt. I did not say that the Privacy Act prevented
us from providing it to mayors, ma'am. I said that we were
prepared to provide that information.
Ms. Waters. The mayors don't have it. I was just appalled
that they don't have the information about where their
residents are. They have no way of contacting them. People are
talking about elections and everything else, and you are citing
some privacy act. What privacy act are you citing?
Mr. Garratt. I am citing the Privacy Act. But that
information has been provided to each of the States, ma'am.
Each State has that information. They can share that with the
mayors. If the mayors cannot get that from the States, we will
be happy to engage. But that information has been provided to
all of the States affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Ms. Waters. Well, your mayors don't know it, and I am going
to call today Mayor Nagin and maybe one or two others, and I am
going to tell them that, first of all, their Governors have it,
and that Governors could give it to them, but if not, you will;
is that right?
Mr. Garratt. Subject to Privacy Act approval, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. What do you mean by subject to Privacy Act?
Don't parse words with me. What do you mean? Can you give it to
them or not?
Mr. Garratt. If our Office of General Counsel approves
that, yes, ma'am, we can.
Ms. Waters. You should know by now whether or not your
Office of General Counsel is telling you yes or no. Who told
you that you couldn't give it to them?
Mr. Garratt. No one has told us we can't give it to them,
ma'am. There are a couple of considerations--
Ms. Waters. Then give it to them until someone tells them
you can't. Do you know what you are doing? If you hold on to
that information, and they don't have access to it, people--I
mean, the mayor from New Orleans is going over to Atlanta to
hold a town hall meeting. Six or seven hundred people are
there. There are 1,300 people out in California alone. They
don't have any contact. Nobody is talking to them. They don't
know what is going on. So I am suggesting to you, don't make it
a problem.
I am going to follow up today with the fact that you said
the Governors have it, and they can get it, and I don't want to
know about some problem that you have not been told that you
have. Just get the information to them, and I will make sure
that the mayors are in contact with you today to find out where
their information is. It is extremely important.
Now, I understand there has been a lot of conversation
about these trailers. We know that the people have got to get
out of these hotels. I don't know how much money you have spent
on hotels, but you can't dump them out in the street. And I
don't care what your deadline dates are. Don't dump people out
in the street in any city. You have got to get them settled
somewhere, and transitional housing is only the next step.
We knew that they could not stay in the shelters or the
hotels. Transitional housing, trailers, and manufactured
housing, if you have a city that is not cooperating with you
and they are not giving you the space or they don't give you
the land or you can't get the hookups, I would appreciate it if
you would let the chairman know about that problem, because the
mayors tell us that you have all the space that you need; they
don't have any problems in cooperating with you; they have been
identifying spaces, but you are not putting the trailers down.
You have the trailers, right?
Mr. Garratt. We have trailers, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. You have enough to accommodate all of the
120,000 trailers--you have 120,000, is that it?
Mr. Garratt. We don't have those yet. They are in the pipe.
Ms. Waters. They are in the pipe. So if there are 10,000
that are needed in New Orleans today, you could move them there
if you had the space, is that right?
Mr. Garratt. Not necessarily, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. How would you do it?
Mr. Garratt. We have got a contract to obtain up to
119,000, 120,000 travel trailers and mobile homes--
Ms. Waters. A contract?
Mr. Garratt. We have a national contract to have those
produced and delivered.
Ms. Waters. Wait a minute. Is this one manufacturer? Is
this a wholesaler, an in-between person who is going out buying
them, marking them up and then you are paying the taxpayers'
money for them?
Mr. Garratt. Both the national contract and local buys, our
principal contractor--
Ms. Waters. Well, wait a minute. Back up so we understand.
You have one contractor, is that right?
Mr. Garratt. No, that is not correct, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. Explain it to us.
Mr. Garratt. We have a national contract, but we are also
supplementing that with local buys.
Ms. Waters. Explain the national contract. What is that?
Mr. Garratt. It is a contract that was developed, executed,
at FEMA headquarters for ``X'' number of travel trailers to be
provided by Gulfstream--
Ms. Waters. How much is that contract for?
Mr. Garratt. I am going to have to get that information
back to you, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. No, no, no, you tell me now. You know. You have
to know. That is a lot of money. If you can go out and spend
millions of dollars on a contract, and you can't come here and
tell us that, then something is wrong with the way you think
about this. That costs a lot of money. Who on your staff knows?
All those people sitting behind you, who knows how much that
contract costs and who got the contract? Gulfstream got the
contract. For how much?
Mr. Garratt. I don't know, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. Ask all the people behind you who came with
you.
Mr. Garratt. Two people came with me, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. I am sorry. Of the two, do you know how much we
are spending on this Gulfstream contract? Well, that amazes me.
That absolutely amazes me. Of that one contract, the national
contract, how is that contract divided up to get all of the
trailers? What do they do for you? How do they get you all of
these 120,000 trailers?
Mr. Garratt. They produce the trailers in their plants.
They ship those trailers down to staging areas where they are
picked up by our individual assistance, IA, technical
assistance contractors, who then--
Ms. Waters. Is that a no-bid contract? Don't tell me you
don't know that. Staff members, was that a no-bid contract?
Mr. Garratt. I don't know, ma'am.
Ms. Waters. I respectfully request another 30 seconds. We
don't know how much the huge, profitable contract is to supply
120,000 trailers. We don't know how much we paid for that, is
that right?
Mr. Garratt. Ma'am, we can certainly get that information.
Ms. Waters. And we don't know whether or not it was a no-
bid or it was a competitive bid, is that right?
You are not prepared for this meeting today. You should not
be here without that information. That is what is wrong with
FEMA. If you come before the Congress of the United States
where we are talking about an agency that is not working and an
agency that is spending our taxpayers' money, and we are not
getting the results; you can't tell me whether one of your
major contracts is a no-bid contract and how it works; you are
not prepared for this meeting today.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Ney. Thank you. I want to ask a quick question to
just follow up. When decisions are made about, for example,
manufactured housing, which seems to be one of the best things
to do for the quickest ability to get people out of there, when
a decision is made, do you contact the manufactured housing
people who make this in whatever State, Indiana or down in the
Carolinas--not you--but does FEMA contact and say, I need ``X''
amount of units? Do they do that?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Chairman Ney. Because manufactured housing, I know, at one
point in time a few weeks ago, we had asked people in
manufacturing housing, unless the order goes in, they can't
produce them. If we say we want 200,000 manufactured houses,
they can only produce so many, no matter what. So I just
wonder, in the area of contracting, do you call every
manufactured housing entity and say, I want to purchase X
amount, or how do you do that?
Mr. Garratt. For the contract, for this particular
contract, again, we typically obtain contracts when we are
responding to disasters through local buys, is the way that we
typically do that. We want to use the resources in the affected
area. So we will do local buys, and we are doing some of that
down in the affected areas right now, supplementing that
national contract.
We did that national contract or started pursuing that
national contract immediately after Katrina hit, when we
recognized that there was going to be a huge paucity of
available housing down there, that we were going to have tens
of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed and that there was
going to be a huge population necessary to support, we embarked
on setting up a national contract to support that. That was
done out of FEMA headquarters. We wanted to secure a set number
of travel trailers and mobile homes then that were going to be
delivered over time, that we could manage over time, getting
them into the area.
Chairman Ney. Are you going to get, if you don't know the
statistics, how many manufactured housing units different than
the Gulfstream trailers have been ordered? I am told it is
25,000 have been ordered, is what I am told is an estimate, has
been ordered. That might be nationally.
Now, if we anticipate we need more to get people out of the
hotels, if only 25,000 have been ordered, from wherever they
have been ordered from, I don't know if you ordered it from one
place, one contract, if you know you have got all these people
and you have a time deadline and people are going to be told
they have to get out, if we need another 30,000 of them, if
they are not ordered, you aren't going to get them. That is
just something I think you need to be quite aware of.
I will move on in a second. I just wanted to ask about a
precedent setting. Some of the things you are doing, and I
think we have an unusual, horrific disaster, and so, therefore,
we have to do some things we don't normally do. The FHA, I
talked to Secretary Jackson, he extended that 1 year to not
have to pay payments, and I am not quibbling with that. But by
him doing that, does that mean that people in Ohio, to pick
obviously my State, or Georgia, if you are Mr. Scott, or
wherever you are from, will that same support be extended to
people who reach a natural disaster?
We are not going to have the proportion of New Orleans, but
a person in my district who loses their home, will that also be
automatically extended, that payments can be paid for other
people across the country? Maybe not just floods, maybe
earthquakes. Have you talked about that? What you are doing
now, will that set a precedent? I am not saying that is bad,
but will it set a precedent to help similar people in similar
situations?
Mr. Garratt. I can't speak for the agency on whether that
agency is prepared to extend that program for other disasters.
Chairman Ney. I am sorry, things you do. Let me restrict it
to FEMA. Things that you are doing now that are outside the box
that you had to do, that are not the usual things done. Will
that same support be extended across the United States for
disasters for people?
Mr. Garratt. I would say that it may be, sir. We are going
to look at the lessons learned from this event, lessons that we
are learning even as we are moving through this event right
now. If we determine that there is a smarter way of doing
business and we determine that, as a consequence and a response
to this disaster, then there is no reason we should not extend
that smarter way of doing business to the other disasters. But
that will depend on an innovation-by-innovation case review and
a determination that that is the smartest thing to do.
Chairman Ney. But what you are doing are temporary
extensions. In other words, what FEMA does now is temporarily
waiving a rule or suspending a rule?
Mr. Garratt. We have made some accommodations, for example,
in debris removal. We do not typically, for example, remove
debris from private property. But given the circumstances of
Katrina and Rita, given the declaration of a public health
emergency, given the catastrophic nature of the event, we have
authorized debris to be removed from private property in
recognition of that.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Mr. Chairman, may I make a
parliamentary inquiry of the Chair and interrupt the witness
for one second?
My inquiry, I note there are a number of individual members
here who want to ask questions. I did want to make one request
for solicitude from the Chair. The two of us in the room who
actually represent States directly affected are Mr. Melancon
and myself, and I know that he has been given unanimous consent
to participate.
Can I ask that the Chair consider at least allowing the two
of us, given the fact we have a vote coming in about 10 or 15
minutes, to go ahead of some members who have all spoken
previously when the two of us have not?
Chairman Ney. Unless somebody objects.
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Chairman, I just have a few questions,
and I have a meeting on the issue of immigration that is coming
before us.
Chairman Ney. I am done with mine.
If there is no objection, we will move on.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate that.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
the gentleman.
Mr. Garratt, I would just like to continue to ask you some
questions about the contracts that have been awarded by FEMA.
Specifically, you said that you want to do local buys, right?
Mr. Garratt. We like to do local buys.
Ms. Velazquez. I would like to know, are you doing local
contracts? Are you awarding contracts to local contractors?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Velazquez. Okay. How many Federal contracts have been
given, of those big contracts, in the area of debris and
demolition?
Mr. Garratt. I don't know how many contracts have been
given in the area of debris and demolition, ma'am.
Ms. Velazquez. Since FEMA falls within the jurisdiction of
Homeland Security and is subject to the Small Business Act, you
are required by law to make sure that those big contractors
submit a subcontracting business plan to you. Have you seen any
of those subcontracting plans?
Mr. Garratt. I am certain that our procurement staff have
seen those, ma'am.
Ms. Velazquez. Would you be able to submit those to us?
Mr. Garratt. I would be happy to take that back to our
procurement staff, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Velazquez. I just have one question about--I want to
ask you, does FEMA provide assistance for mold remediation?
Mr. Garratt. I am sorry, assistance for what?
Ms. Velazquez. For mold remediation. Mold.
Mr. Garratt. We can certainly provide assistance under the
Other Needs Assistance Program that individuals can use for
mold remediation. That would fit the criteria for a necessary
expense and a serious need. It may also be possible that
assistance could be provided by a health agency, and that
assistance could potentially be subsidized, but it is going to
depend on the nature of the facility that is affected and some
determinations that are made. So the bottom line is, yes, they
can get assistance under other needs assistance, under direct
individual assistance. It is possible to get other forms of
assistance.
Ms. Velazquez. There is. By FEMA, they could get
assistance; yes or no?
Mr. Garratt. Yes.
Ms. Velazquez. Well, my staff called the hotline, and we
inquired about assistance, and they said that you provide none.
So the problem that we have is that it seems like the right
hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. There is no
coordination on this recovery effort, and people and families
do not know how to navigate the assistance that the different
agencies are providing, and so, therefore, at the end of the
day, they are not getting any.
Mr. Garratt. Any individual who registers for assistance
with FEMA, when an inspector arrives to evaluate their home and
they identify the mold issues, that would be an eligible
expense and they would be eligible for assistance to address
that expense.
Ms. Velazquez. Okay.
Regarding the Federal contracts and subcontracting business
plan, I just would like to make sure that we get the
subcontracting plans submitted by a Latino business contractor
in Mississippi--and I don't have the entire information with
me. The only thing that I know is that she is a Latino
contractor who got a contract for $6.7 million, and I am happy
to know that she is a minority contractor who happens to be
married to the nephew of the Governor of Mississippi.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Ney. Is there objection to moving to Mr. Davis?
Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank my colleagues for being indulgent with my
request.
Mr. Garratt, let me ask you, you have gotten a lot of
pointed questions from the committee, and that won't stop with
me, so I certainly want to put you on notice regarding that.
There are several things I just frankly don't understand about
this process, and I will be very blunt on the first set of
questions.
This decision that was announced in mid-November that my
colleagues have queried you about, the initial decision that
people had to get out of these hotels, that honestly strikes
me, coming a week before Thanksgiving, as frankly one of the
dumbest decisions I can imagine anyone making in government.
Who made that decision?
Mr. Garratt. My name was on the guidance document that
implemented that guidance.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Did you make that decision
unilaterally?
Mr. Garratt. I signed that document, sir.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. I don't mean to offend you. I am sure
you are a competent, capable person. Although I don't know
anything about you, I will make those assumptions. But that is
a pretty tone-deaf decision. It is a pretty clueless decision
for a number of reasons. My colleagues have mentioned some of
them, but I will add an obvious one: It was right on the eve of
the holiday season coming up.
Do you have the authority to make that kind of decision
without talking to the temporary head of FEMA?
Mr. Garratt. Whether I do or I don't, I think that my
responsibility is to talk to the acting director of FEMA.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Did you talk to the acting director
of FEMA about that decision?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. And did the acting director of FEMA
consent to what you did?
Mr. Garratt. The acting director of FEMA is aware of what I
did; yes, sir.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Did you ask him, is this a good idea
or bad idea?
Mr. Garratt. We discussed that decision, sir.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. And did he agree with you that it was
a good idea to do it?
Mr. Garratt. The decision to make December 1st the date
that we stopped the subsidies of hotels and motels was actually
made well before that guidance document was issued, sir. When
we took over the corporate lodging consultant contract from the
American Red Cross--
Mr. Davis of Alabama. I understand all that, Mr. Garratt.
But who made the decision to go with the termination and not to
seek an extension. You said it was you. I don't want to spend
my whole 5 minutes on this. I think you have gotten my point.
It was a remarkably bad decision, frankly, and if you did share
it with the FEMA director, one of two things occurred: Either
your chain of command is so loose that he didn't engage in it,
or that he joined you in the bad decision.
The second line of questions, you mentioned several times
that you all do an inventory and you do a census, I guess, of
people who have registered with FEMA, that you have some kind
of an inventory of people who register with FEMA. And you said
you get two pieces of information from them, you get their past
address and you get their current address.
Do you ask them what their current housing needs are?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. And is there an inventory that lists
these people by housing need in terms of, are they renters, are
they homeowners, are they behind on their payment? Is that
level of specificity contained in this information?
Mr. Garratt. We find out if they are homeowners or renters,
sir. When I said these two pieces of information, I meant just
regarding whether--we obtain a lot of information during the
registration process.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. So let me ask you about that. You
ascertain whether they are homeowners or renters. Do you
ascertain what their specific financial situation is right now
with respect to their delinquency on any payments? Do you
ascertain specific information about what their financial
situation is right now?
Mr. Garratt. We ascertain their pre-disaster income level.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Do you ascertain specific information
about their status right now in terms of whether or not they
need help from the government or any number of other things?
Mr. Garratt. When they call to recertify, after they start
receiving assistance, an individual calls to recertify that
they want to continue to receive rental assistance, we will
discuss that with them at that time.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Let me ask you about the Transitional
Housing Assistance Program that was implemented back in, was it
September I think, Mr. Garratt?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Can you give me an assessment of how
many people participated in that program?
Mr. Garratt. In the Transitional Housing Assistance
Program?
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Maybe a better question, instead of
you giving me a number out of the air, what is the status of
those people? Can you tell me or is your agency able to tell
whether or not you have an inventory as to how many of those
people have been placed in permanent housing right now?
Mr. Garratt. We can tell you that we assisted between
500,000 and 600,000 of those individuals. In terms of how many
of them have been placed in permanent housing, I cannot tell
you that.
Mr. Davis of Alabama. Why can't you tell me that? Because
it would seem, and I don't want to go over my time, but it
would seem that what is striking about this process, obviously,
you all have an inventory of some sort. You have some
identifying information about these people. You get some
information from them, and I can't understand why you wouldn't
get the full waterfront. I can't understand why you all don't
have adequate information regarding the status of the people in
the program.
I guess I will just close, Mr. Garrett, on this point,
because I know my other colleagues do want to ask questions.
All of us understand the gentleman from Texas' point earlier
that, well, yes, something bad happened, but at some point,
these people have to get their lives together. Let my give you
briefly a different perspective on that, sir.
Everyone on the other side of the aisle and our side of the
aisle has spent the last 4 months talking about all of the
failures of government, and, yes, in candor, the people on our
side talk a lot about your agency and the Federal Government.
People on the other side like to talk a lot about the State
Governor, like to talk a lot about the mayor, but the one
consensus that we all seem to have is that government really
messed this up.
We have something called a social contract in this country.
And if we have a broad consensus, Mr. Garrett, that multiple
levels of government failed, municipal, State and Federal, that
means something basic to me. It means that they failed not in
the abstract, but they failed people, they failed human beings.
So isn't it reasonable to you that we owe those people
something that we wouldn't owe them in the ordinary course of
life?
Mr. Garrett. Yes, sir. And we owe that same level of
support to the victims of any disaster anywhere.
Chairman Ney. The time is expired.
Is there still a unanimous request to--without objection,
we will recognize the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Melancon.
Mr. Melancon. Mr. Garrett, with the trailer issues, a
number of things, I guess, that come to mind.
We had trailers that we bought for Florida last year for
the hurricane. It is my understanding that they were auctioned
off as they became available; is that true?
Mr. Garrett. We do auction off trailers, yes, sir.
Mr. Melancon. So we have 1-year-old trailers that we
auctioned off and then turned around and we are buying new
trailers now. Is there no plan within FEMA to possibly store
and maintain these? Because hurricanes are pretty common now
and other disasters where they could used. Is there no plan to
do this at all?
Mr. Garrett. We store and maintain them at multiple
locations now, sir.
Mr. Melancon. Are you talking about the trailers from
Florida and previous disasters, or are you talking about new
trailers?
Mr. Garrett. I am talking about either rehab trailers or
new trailers. We store both.
Mr. Melancon. How many trailers did you rehab from Florida
last?
Mr. Garrett. I don't know those figures, sir. We can get
them to you.
Mr. Melancon. How many did you auction? Do you know that?
Mr. Garrett. I don't know that either.
Mr. Melancon. If you can get that to me, also. Now, Hope,
Arkansas has a contract for $25,000 a month to store trailers,
and nobody from FEMA seems to be able to tell anybody how many
trailers are there, how many are coming through. I think
between Texarkana and Hope, which is a staging--off staging
area I think is the proper term--is there, I mean, do we not
know how many--
Mr. Garrett. The Hope staging area is largely, if not
exclusively, being used for mobile homes and not travel
trailers. It turns out that there is not the demand for mobile
homes in the affected area that there is for travel trailers.
As a result, we have some excess supply, and we are storing
those at the Hope site.
Mr. Melancon. In south Louisiana the demand is for travel
trailers because people would like to get back to their
property, start cleaning it up and establishing their lives if
that is at all possible, particularly if their houses are
salvageable, and even if they are not, where some of them are
just completely gone. There seems to be a great difficulty with
FEMA. They have to come in, they have to establish the
electrical supply, they have to make sure there is sewage and
water.
Now, if I understand the concept of travel trailers that
people use for campers, are there not holding tanks to these
trailers?
Mr. Garrett. Yes, sir.
Mr. Melancon. Are there water tanks on these trailers?
Mr. Garrett. There certainly can be.
Mr. Melancon. A 5-KW generator in my mind would probably
run the air conditioning and the lights, and the stoves would
probably run on propane; would that be a fair guess?
Mr. Garrett. My understanding was that we were actually
moving away from the propane units, sir.
Mr. Melancon. Okay. I guess where I am trying to go is, I
spoke with the president of the parish of St. Bernard. They are
averaging, I believe, one trailer per day that they are
spotting in St. Bernard Parish. At that rate, it will probably
be in the next century before the folks will be able to get
back and get started. And I have heard complaints from people
who had several acres of land in Blackman's Parish, it is
family owned land, they wanted to put four trailers or houses
within a mile, daughters, son, the mother, and they are
refusing to let them do that. Now, there are people camped out
in pup tents in front yards from Mississippi and Alabama all
the way through Louisiana, and having a travel trailer with a
bed to sleep in, even if they didn't have air conditioning and
they didn't have running water at this point in time, they had
a septic tank, that is way ahead of the curve. But yet we
refuse to let these people into those trailers until they are
completely sited.
And then one of the things that I have been seeing when I
fly into Baton Rouge, there are several hundred trailers in
Baton Rouge. That is not going to get those people back into
New Orleans and St. Bernard and Plaquemine Parishes where their
homes are, and the commute, with traffic, will probably be an
hour-and-a-half, 2 hours a day. They will never reestablish
that. It is almost as though there is an intent there to not
let them get established back.
You said there is about 40,000 trailers. Do you have the
numbers per State that are sited and per parish and per county?
Mr. Garrett. Yes, sir. By State, let's see, Louisiana
travel trailers, projected needs 80,000, capacity on leased
sites, 23,482. Capacity on leased sites is the sum of leased
commercial pads plus industry sites plus leased group emergency
group site pads, plus private sites.
Cumulative units on pads, 20,686. Cumulative ready for
occupancy, 6,099. Units occupied 13,772. Occupancy rate of 86
percent.
Mr. Melancon. Is that Louisiana or is that all States?
Mr. Garrett. That is travel trailers in Louisiana.
Mr. Melancon. Because you are giving me pads, you are
giving me on sites, you are giving me at locations. I guess I
need to get you, if you could provide that for me in written
form rather than run through all those--
Mr. Garrett. I would be happy to do that.
Mr. Melancon. Because my problem that I am finding is that
they are not getting the trailers to their homes, to their lots
so that they can restart their lives and get their places back
up.
The cost per trailer is about $20,000 average for these 30-
foot trailers, or what is the average cost? Don't you have a--
Mr. Garrett. That is the reasonable average cost, but we
have also been getting them--I would say between $14- and
$20,000 is probably a good--
Mr. Melancon. So if you had 125,000, average price $18,000,
that might give you the number you have been looking for?
Mr. Garrett. I think the number for the national contract
is less than that. Some of our local buys--
Mr. Melancon. They are staged, and then they are hauled in.
Do you know what the price per trailer contract is for hauling
them from wherever it is from the staged area down to where
they are going to be located, what the cost is per trailer to
make those moves?
Mr. Garrett. We have those figures, sir--
Mr. Melancon. I am told it is $4- to $5,000 per trailer.
Mr. Garrett. To haul and install?
Mr. Melancon. Yes, sir.
Mr. Garrett. That would seem a little high to me, but I
would be happy to verify that.
Mr. Melancon. One of the other complaints I am getting is
rotation of personnel in and out. A lady called that I talked
to last night, she was trying to get her claim adjusted for
damage from Katrina. Then the person she was dealing with was
rotated out. In the meantime, the next person comes back in and
he is a Rita inspector, he is not a Katrina inspector, so she
hasn't gotten anything completed on the storm damage that
occurred during Katrina, and the guy is saying well, we have a
problem because you have to finish that up before I can help
you with Rita.
The parish presidents and the people who are dealing with
them, they finally get somebody on the ground, and after about
2 weeks they are starting to understand the demographics and
the geography and the problems, and then you rotate them out
and they start from scratch. Grand Island, Louisiana rotated
out a lady who had worked on the list of those people who could
occupy the trailers, all of a sudden they rotated her out, the
new person came in and nobody knew where the list was. The
mayor took a crowbar and was getting ready to break into the
trailers to let his people in them. It is as though the agency,
instead of taking the initiative and saying let's make it work,
it is like if it is not written that we can do it precisely, we
are going to opt not to do it. And that seems to be the
mindset, and that is where the frustration level is.
As I told the committee and Governor Barbour yesterday, and
he agrees, Congressman Pickering made the statement that the
people had moved into a state of depression. My people in
Louisiana are either behind that curve or ahead of it because
they are PO'd now, they are not depressed anymore, they are
just flat out mad, and it is getting worse.
Chairman Ney. The time is expired, but would you like an
answer?
Mr. Melancon. No. What I will do, if I could, Mr. Garrett,
I will make a list of the some of the things, numbers and such
that I need and I will get them to you, and if you could get
them back to me I would appreciate it.
Mr. Garrett. I will get them back to you quickly.
Chairman Ney. Actually, can I intervene on one point you
made, I would like to see if we can get a response on it, on
the coordination of what the Congressman is saying about the
fact that people are moved in and they are moved out. Have you
heard this before, that this happens?
Mr. Garrett. Yes, sir, we have, not only in this disaster
but in previous disasters.
Chairman Ney. Because it has happened to us back home.
Well, can you put a stop to that? You know, can you have the
continuity? Have you taken that step?
Mr. Garrett. We are working towards that, sir. We recognize
that is an issue. Our problem is that a lot of the individuals
who are currently out in the field right now are individuals
from the various 10 regions, permanent full-time individuals
who have been down there for three-and-a-half months. What we
typically do in a disaster is we will often flood that disaster
with permanent full-timers, and then over time backfill them
with our Disaster Assistance Reservist Corps.
In this particular case we have been pretty stretched
across the country, and we have had individuals in a lot of
these positions for a lot longer period of time than we would
like, and so we are getting around to slowly rotating them out.
We are also rotating people out just for some R&R. But our
long-term strategy for this particular area is the same
strategy that we employed in Florida last year, and that is to
develop long-term recovery offices with individuals who are
assigned to that office and will be there for the long term and
will be able to provide that kind of continuity. We are not
there yet, but that is what we are moving towards, and we hope
to have that kind of continuity in place here in time.
Chairman Ney. Thank you.
Mr. Melancon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Ney. The gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Garrett, let me ask you--I want to be clear, is it
accurate to say that you made the decision, not signed off, but
that you made the decision to evacuate the evacuees from the
hotel rooms?
Mr. Garrett. I made the decision, and I signed the guidance
for that that made that official. I would not characterize it
as evacuating individuals from hotels, I would characterize
that as that was the date by which we had planned to stop
subsidizing hotel room stays. However, I also want to make a
point--and I think it is an important point to make here--that
anyone who was a--if FEMA determined that an individual was
eligible for assistance from FEMA, had not received that
assistance yet, FEMA was prepared, and is prepared now, even
beyond the December 15th date to continue on a case-by-case
basis subsidizing individuals in hotel rooms until they receive
the assistance that they are eligible for and due from FEMA.
By the same token, if we have individuals in our queue who
are in what we call the pending queue, these are individuals
whom we haven't made an eligibility determination for yet, we
will continue to subsidize those individuals beyond December
15th until we can determine if they are eligible, and give them
rental assistance, at which point they will be responsible for
taking care of themselves, or we determine that they are not
eligible for FEMA assistance, at which point we would refer
them to HUD and to the KDHAP program.
Mr. Scott. Now, there are two dates that are amounting to
some confusion in my mind as far as extension of the deadline.
You mentioned a December 15th date as the extension for the
hotel stay, but also there is a January 7th date. Can you
explain the difference?
Mr. Garrett. Yes, sir. We initially had established--on the
initial guidance that went out we established December 1st as
the date that we would stop the subsidies. And we had
authorized two States, Mississippi and Louisiana, to apply for
extensions up until January 7th. A week later we amended that
guidance and extended what was the original date of December
1st to December 15th. And we preserved the January 7th date,
but we also opened that up to an additional eight States who
had the highest number of evacuees in their States.
Mr. Scott. Now, what you have just said is ample evidence
of why the people are so confused. I mean, that--to go through
that minefield that you laid of dates, how it applies, you
know, even for me just sitting here, I had a little problem
comprehending and following all of the dates. I can imagine
what it would be for people who are actual victims of it.
But from my own point, then, January 7th is that foremost
date at this point that you have extended for folks to be able
to stay in the hotels?
Mr. Garrett. For 10 States, sir.
Mr. Scott. For the 10 States. All right.
Now, now that you have extended the hotel deadline until
January 7th for those specific States, those 10 States, does
that mean that the 403 program's deadline is also extended to
permit the evacuees to enter into this program and enter
contracts into this program?
Mr. Garrett. First, just a point of clarification is that
those 10 States are authorized up until January 7th. I am
personally aware that only one State has submitted a plan and
has received the authorization to go to January 7th at this
point. We have pending plans from the others, but they
certainly have that capability.
In terms of the 403 and the extension, yes, sir, as long as
individuals continue to be subsidized in hotels and motels as
part of an organized strategy, then the States and locals who
are hosting those evacuees will continue to have the authority
to use 403 to place them in apartments during that period of
time.
Mr. Scott. How are you getting that information out? How
are you publicizing that information?
Mr. Garrett. A couple of ways, sir. In terms of the
information to the hotel occupants themselves, we are putting
flyers under the doors of every one of the occupants. Corporate
Lodge Consultants contacts the hotels, provides them those
flyers, provides the direction to do that. And we have done
that multiple times. We also have teams who are going out, not
only the Federal Government or joint teams with the States and
locals, but States and locals are doing this themselves as
well, knocking on doors, advising individuals about the
deadline, what their options are, that they need to register;
if they haven't received assistance yet, what their options
are.
Mr. Scott. Now, as we move through that to the 403
programs, you stated--I think you released in November--that
the payments under this section 403 program will end March 1st.
Is that deadline still accurate?
Mr. Garrett. Yes, sir.
Mr. Scott. Well, let me ask you this; how will this impact
cities like Atlanta and Houston and Dallas that have already
entered into 1-year contracts with the property owners? Will
these commitments be honored to full term?
Mr. Garrett. Well, if the commitments aren't honored to
full term, then the provisions of the contract that allow that
contract to be terminated, to include whatever those
termination or penalty fees are, we will honor those terms. So
if an individual who receives individual assistance by March
1st, is now receiving rental assistance at that point, elects
to take that rental assistance and move to another city,
leaving that apartment vacant, we are not going to pay for the
full term of that apartment for 12 months. What we are going to
do is we are going to tell them you need to terminate that
apartment, we will pick up and reimburse you for whatever
penalties you have to pay for terminating that apartment early.
Mr. Scott. Let me go to another point, because there has
been a lot of discussion about monies that have been given to
evacuees for their rent, to help with the rent, but they have
used it on other things. And I want to find out from you that
some of these apartment owners have even forgone the rent and
have done so under the belief that they would be compensated by
FEMA directly for housing assistance or through the evacuee
once the evacuees receives this housing assistance money, but,
however, in many cases where the funds were provided directly
to the evacuees, the money was spent on more urgent needs, such
as food, clothing, and medicine. Will FEMA advance money now to
evacuees to pay their back rent?
Chairman Ney. The time is expired, but if you would like to
answer that question.
Mr. Garrett. I would like to answer that question.
We have issued guidance to our national processing service
centers, we recognize that that is an issue, that the initial
money that went out to the evacuees was sent to them or put in
their bank accounts in advance of information that described
what the intended use of that money was for. We also recognize
that these individuals may have had compelling other needs at
that particular time. The ones you mentioned, they needed food,
they needed clothes for their kids. In recognition of the fact
that these individuals who received that first increment of 3-
month rental assistance may have needed that funding for other
things and may not have been notified about what the intended
use of that was for, we have authorized our NPSC's to recertify
those individuals if they will just make a self-certification
statement. All they need to do is certify one of those two
things occurred, either I was not notified what the intended
use of this money was for prior to its receipt, or I had these
compelling other essential needs that I needed to fulfill with
that money. If they will do that, we are prepared to recertify
them for rental assistance.
We are also prepared for individuals who need to pay, for
example, a first month's rent with their 3 months worth of
rental assistance and therefore only have really 2 months of
rental instance left, we are prepared to recertify them at the
end of that 2-month period. They are not going to lose a month
as a result of that.
So we have made some accommodations here to recognize the
situations that these individuals are in and to try and make
sure that an individual is not penalized because they had to
make what was--even an individual who was given--they had to
make a difficult decision, and it may not have been the
technically appropriate decision, but it was the smart decision
for this individual and for their family. They made a decision,
and we are not going to penalize those individuals for doing
that.
So again, they will be recertified, they will be eligible
for recertification of that rental assistance, they are not
going to lose that source of funding. And we will continue to
recertify people--and this is a point that we want to make to
landlords all over the United States, which is that as long as
an individual--I mean, just an individual who receives an
initial allotment of rental assistance from us, and we are
prepared to on a case-by-case basis, at the request of any
individual who we are providing rental assistance to, talk to
their landlords and explain how this works. This is not just a
three months and they are out. This individual, in a situation
that they are in, is going to be working on developing a plan
to find a permanent housing plan for themselves, and they are
also, during this period of time, hopefully going to be working
to try to find a form of employment. We will continue to
subsidize those activities up until the point that they are
self-sufficient, and we will tell the landlord that, that until
this individual is self-sufficient we will continue to provide
them rental assistance. Once they achieve self-sufficiency,
then our expectation is they are no longer going to be
receiving rental assistance from us because they have achieved
that self-sufficiency. And that is what we want to do with all
the individuals, is we want to provide assistance to them to
help them reach a point where they can be self-sufficient. And
we are prepared to do that as long as we are legislatively
authorized to do so.
So until they reach the cap on rental assistance, then they
are going to be authorized for that. And even if they do reach
that cap, we have the capability to provide direct housing
assistance to that landlord for up to 18 months. So they have
got some options, and we are going to be prepared to work with
all of them to make sure everyone is taken care of.
Chairman Ney. We are going to move on to Mr. Green, but I
just want to take one second, if the gentleman will yield. Just
to clarify, I think, what I heard.
FEMA will continue to pay rent until a person is self-
sufficient? Now, do you need a law change to do that? Did you
say that FEMA will continue to subsidize--I am just trying to
clarify what you had said.
Mr. Garrett. We pay rental assistance to individuals. It is
typically in most disasters paid on a monthly basis and they
recertify monthly; in this disaster, because of the size of the
population, we are doing 3-month increments. So when they come
back, as they are approaching the end of that 3-month period to
recertify and get another 3 months, if they have not achieved
self-sufficiency at that point and if they still have room
under their cap for that $26,200 they will continue to receive
rental assistance from FEMA.
Chairman Ney. But once that $26,200 runs out, you are not
going to continue after that?
Mr. Garrett. We can't continue rental assistance for those
individuals--
Chairman Ney. Unless you had a law change by the Congress.
Mr. Garrett. Correct. But we do have authority to, under
direct housing, essentially take over that lease and pay that
lease directly to the landlord.
Chairman Ney. For how long?
Mr. Garrett. Up to 18 months.
Chairman Ney. Thanks. I just wanted to clarify.
Mr. Green.
Mr. Green. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. Garrett, I
trust this will be an amiable, amicable exchange that you and I
will have because I truly am interested in some very specific
information.
Let's start with about $600 million in contracts, 8(a)
contracts that are to be let, and proposals are due on December
30th. Are you familiar with these contracts that I am talking
about, the 8(a) $650 million broken down into four separate
contracts for various States that have been impacted by
Katrina?
Mr. Garrett. Yes. I have some information in front of me.
We are talking about the contracts, the maximum value of each
will not exceed $100 million?
Mr. Green. $150 million is the information I have. Do you
have $100 million?
Mr. Garrett. Yes.
Mr. Green. How can we acquire information in terms of what
the scope of the work is for each of these 8(a) contracts?
Mr. Garrett. Each contract will provide for the provision
of maintenance and deactivation of approximately 6,700
temporary housing units. The period for performance will be 5
years from the date of the order.
Mr. Green. Maintenance and deactivation?
Mr. Garrett. Correct.
Mr. Green. Is this information codified someplace so I may
have it in hand so as to carefully review and make good use of
it? For want of better terminology, is it codified someplace?
Mr. Garrett. I am certain that it is, sir.
Mr. Green. May I have someone on my staff get that
codification from you as quickly as possible?
Chairman Ney. Could I make a note on this, too? And I won't
take it off of your time. The gentlelady from California had
requested, too, about information. Any information requested
today, you can provide it to the member requesting it and also
to the committee so we can then disperse it to all members. I
just wanted to--any of the questions today, provide to the
members asking and to the committee so we can disperse it to
all members. Thank you.
Mr. Garrett. I am have advised that until that appears on
FedBusOps website, that we can't provide that to you directly.
Mr. Green. So until it is published on a website there will
be no means by which I can acquire it, other than what you will
tell me today?
Mr. Garrett. That appears to be true, sir, yes. And I have
got a little cheat sheet here in front of me. I will be happy
to provide you information from that.
Mr. Green. Immediately afterwards why don't you and I visit
about the cheat sheet and get as much of that information, and
then I would like to explore some other avenues by which we may
proceed.
Quickly now with Houston, and all of the contracts that
have been let for 12 months. To recap, you will either honor
the 12-month contract, or if the contract is not honored, you
will then honor any penalties associated with the contract.
This is true?
Mr. Garrett. That is true.
Mr. Green. Houston has been styled a model city for this
type of unfortunate circumstance, I think you have as much as
said so yourself. Given that Houston is a model city, why would
we not simply try to replicate what Houston was doing, and that
was with the 12-months contracts, as opposed to negate what
Houston did and move to the 3-month contracts?
Mr. Garrett. No one was trying to--or there was certainly
no intention to negate any of the very lean forward actions
that Houston has been engaging in. Authorizations for cities to
enter into leases for up to 12 months was not a method of
encouraging cities to do that, it was recognition of the fact
that they might not be able to get leases at less than 12
months.
Mr. Green. Here is the concern we have, Mr. Garrett, two--
and possibly many more, but two quickly--one, your image is
being tarnished with landlords once they hear about a 12-month
arrangement and find out that you are now willing to move to a
3-month arrangement and pay the penalties. That does not
encourage them to continue to do business with you.
Two, even if you are so kind as to pay the penalties, you
still have a person who has to find a new place to stay in an
unfamiliar environment, possibly with children, possibly
without transportation. It still places the person in a
position where he or she is having to do something that may not
be done within a reasonable amount of time.
Mr. Garrett. I would hope that is not the case. I would
hope that the individual--again, what we are talking about,
when we are talking about extending this contract out to the
full 12 months, is just converting from having that contract
paid by the State or by the jurisdiction, using 403, to being
paid by the individual. So if an individual is in an apartment
that was leased or--
Mr. Green. Because my time is running short, time is of the
essence, let me--you made a good segue now for me as to what is
happening now in Houston. We have approximately 105,000 people
in apartments, and that will escalate to approximately 130,000
people. Will you transition all the 130,000 people by your
deadline?
Mr. Garrett. We certainly hope to achieve that, yes, sir.
Mr. Green. And for those that have not been transferred,
what will happen to them? Transition.
Mr. Garrett. The same would apply to an individual on March
1st. Any individual, who through no fault of their own, if they
are in an apartment that is being subsidized by the State and
they are eligible for FEMA assistance and they have not
received FEMA assistance at that point, we would continue their
subsidy under that program until they are converted to the 408
program. So no one is going to be dropped from that program
because they were not converted to the 408 program.
Mr. Green. So your statement, for the record, is people
will be transitioned by March 1st or some point thereafter if
they have not been transitioned on or before March 1st?
Mr. Garrett. If they are eligible, FEMA's goal is to reach
every single one of those individuals, determine their
eligibility, if they are eligible for FEMA assistance, begin
providing them that assistance. At that point they would be
responsible for taking over that lease and making the monthly
payments on that lease. If they are not eligible for FEMA
assistance, they would be referred to HUD and to HUD's KDHAP
program.
Mr. Green. The persons who have not transitioned--now I
think I am hearing you give me something more than they will
simply remain in the program they are in until they can be
transitioned. You are saying that something else may happen to
them as well?
Mr. Garrett. Again, three things are going to happen. We
are going to determine their eligibility and we are going to
give them, provide them the assistance that they are due, their
rental assistance. At that point they are going to be
transitioned off of 403, and they will, using the rental
assistance that they are given, be responsible for taking over
the rental payments on the apartment that they are in. If they
don't want to stay in that apartment, they are certainly free
to move out of that apartment and find other accommodations to
use that rental assistance.
They can also be transferred over to KDHAP program, under
HUD's program. Or, as we discussed prior to this, was if that
individual is still in a state of limbo, if by March 1st we
have an individual who is either pending, we haven't determined
their eligibility, or they are waiting for FEMA assistance, we
would continue to subsidize that individual or those households
until that determination is made and that assistance is
provided to them.
Mr. Green. One final question as a follow up to our first
line of inquiry.
How would one who proposes to acquire one of these 8(a)
contracts do so in a prudent, judicious fashion without the
information that we are making--we are asking you to share with
us?
Mr. Garrett. That information will be made available to
everybody who wants to compete for those contracts at the very
same time on the FedBusOps announcement.
Mr. Green. Notwithstanding the December 30th deadline for
the proposals?
Mr. Garrett. We have to double check on the status of
whether that announcement is even out yet. It may be out now; I
am not personally aware that it is. But if that deadline--or if
a determination is made by our procurement officials--
Chairman Ney. Time is expired.
Mr. Garrett. --that a deadline needed to be extended, that
could be done.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Ney. The answer on that--
Mr. Green. Yes, sir, thank you.
Chairman Ney. Mr. Cleaver.
Mr. Cleaver. Again, thank you, Mr. Garrett, for being here.
And the questioning, I hope you understand everybody's
frustrated. I have spoken with one of the women sitting here,
and of course they are frustrated and want answers to
questions. And everyone--and we want them, too. And so even if
we are noisy, we are not going to be nasty, so just bear with
us.
Are you familiar with E.L. Quarantelli?
Mr. Garrett. No, sir.
Mr. Cleaver. He runs the Disaster Research Center out of
the University of Delaware. I think one of your staff persons
seems to be. You know, he has been doing this since 1949, and
he wrote, this is the worst response to a disaster during his
time of research. And so you understand that people are
frustrated.
One of the--and this seems so simple, but what is the
status of reuniting children with their parents? We have
children, as I am sure you know, separated from parents. In
Kansas City, Missouri, where I am from, we had some children
who came there and ended up in the Children's Mercy Hospital,
but we had no idea where their parents were, and I am not sure
if they know even today. So is there some kind of process--
Mr. Garrett. We have been working with the National Center
for Exploited and Missing Children, and they provided us with a
list of names. We have, on behalf of that center, done call
outs to individuals, names that match up against the list of
individuals that we have in our system, and we have locations
for those individuals, and we have contacted the individuals or
attempted to contact them, if we can, at the address at which
they are listed and advise them that someone is looking for
them at the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children
and would like to talk to them and provide the contact
information for that, either the individual or the guardian.
Mr. Cleaver. Do you have a number of children who are still
disconnected from parents or grandparents or guardians?
Mr. Garrett. I think the numbers--and I don't have them
here, but we can certainly provide them to you--are the numbers
that we were provided by the National Center for Exploited and
Missing Children. The number that we were successful contacting
and the number, obviously, that we were not. We can provide
those numbers to you.
Mr. Cleaver. You know, one of the problems is that the name
of the agency trying to do the connection, Missing Or Exploited
Children, people don't like to respond to that is why we have
problems with the census in the central city.
But the other issue that I wanted to relate on the same
question, what would be the feasibility and practicality of
having all the children in one area and trying to reconnect or
to receive all of the children and put them in one area so that
everybody in the country knows that if there is a child missing
from Katrina or Rita, that if you go to Baton Rouge or St.
Charles, all the children are there. Is that practical?
Mr. Garrett. I am not prepared to make a practicality
assessment of that. I will certainly take that back and we can
knock that around, but I am not sure what the issues--I think
there might be a number of issues involved with trying to
relocate en masse a lot of children.
Mr. Cleaver. You know what, I am moving my Congressional
office at the first of the year because I can't get people to
come in. You know why? Because it is also the office for the
U.S. Marshals, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney, and so I don't get
anybody to come in. I mean, they don't want to come in to the
Federal courthouse, even though it is cute. So, you know,
Missing and Exploited Children sounds like an agency that is
going to do something to you. But if you would explore that.
The other, kind of related is do you have any kind of list
of the people with special needs, the disabled? When you look
at what happened there in the aftermath of Katrina, there were
people--and it sends chills to me thinking about it--dying in
wheelchairs, people were watching folk die because they
couldn't walk and so forth. So even in the aftermath--and I
think is it Justice After the Flood or something like--Justice
After the Storm is kind of the theme they have. And so I am
thinking about the disabled. Is there any special action being
taken for people who have special needs?
Mr. Garrett. When individuals register with FEMA, if they
self-identify themselves as having a disability, we can capture
that information and we can begin caseworking those
individuals, again on a case-by-case basis.
Individuals within the impacted areas are also being
caseworked on a case-by-case basis. We recently upped the
number of ADA compliant travel trailers and mobile homes that
we are providing to Louisiana to address what are the unmet
needs of a sizeable population of the disabled.
So we are working that both at the ground level and at the
regional and headquarters level to identify individuals, and
based on where they are located, what their particular needs
are, either working directly with them or making referrals to
the appropriate social services to work with them.
Mr. Cleaver. How many evacuees have registered with FEMA
thus far?
Chairman Ney. The time is expired, but if you would like to
please answer that question. Thank you.
Mr. Garrett. More than two million. I would actually have
to add those figures up, but I can give you a figure at the end
of this.
Mr. Cleaver. But roughly two million?
Mr. Garrett. Yes.
Mr. Cleaver. That is fine, thank you.
Chairman Ney. The gentlelady from California.
Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A couple of things. Let me ask you, with regard to the
homeless population, for example, following up on Mr. Cleaver's
question. We have learned--and I think it was as a result of
the briefing with FEMA--that there were what, about 842 Katrina
survivors living right now in homeless shelters. And I am just
wondering, in terms of people who were homeless prior to this
disaster, as well as those who are now on the verge of becoming
homeless, what type of services, not only transitional housing
assistance, but the type of supportive services that either
FEMA or HUD or whomever is providing.
And secondly, I just want to ask you about rent gouging? We
have heard of instances where of course landlords are taking
advantage of this unfortunate circumstance and gouging, and I
wanted to find out if FEMA is working with HUD to establish
some way to prevent that from happening?
And finally, a question I have--and I am just not sure what
the answer is, and forgive me if you have answered this
before--in terms of local rents in high cost areas, such as--
and we have, like I said, probably as far as we can tell maybe
1,200 individuals in just the Oakland Bay area, and the cost of
living, the cost of rent is enormous, I think a two-bedroom
apartment you probably can't get for under $1,500 a month. And
I am trying to find out how FEMA adjusts its housing assistance
for high cost areas where individuals are living.
Mr. Garrett. I will be happy to address all three of your
questions or areas you are interested in, and I will start with
the last one first, in terms of the cost of living.
FEMA initially gave out, under the Transitional Housing
Assistance Program, 3 months at a national fair market rent.
However, that was only for the initial allotment of rental
assistance. From that point on, when an individual came back or
comes back to FEMA and recertifies for rental assistance, they
will be recertifying based on where they are living now, where
they have established that temporary residence, and we will
from that point on provide them rental assistance at the
prevailing FMR for wherever they are living. So someone living
in Oakland will get what that FMR is, not what the Tulsa,
Oklahoma FMR is or what the national FMR is. And that will be
effective with the very first recertification, and from every
certification from that point on.
In terms of rent gouging, it is because we are only
providing rental assistance to individuals at the fair market
rate, it makes it a little more difficult for someone to gouge
an individual who is basically on a fixed rental income at that
point. We recognize that that does take place and it has taken
place; that is largely anactivity that we make known to--if we
become aware of it, we will let, through our joint field
offices, through our region's States and jurisdictions, make
them aware of the fact that we believe this may be going on.
But that is largely up to the States and local jurisdictions to
tackle in terms of addressing that rent gouging at a
jurisdictional level.
And in terms of the homeless, that is a more complicated
issue. For the predisaster homeless, they don't have as many
options as an individual who was a homeowner or who was a
renter. For example, they are not going to be eligible for
rental assistance, they are not going to be eligible for home
repair. They may potentially be eligible for some types of
other needs assistance. If they had personal property that they
lost as a result of a disaster, they may get some funding
there. But largely, from an individual assistance standpoint,
they are not going to receive nearly as much as someone else--
Ms. Lee. Let me ask you this, because they were homeless in
a disaster area where--they were homeless for, unfortunately,
many reasons, but this compounded their homelessness and had to
move from one homeless venue to another. Isn't there any way
that FEMA can perhaps look at grandfathering in predisaster
homeless individuals who were displaced to provide some type of
assistance? Because it is unfortunate they didn't have a
shelter, but now in fact because this disaster has hit so many,
they should be eligible for whatever transitional housing
assistance that is available for those who had to be displaced.
And I think that FEMA needs to look at that and come up with
some recommendations on how to do that.
Mr. Garrett. Predisaster homeless are referred to the HUD
program, to their KDHAP program.
Ms. Lee. Well, what is HUD doing? Since they are not here
maybe you can answer. Don't you coordinate with them?
Mr. Garrett. We do. And we make referrals to them.
Ms. Lee. Do you know what they are doing?
Mr. Garrett. They work with the individuals who are
referred and through their public housing authorities to find
housing for those individuals.
Ms. Lee. Since they are not here, could you ask them, in
your response to all these questions, what they are doing to
make sure that people who were homeless and were displaced
receive the same type of assistance as those who had shelter
over their heads, please?
Mr. Garrett. You bet, ma'am.
Ms. Lee. And if they are not doing anything, would you let
us know?
Mr. Garrett. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Lee. Thank you.
Chairman Ney. The time is expired. Before we move on--we
are going to recognize Mr. Watt--I just wanted to note for the
committee members, we want to thank Jim Shuman, he is sitting
right there in the blue tie, from FEMA; he has been a
Congressional liaison to this committee, and Friday is his last
day. And we all want to thank you for your hard work. I don't
know what you are going to be moving on to, but whatever you
are doing, thank you for all your hard work.
Mr. Shuman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Ney. And also, we are going to go to Mr. Watt, and
then we will be finished.
I do want to reiterate also to the committee members--and I
want to thank Mr. Garrett for coming and addressing this
situation. One way or another somebody from HUD is going to
come here next week, not in January at the end, but next week,
one way or the other somebody is coming here from HUD. I just
want to assure you here on behalf of Chairman Oxley. So we can
do it the easy way or the hard way, but one way or another
somebody will come and answer questions. And again, I have
talked to Secretary Jackson, and he has stated he was going to
be coming. So I just want to make sure that that is followed up
on and to assure you of that.
And with that, we will go on to Mr. Watt.
Mr. Watt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Garrett, I am Congressman Mel Watt. I happen to be the
Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. I am not on this
subcommittee, and I want to thank the chairman for allowing me
to ask a few questions and make a few comments.
Perhaps the face of this disaster, Hurricane Katrina, was
disproportionately black, and because it is disproportionately
poor, and perhaps you are wondering whether the face of this
committee this morning is disproportionately African American.
I guarantee you, all these chairs are occupied by folks who are
Members of Congress. We don't represent 80 to 90 percent of the
committee, as you have seen 80 or 90 percent of the questioners
here this morning. And there is probably nobody in America who
would be more justified in taking out and venting against FEMA
than me, as the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus,
because there has been a lot of horror stories. And I have
passed up multiple opportunities to slam FEMA, so I am not here
to slam you. I am not going to take advantage of this
opportunity today to slam FEMA. I got some real tough
questions.
And part of what you are hearing is frustration because we
can't get any answers, except whatever is convenient to be said
at the given time. I happened to be in a meeting with the
President of the United States yesterday, and if I listened to
what the President told me in that meeting everything at FEMA
is going well. It was like day yesterday and night today,
because everything obviously is not going well. And that is the
global thing. I want to bring it home for a little bit, not
playing my national role, but to my own State of North
Carolina, where I have in front of me a summary of Charlotte,
North Carolina. I got the names of the individuals who are
staying at the AmeriSuites, the Marriott Executive Hotels,
Staybridge Conference Suites, Extended Stay, Glen Haven; 43
people at just those hotels. And we are told this morning that
as of December 5, 2005, 194 hotel rooms are being occupied just
in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I also represent Greensboro,
Winston-Salem, and a number of other cities that have evacuees.
Now, we also were told this morning that this extended
extension beyond December 15th to March 1st--everybody's
concerned about that--applies to only 10 States, am I correct
about that?
Mr. Garrett. The extension is to January 7th, and yes, it
only applies to 10 States.
Mr. Watt. And that North Carolina is not one of those
States; is that correct?
Mr. Garrett. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Watt. So I have 194 hotel rooms just in one city in my
congressional district, and I have the names of the people and
I have the record of the churches that have been working with
them, they have been courageous and wonderful in working with
these people. And they called me just as a last resort, and I
don't know what to tell them, Mr. Garrett, because they don't--
I don't know what to tell the churches because--and they don't
know what to tell these people about where they are going, and
I need your help.
What would you have me say to those people?
Mr. Garrett. Pick up the phone, call FEMA's 1-800 number,
tell FEMA that you are in a hotel, that you have not received
any assistance from FEMA, if that is the case--
Mr. Watt. No, no, no. These people are receiving assistance
from FEMA now. I just told you they are staying in a hotel,
FEMA is paying the bill. But you just told me that as of what
date?
Mr. Garrett. I was referring to our individual assistance
program, sir, versus the program under which they are being
billeted in those hotels right now. That is a program that we
are providing to individuals through a--
Mr. Watt. Well, through what date? I mean, these people
have been told that they will have to evacuate the hotels on
December 15th.
Mr. Garrett. They don't need to evacuate the hotels on
December 15th, sir. On December 15th FEMA will cease paying the
subsidies for their stays in the hotel. At that point, it will
be their responsibility--
Mr. Watt. Well, what does that mean to somebody who doesn't
have a dime in their pocket, Mr. Garrett, other than you have
to evacuate the hotel?
Mr. Garrett. That they, at this point, shouldn't wait until
December 15th, they should pick up the phone right now. If they
don't have a dime in their pocket, they should contact FEMA. If
they haven't registered with FEMA yet, they need to register.
If they have registered with FEMA and they haven't received--
Mr. Watt. They have done all of that, I guarantee you.
There are individual volunteers from churches who are working
with these people and they have done that, and they don't have
anywhere to go on December 15th. What is it that I am supposed
to tell them?
Mr. Garrett. If they have--
Mr. Watt. Call the 1-800 number after you are standing on
the balcony of the hotel?
Mr. Garrett. Call it right now, sir, call--
Mr. Watt. They have already done that, Mr. Garrett, they
don't have any place to go.
Mr. Garrett. We are prepared, if these individuals have not
yet received rental assistance from FEMA, if they have--
Mr. Watt. And if they have?
Mr. Garrett. Then they will be responsible for using that
rental assistance to take over their hotel and motel bills.
That is what that rental assistance is for. Ideally they would
use that for an apartment, but if they don't--
Mr. Watt. Well, I haven't even mentioned the people who are
staying in apartments, I just focused on the--they are having
the same set of issues here. When do they have to get out?
Mr. Garrett. Individuals in apartments?
Mr. Watt. March 1st?
Mr. Garrett. They don't have to get out on March 1st. March
1st is when we will complete--or hope to complete the
conversion from a State--subsidized through the States and
locals to having individuals responsible for that because they
will be receiving individual assistance.
Mr. Watt. Wait a minute. I thought you already terminated
North Carolina before that. What did you terminate? I don't
understand--
Mr. Garrett. December 15th, sir. That was the date that we
stop doing the hotel-motel subsidy.
Mr. Watt. For North Carolina?
Mr. Garrett. Yes, sir.
Chairman Ney. The time is expired, but I would like to ask
for a clarification. You might want to--
Mr. Watt. I am trying to get a clarification. Maybe you can
ask the question more clearly than I am asking it. I am missing
something here.
Chairman Ney. Just to get down to a point. Okay. If you
were HUD assisted--let's just focus on who is in these rooms.
If you are HUD assisted, you are taken care of. You are
probably not in a hotel room if you are HUD assisted.
Mr. Garratt. Or you are in that hotel room until you are
HUD assisted. Once you make a determination that you are a HUD
referral, we will refer that individual to HUD, tell that
individual to contact HUD and begin working with HUD.
Chairman Ney. But if you were in Section 8 prior to this
disaster, you were HUD-assisted. You naturally would have your
voucher and, if you could find a place, be able to go to it.
All right.
Of the other people who are in there, if you owned a home
and you are in this hotel, you get $26,200, if you owned a
home?
Mr. Garratt. You can potentially get up to $26,200.
Chairman Ney. Now, is there another category of people, a
mom and three kids who didn't own a home, were not HUD-assisted
Section 8, but had rented an apartment? What happens to that
group of people?
Mr. Garratt. They are eligible for rental assistance,
certainly, sir. So they are eligible to get rental assistance
at the fair market rent, and they are eligible to get that in
3-month increments.
Chairman Ney. To pay to the hotel?
Mr. Garratt. Or ideally to pay to an apartment.
Chairman Ney. But let me ask a question. We know they are
HUD-assisted. We know that people who live in that hotel room
now get $26,200, and they don't technically have to leave on
that date, but they would have to start into the $26,200 to
pay.
Now, is there another category of people though who were
not on Section 8 but were the working poor, barely making it
and were living in an apartment. Do they right now have the
resources to pay, if FEMA says we are not going to pay anymore
to the hotel tomorrow morning, do those individuals in the
checking account have some money from the United States
Government, FEMA or HUD, to pay that hotel room?
Mr. Garratt. If they do not have that yet, that is why we
urge them to pick up the phone and call FEMA right now, is
because if they don't have it and they are eligible for it--and
the family you just discussed would be eligible for it
Chairman Ney. I don't want to take more time. Who is
eligible for it?
Mr. Garratt. Renters and homeowners are eligible for it,
unless the homeowner had insurance that covered alternative
housing.
Chairman Ney. Say they are renters. Are they eligible based
on income? Are they eligible just to get it? And how long would
it take them to get it? I think this is probably--
Mr. Watt. Is there some written description of these
various categories somewhere?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, there is, sir.
Mr. Watt. I beg of you, my office, we need to know what to
tell these people, and I can't tell these people to call a 1-
800 number, Mr. Garratt. That is not a sufficient response for
a Member of Congress to tell to volunteers from churches who
have been working with these individual people throughout the
process, who obviously they don't understand what the various
alternatives are either, because they have called me after
having worked--this is the 101st day. We have had people in
Charlotte now for almost 90 days, and they have been matched up
with volunteers. These people have tried to figure it out. Now
they are calling me and saying okay, what do we do on December
15th? And I don't know what to tell them. So if you will give
me a description of these.
The other thing I need you to give me is not a 1-800 number
but somebody down in North Carolina that I can talk to, that my
staff can talk to, to try to help these people. These are
people out there, and now, even though they don't vote for me--
we hope they are going to vote--if we ever give--maintain the
right for them to vote in Louisiana or Mississippi or wherever
they were evacuated from--even though they don't vote for me,
they are now my constituents while they are in my Congressional
district.
That is why I have the individuals--I mean, this is not a
theoretical policy discussion that I am having with you, Mr.
Garratt. These are about the lives of Walter Williams and
Jerome Williams and the list of people who I have here in front
of me who, on December 15th, don't know where they are going.
By the end of the day, just give me a description of these
various categories and a contact in North Carolina that we can
access to try to work to help these people.
Chairman Ney. If you could provide that, and also please,
again, any information provided to individual members, provide
to the committee, so we will be able to disseminate it.
I want to note that some members may have additional
questions, of course, that the panel may want to submit in
writing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open
for 30 days for members to submit written questions for these
witnesses and for them to place their response in the record.
I appreciate the members' time for an important topic.
And I also want to thank you, Mr. Garratt, for coming here
to address these questions.
Mr. Garratt. Thank you, Chairman Ney.
[Whereupon, at 1:03 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
December 8, 2005
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