Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Ford Calls For Extending Temporary Housing For Hurricane Victims

Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert yesterday calling on them to support legislation delaying the deadline for Hurricane Katrina evacuees to move out of their government-subsidized hotel rooms until after the New Year. The text of the letter is as follows:

November 21, 2005

The Honorable Bill Frist
Majority Leader
509 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable J. Dennis Hastert
Speaker of the House
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Leader Frist and Speaker Hastert,

I am writing to request that you bring legislation to the floor as soon as possible delaying the deadline for evacuees to move out of their government-subsidized hotel rooms until after the New Year. The cost of extending the temporary housing assistance can be borne by the new tax on oil companies that was recently approved by the Senate.

As you know, the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently notified the 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in almost 54,000 hotel rooms across the nation that they have until December 1, 2005 to find new housing or risk losing their government housing assistance. Officials in Louisiana and Mississippi - where local housing stocks were decimated by the storm - may petition federal officials to extend this deadline until January 7, 2006. Still, this means that evacuees in more than three-quarters of government-subsidized hotel rooms across the country face the prospect of a holiday season without a place to live.

To date, these hotel rooms have cost $273 million. To put this amount in perspective, it would be paid for by only 6 percent of the new $4.3 billion tax on oil companies that the Senate recently passed. Put another way, a mere 1.5 months of the benefit accrued by the oil tax would pay for all of the Katrina-related housing assistance provided to date. Surely, that is a small price to pay.

By comparison, the House of Representatives recently passed a budget reconciliation package that included $11.4 billion in cuts to Medicaid, largely in anticipation of the $56 billion in tax cuts that House leadership has proposed. If we are prepared to pay for tax cuts for millionaires by cutting healthcare for those most in need, then surely we should embrace paying for shelter for those displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita by taxing oil companies who have enjoyed record profits in the months since the storms.

As Thanksgiving approaches, we should do everything we can to make evacuees' holiday season a little more joyful. We owe them at least that much. I thank you in advance for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

HAROLD FORD, JR.