On October 1, 2006 Louisiana voters voted to reform the ten southeast Louisiana boards that had authority over the levees into two boards, one for beach bank of the Mississippi River.
Among the legislation signed into law following Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma to aid the needy are the following bills:
The Fiscal Year 2006 Defense appropriations bill allocated $1.6 billion in assistance to public, private and religious schools in the region, with $750 million going to help damaged schools reopen, $645 million to reimburse schools hosting Katrina evacuees and $200 million to aid in rebuilding colleges on the Gulf Coast.
In September 2005, Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) introduced a bill that would have expanded Medicaid to anyone in need who had lived in a state hit by Katrina, and would have promised full federal funding for those states’ Medicaid programs.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that 1 million homes were damaged by Hurricane Katrina; roughly 1/3 of those homes were destroyed or severely damaged and of 70% of the homes that were destroyed or severely damaged were owned or rented by low-income people and families.
Read more about how various orders of government have responded to the challenges of the crisis, from housing to reconstruction, to infrastructure.
For much of Louisiana's history, there has been a disparity between how much profit Louisiana receives from off-shore drilling and how much profit other states (i.e. Florida and California) receive.
Part of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina was due to the receding wetlands.
The Gulf Coast is still in need of volunteers. Since the hurricane season of 2005 many organizations have acted to help those in need in the area. Below is a list of organizations accepting individual volunteers and/or groups for a variety of relief efforts. Each organization has its own criteria regarding housing, age limits, length of service and required skills. At the bottom of this page you will find a list of sample itineraries of congregational volunteer trips to the region.
