Wednesday Housing News: FEMA, Lame as Ever

Another casualty of Katrina, in its way: FEMA inspector crippled by bullet. I'm sure there're a lot of people crowing about how he got what he deserved and such, but that's just infantile. The poor guy was probably like hundreds of other FEMA employees just trying to do their jobs and getting screwed by incompetent management. I wouldn't even put a bullet to Mike Brown, because he deserves no sympathy whatsoever.

If you're a Hurricane Wilma survivor and need aid from FEMA, the deadline for aid applications is tomorrow. Of course, even applying for aid has perils of its own, as condo owners in Florida found out. Money quote:

It turned out that associations couldn't get assistance because they technically are corporations and FEMA has a rule against assisting corporations.

"It didn't matter that the unit owners owned the corporations, which aren't for profit," Rizzo said. "FEMA just saw them as corporations that they couldn't aid. I explained that in order to help the people they must help the corporations."

You gotta read through A Legacy of Waste to see who FEMA is aiding, and the level of stupidity they exhibit throughout. Just nuts. But as I said, that's what happens when you hire or contract out inexperienced people, give 'em no training, and expect them to follow confused directives issued by the agency that thought grooming Arabian horses was the perfect training for disaster management.

Posted at January 4, 2006 07:22 PM

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