Mitch Landrieu: “As the Gulf Coast recovers from Katrina and Rita, rebuilding our housing remains the key to our recovery. I have talked…”

“As the Gulf Coast recovers from Katrina and Rita, rebuilding our housing remains the key to our recovery. I have talked about this issue on this floor before. We need housing so that our citizens have a place to live while they rebuild our businesses, restore our infrastructure, and renew our communities. Congress and the President responded by making billions of dollars available to us and we are grateful for this assistance. I am proud to say that this assistance is working. Every time I go home I see signs of improvement. They are often small: a gas station or a store reopening on a corner; children playing on a street where no one lived only a few months before. I wish I could say that these signs are everywhere, but they are not. Some parts of New Orleans are doing well, some are not. We knew from the start that recovery would take longer in some areas than in others; and we all knew that nothing would happen overnight. America has never rebuilt a city of 500,000 people before. Our experience in Louisiana and in the Gulf has taught us some valuable lessons about postcatastrophe rebuilding and recovery. We have learned about the shortcomings of government programs at FEMA, the Small Business Administration, and other agencies.”