The latest step in a pattern of underspending on lower income housing needs by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is his plan to subtract $600 million from housing programs to pay for an enormous expansion of the State Port at Gulfport.
This proposal, coming little more than a week after the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina has aroused strong opposition from advocacy groups.
Governor Barbour emphasizes his Katrina record in his re-election ads, but this trend has raised serious questions ahead of the first gubernatorial debate in Biloxi next Thursday.
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The $600 million Governor Barbour diverted is not "surplus" money because the housing recovery is far from complete. As of the second anniversary Mississippi still had 17,000 households in trailers, and unknown numbers of others doubled up with family or friends. There are substantial unmet needs both for wind-damaged Mississippi homeowners (who are ineligible for grants, unlike their Lousiana counterparts) and for displaced renters. Any unspent money under existing home grant programs needs to be devoted to meeting these housing needs.
Six hundred million is a ton of money to pour into expansion of a port that was worth $127 million prior to Katrina, that suffered $50 million in damage from Katrina, and that employed 2,000 people (10% at low-mod job wages). Last year, Senator Cochran attempted to include $750 million in the second Katrina recovery appropriation to relocate the CSX railway, but this was too much for the GOP led Congress. Spending nearly this much to expand the State Port ought not be done with funds still needed to complete the affordable housing recovery.
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