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New Orleans Evacuees Given "Raw Deal" As FEMA Money Running Out; Baton Rouge Motel Manager Says He Didn't Try To Evict Evacuees As Media First Reported
Many displaced New Orleans residents may have nowhere to go after March 1 deadline when FEMA money runs out.
17 Feb 2006
By Greg Szymanski
The manager of a Baton Rouge motel, housing Katrina evacuees, Thursday said stories claiming he was evicting residents indiscriminately “were just not true,” as media reports were initially blown out of proportion.
Brent Servario, manager of the Pines Motel, said local television and news reports “got the real story all wrong” by saying he tried to clear out all 30 rooms of evacuees against a recent federal court ruling protecting evacuees from eviction until March 1.
Instead, Servario claims authorities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are the real culprits for leaving the hotel in disrepair and not reimbursing management for damages caused by a small group of unruly tenants.
The court ruling stopping all temporary housing facilities from evicting evacuees contains a clause giving owners e right to evict tenants who break the law or do not comply with normal hotel policies, including vandalism, drug abuse or prostitution.
“I never tried to evict everybody as initially reported. I only was following the court order which allows us to evict tenants damaging property or violating the law,” said Servario in an extended Thursday telephone conversation from the Baton Rouge motel.
“Most of the tenants are no trouble but there are some bad apples who have caused extensive damage to a vending machine and some rooms. I never tried to evict everyone. That was just not true.”
Besides the inaccurate media coverage, Servario puts most of the blame on FEMA, who has not “lived up to their end of the bargain,” leaving the motel in the lurch with expensive maintenance and repair bills.
“This is just a massive waste of taxpayer money to begin with. FEMA shold be getting the people back to their homes instead of wasting millions on out-of-state motel bills,” said Servario. “What makes it worse is that we may end up having to pay expensive repair bills out of our own pockets.
“Most people here want to go home anyway and are caught behind a rock and a hard place. Some, of course, are better off here than in New Orleans, but most are not.
Servario added FEMA programs geared at keeping people “away from home” makes no sense, leading to a massive waste of taxpayer money and added financial burdens to out-of-state businesses, as well as defeating he real purpose of getting evacuees back into their New Orleans homes.
“All our problems started with FEMA programs not working and now we are made to look like the bad guys in the press,” he added.
The original report from Chelby Kosto of WBRZ from Baton Rouge said Servario and his wife, Dana, were trying to evict each tenant from all 30 rooms despite FEMA footing the bill ad tenants having “FEMA codes” allowing them to stay until March 1.
Servario claims the full truth needs to be told, saying FEMA has not paid all the bills, including damage caused by the unruly tenants ordered to stay at the Pines.
“I’ll tell you the real truth but you have to promise me you won’t have Bush’s boys come down here and lock me up,” said Servario. “And if I was one of these evacuees, seeing how they have been treated, I would ring the neck of the head of FEMA, plain and simple. I’m not kidding. It’s that bad.”
With the situation reported even worse in New Orleans, evacuees at the Pines and many other similar places across the country are wondering “where to go” when the March 1 expiration of FEMA voucher funds ends in many places, as well as a slow recovery process ting place in the Big Easy due to lopsided FEMA programs allocating hundreds of millions out of state instead of spending the money to repair homes in New Orleans.
“They want to keep the lower and middle come people away so the government can steal their property,” said Brandon Darby of Common Cause Relief, a private group helping many residents in the poorer neighborhoods repair their homes in the face of a government land grab.
“It’s like ghost town in the lower 9th Ward. People should be brought back home or housed in temporary trailers near here instead of keeping them thousands of mile away.”
While many evacuees are facing eviction, other reports coming out of Houston indicate further FEMA mismanagement and an orchestrated plan to keep people away from New Orleans, as more than 9,000 temporary housing trailers are not being used and kept under lock and key at a storage facility.
And in Washington and Baton Rouge, federal and sate legislators are haggling over how to use $4.2 billon in federal money now allocated to assist in New Orleans relief efforts.
But back in Baton Rouge, the plans to implement an agency to locally distribute the cash has been bogged down in details, critics saying the Louisiana Housing and Land Trust Corp needs to trim administrative costs and get more money to the people.
The housing corporation is being set up to help displaced homeowners through home buyouts, loans, house repairs, gap financing, grants and mortgage payment assistance. An 11-member appointed board would oversee the trust.
Back in Baton Rouge, however, the housing corporation bill ran into a snag when lawmakers complained about the $3.8 million administrative cost of the trust and about the complexity of the legislation.
.The bill failed to pass by one vote after at least one senator left to attend an LSU baseball game. One of the governor’s own floor leaders also left the chamber
Greg Szymanski
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