Rep Al Green: Extend Free Housing for Evacuees til 2008

I was going to post something like this. If they are Rita evacuees and can find any housing (which, admittedly is very hard right now), please send them back home. We desperately need them.

 

I believe it was 1968 or 1969.

 

Glad you asked this, as I just talked to him about it last night. Basically, he rented a bedroom from someone in a really crappy house in an even worse neighborhood. He went to school during the day, waited tables at night, and did other chores for money. When he finished grad school (MS in EE) he got a job, moved to Salt Lake City, bought a house, etc. Definitely the American dream, and proves that with hard work, elbow grease, and determination, this country really is the land of opportunity.

 

When will it end...A year, ok, maybe two, but c'mon...Do something for yourself...

 

so he came with an undergrad degree. he was entered in a graduate program. right? and did he even pay for that grad school or was it thru scholarships?

 

when did katrina happen? 10 years ago?

its was aug 23 2005.. so just 19 months/less than 2 years?

 

I liked this thread better the first 97 times when it was called "it's not fair that black people can use the N-word and I can't."

 

Ah, yes. The always present SamFisher "those who don't agree with me are racists/bigots/stupid/etc" post. Well played, sir.

 

Get a job. Stop asking for handouts and, get off your asses and do something. You have to cease your opportunities, not wait for people to give them to you.

 

This made me laugh.

 

\My bad man, made me laugh too, someone edit that

 

What?

Are you for real?

These people lost their homes 2 years ago. Is it sad? Yes. Is it insurrmountable? No. People have survived worse. As long as you provide free housing for people, they will take it. When people know they have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, they tend to be pretty good at it. Two years is plenty of time to get a job and find an apartment in an attempt to rebuild.

As for those who "most deserve it," who decides that? Some government hack? You? Me? A poll of the BBS? How long should the application process be? Frought with trouble.

 

first of all whats wrong with providing free housing to anyone and everyone.

secondly this whole notion of pulling one up from bootstraps has no factual validity as a public policy principle.

 

Well...first of all somebody has to pay for it. There is nothing truly free. I realize this may be a difficult concept, but people should pay for their own stuff.

Secondly, government paying for everything has been a disaster from a public policy perspective. Notice how communism has been a failure whenever it has been tried in a populous society.

 

As I said shortly after Katrina and Rita, the New Orleans mayor (Nagin) and Louisiana governor (Blanco) were so incredibly inept, they should have been prosecuted. Worse, they impeded an inept FEMA response to compound the situation.

Of course, you have to forgive me. I never had a high opinion of New Orleans. The hurricanes were akin to stomping on a nest of roaches and watching them scatter. That's why all the cities who embraced the population were rewarded with sizable increases in crime.

Lastly, we should not spend a dime to restore New Orleans. Make it a national park to preserve the marshes with only a narrow industrial area for the port. Let workers commute by rail or bus in and out from residential areas safe from flooding.

 

That reminds me of my dad. He used to tell me the story of how the first time he came to the US he landed at San Francisco Airport with poor English only about $20, and the clothes on his back in 1965 and with hard work he got a great job, a good house and raised a family. When I pointed out to him that he also came with a fellowship to go to Grad School at Rice he quit telling the story.

 

A lot of people have also not survived less. I agree with you that people need to pull themselves up with their bootstraps but that's far easier said than done. A lot of these people had little to begin with and now they have nothing. Consider if your home and almost all your possesions had been wiped out, you had little savings, you got sent to another city and your friends and family scattered or even killed. That's a whole that most of us would have a hard time climbing out of. Two years might seem like a long time but not when you consider your whole life prior has pretty much been destroyed.

No one is advocating these people live in luxury merely that they have a roof over their head. Also consider that if they were just dumped on the street they might never recover as its almost impossible to get a decent job if you're homeless.

There's a lot of social Dawinism coloring this debate as people seem to be arguing that these people are undeserving, or that there is some innate failing about them. I would say whether they are deserving or innately lazy keeping them sheltered is still a matter of enlightened self-interest. If you're worried about Katrina refugees be housed in your city off of tax dollars consider what it will be like to have Katrina refugees homeless in your city. Either way you will be paying for it whether housing them in apartments or in jail and a rent subsidy is cheaper than jail.

 

I'm happy some of you guys' parents or grandparents worked their ass off to make it, but until you tell me wtf you did, I really don't give a crap about what your parents or grandparents did. the fact is most if not all of us posting in this thread have no idea what it is to be poor and the amount of fortitude it takes matter which side of the debate you're on.

secondly using some of your logic, we should let some of these other countries people starve to death and cut off aid, I mean by using your logic someone made it over here from those countries so we shouldn't give a crap about the others.

 

let me just clarify that I don't think you have to be poor to have an opinion either way. I just hate when people stand on the experience of a family member to validate their opinion like they have some special knowledge.


secondly, if your grandparents are over 70 years old, who wasn't poor back then. that means nothing.