Housing aid extended for Gulf Coast hurricane evacuees
Federal housing assistance for more than 120,000 families displaced by Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005 will continue through March 1, 2009, officials announced today. Beneficiaries of the extension include about 34,000 families in apartments, including about 14,000 in the Houston area, and 88,000 families in mobile homes and travel trailers, mostly in Louisiana and Mississippi.
I’m all for lending a helping hand, and Lord knows that few have needed a helping hand more than those whose lives were uprooted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Within the space of a month, Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast from southeast Texas to Alabama. Homes were destroyed, lives lost, and entire communities devastated. Helping those impacted by such an unimaginable is EXACTLY the sort of thing that government should be doing. Nonetheless, I have some very mixed feelings about the decision to extend federal housing assistance through 3.1.09. If memory serves, Hurricane Katrina rolled through New Orleans on 8.29.05. So we’re still to be paying for housing assistance almost four years later? Yes, I understand that some of the folks along the Gulf Coast have been through Hell and then some. At what point, though, does a hand up become a handout?
Thankfully, most folks along the Gulf Coast have been able to reconstruct their lives. Perhaps things aren’t as they once were, but they’ve been able to reconstruct what they could and move on. What of those who, almost four years later, will still have not done the same thing? Do we still have a responsibility to subsidize them? How much is enough? And when do we leave the realm of enough and cross over into the dominion of too much?
I don’t have an answer to those questions, and I certainly don’t want to sound as if I’m lacking compassion. If there are people who legitimately need help, then government should be there for them. But what about those who are perfectly content to let government do for them so they don’t have to be bothered to do for themselves? What about those who think that we “owe” them because of what they’ve endured?
Yes, we have a responsibility to assist those legitimately in need. I’m just not certain that this need ought to exist almost four years after the initial event. People have a responsibility to themselves, and to the rest of society, to do what they have to do in order to pick themselves up. I’m not saying that limits should be set on our compassion, but neither do I think it unreasonable to expect that our financial assistance has a reasonable and appropriately finite life span.
I can’t help but wonder if “enough” hasn’t already become “too much”? And when should our responsibility to help out be throttled back? I wish I knew, but I do believe that this is a discussion we need to have, and soon.
