Mintz Levin Files Suit Against HUD on Behalf of Mississippi Residents Still Homeless Three Years After Katrina
12/10/2008
Improper Diversion of Nearly $600 Million of Hurricane Recovery Funds To Port Project at Issue
Boston, MA - On behalf of the Mississippi State Conference NAACP, Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center, and several individual residents from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo, P.C. has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) over the diversion of Katrina-related housing dollars.
When Congress appropriated more than $5 billion in hurricane-relief aid to the State of Mississippi, it required that at least half of the funds be used to benefit low and moderate-income people, in keeping with the purposes of the federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. CDBG expenditures must also conform with the federal Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Act. To date, however, only 13% of Mississippi's emergency CDBG funds have been directed to activities that might benefit the affected region's poorer residents. The lawsuit asks the Court to require HUD to exercise its authority to disapprove Mississippi's plan to spend almost $600 million of CDBG funds on a project that would expand the Port of Gulfport, but would provide no housing and precious few jobs for the poorer residents of the State's Gulf Coast.
"Three years after the worst natural disaster in our country's history there are still people living in trailers because there is no where for them to go. It was HUD's responsibility to correctly direct federal dollars to providing affordable housing for some of the areas most vulnerable citizens. Instead, they gave $600 million dollars to the state for an economic development project that the State had been planning years before the hurricane hit -- it's simply wrong," said James Wodarski, a Member of Mintz Levin's Litigation practice.
"Through this lawsuit, we intend to enforce HUD's duty to ensure there will be housing choice for the thousands of households that Mississippi does not want to help," said Reilly Morse, Mississippi Center for Justice senior attorney. "The diversion of funds intended to rebuild safe, affordable housing for low-income, elderly and disabled people has shattered the promise of making affordable housing the priority of this recovery effort."
"Though the storm did not intentionally discriminate, the damage did reveal the impact of decades-long discrimination against poor, African American people who were already living in substandard housing," said Derrick Johnson, State President of Mississippi NAACP and one of the plaintiffs in the case. "For the first time in our state's history, we have the resources to right this wrong. It is a matter of priorities. Now is not the time to pull the carpet back over the ugly stain of segregation."
Because the lawsuit alleges a violation of duties imposed by federal law, the complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Attorneys from Mintz Levin in conjunction with the Mississippi Center for Justice and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law are representing the plaintiffs pro bono.
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