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I'm waiting to see this discussed on BayouBuzz.com and NOLA.com (Times-Picayune). I know that there is a targeted effort to support homeowners who actually live in the houses that will be rebuilt and that a significant motivating factor in passing the legislative appropriation was, at least officially, to bail out homeowners who had flood insurance but received word from their insurance companies that the Katrina deluge was a "hurricane storm surge," which is something different than a "flood." But forget the official justification for the appropriation, the real motivation behind it was to bail out the insurance companies, who would have to come up with billions for flood insurance settlements without this legislation.

Given that payments are scheduled for insurance policy holders who did not receive settlements from their insurers, I doubt the suit described in the article above will have much merit before the court because no judge is going to try to stick the insurance companies with the bill for Katrina to provide money for renters who were not paying insurance premiums in the first place. No way that will happen!

And the real bottom line here is that unless some way is found to "fund" the return of some 150,000 or so relocated African-Americans who will not be able to return to New Orleans on their own, the entire political landscape of Louisiana politics will change significantly. That is why the NAACP is in the mix here.

This is a follow-up to my previous post.

I meant to mention in my last paragraph that there is a problem of logic in the suit described in the article. Since renters did not own their own homes, the "payments" described in the legislation would go to landlords, most of whom do not fall within the category of "low to moderate income" earners. Those filing the suit are arguing for the transfer of larger amounts of the appropriation settlement to wealthier landlords who own rental property, by calling it "assistance to the poor." It's not going to stand up in court. Under the law the designation of "low to moderate income" that is supposed to apply to recepients of 50% of the funds is a categorization that affixes to those who actually receive the money for rebuilding homes, i.e. "landlords," not the people who live in the houses.