Starting Over

Our executive director is in the news again.  In a well-framed article from Reuters, Alan is interviewed about FEMA's decision to shut down a busing program that shuttles displaced New Orleans residents from their current home in Baton Rouge to their jobs and schools in New Orleans.   

Ending Buses to Stymie Regrowth of New Orleans:

Theresa Jones hangs on to her low-paying job in New Orleans by riding a
free, government-funded bus 80 miles to work from the temporary housing
she has lived in since Hurricane Katrina. But her efforts to
keep a job in hand and a roof over her head are in peril, as the bus
service for displaced New Orleans residents is running out of money and
poised to shut down at the end of this month.
...
The demise of the LA Swift bus service comes as a blow to its riders,
many of whom are low-paid workers who cannot afford to live in New
Orleans, where a housing shortage has sent rents soaring since the
storm devastated the city in August 2005.

Alan's take:

"People want to work, they want to get jobs and it's not asking very
much of government to keep those doors open through something as meager
as bus service from Baton Rouge to New Orleans," said Alan Jenkins of
Opportunity Agenda, a research and advocacy group based in New York.
"It makes no sense."
...
At Opportunity Agenda, Jenkins argues the rebuilding of New Orleans,
with affordable transportation, housing and health care and quality
education, is "a test of our national values."

"We're supposed
to be a land of opportunity, which means that everyone should have a
fair chance to start over," he said. "We're falling very far short of
that promise of opportunity in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Read the whole piece.  As I noted above, it is very well-framed, laying out the institutional barriers that hurricane survivors are struggling to overcome, and the role that government can and should play in keeping open the doors of opportunity to those who were displaced by Katrina.