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The Wall Street Journal is reporting on how Advocates for the poor filed a lawsuit Wednesday trying to derail Mississippi's plan to use $570 million of Hurricane Katrina disaster grants to rebuild and expand the state's commercial-shipping port in Gulfport.
In the lawsuit, filed in Washington, the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP and other plaintiffs contend that the Bush Administration did not do required reviews to make sure the disaster grants would benefit low- and moderate-income residents when it accepted the state's plan to super-size the port.
The plaintiffs asked Federal District Court Judge James Robertson to freeze the money, which they say should be used to rebuild low-income housing. Their lawyers said they believe the Obama Administration will be less deferential to Mississippi's governor, Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a big backer of the port expansion.
The dispute over the state's use of $5.48 billion of federal disaster grants is flaring up at a time of economic turmoil as well as political transition. International shipping has slowed while unemployment has been rising, though at 5.7% the unemployment rate in Gulfport and neighboring Biloxi is under the national average of 6.1%.
Gov. Barbour has long argued that Gulf Coast residents need jobs as well as housing. In response to the lawsuit, he issued a statement saying restoration of the port "is critical to recovery of the Gulf Coast from the worst natural disaster in American history."
A spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which manages the disaster-grant program, said the agency hasn't seen the lawsuit. In the past, HUD officials have expressed misgivings about the port plan but said the agency didn't have the power to block it.
Though New Orleans received most of the national attention after its levees failed and Hurricane Katrina flooded the city in 2005, the storm swept away entire communities in Mississippi. It also damaged the port, which before the hurricane mainly handled imports of bananas and exports of frozen chickens. The port today is handling shipping, but hasn't recovered to its previous level of activity.
The state government has been praised for its swift response to the disaster, but critics in Mississippi and Washington, D.C., contend that state-run recovery programs have favored the well-to-do, especially a grant program for homeowners.
Mississippi officials say 40% of the grants went to homeowners of low or moderate income, and that a second $605 million grant program is directed at those homeowners.
But programs to rebuild rental units have been slower to get off the ground, and efforts to build new apartments didn't get under way until last summer.
More than 5,500 families still live in trailers and temporary government housing, according to the lawsuit, and many others can't find adequate housing because rents have soared. Four low-income women and the Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center, an advocacy group, joined the NAACP in filing the lawsuit. More HERE
