news from the home state
Bye, Trent! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Biloxi's Recovery Shows Divide
While Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has hailed the casino openings as a harbinger of Mississippi's resurgence and developers have proposed more than $1 billion in beachfront condos and hotels for tourists, fewer than one in 10 of the thousands of single-family houses destroyed in Biloxi are being rebuilt, according to city permit records. More than 10,000 displaced families still live in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
While getting money for lower-income residents to rebuild or for the construction of affordable rental units is like pulling teeth (if you can manage it at all -- according to this article, the state argued at first that bailing out homeowners without flood insurance would just encourage them to forgo it in the future), Haley Barbour wants to divert $600 million in federal housing aid to fund an expansion of the Port of Gulfport, including creating an "upscale tourist village" with hotels, condos, restaurants and casinos. Because they claim that the already-funded programs are adequate to meet the housing needs of their displaced residents. Clearly.
Biloxi's Recovery Shows Divide
While Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has hailed the casino openings as a harbinger of Mississippi's resurgence and developers have proposed more than $1 billion in beachfront condos and hotels for tourists, fewer than one in 10 of the thousands of single-family houses destroyed in Biloxi are being rebuilt, according to city permit records. More than 10,000 displaced families still live in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
While getting money for lower-income residents to rebuild or for the construction of affordable rental units is like pulling teeth (if you can manage it at all -- according to this article, the state argued at first that bailing out homeowners without flood insurance would just encourage them to forgo it in the future), Haley Barbour wants to divert $600 million in federal housing aid to fund an expansion of the Port of Gulfport, including creating an "upscale tourist village" with hotels, condos, restaurants and casinos. Because they claim that the already-funded programs are adequate to meet the housing needs of their displaced residents. Clearly.