Katrina Aid Today assists more than 108,000 Hurricane Katrina survivors

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Katrina Aid Today has assisted 40,000 families to date with the value of services the program’s partners have provided estimated at more than $20 million, according to a report on the progress of Katrina Aid Today.

“Reaching 108,000 people is a great milestone for us,” said Jim Cox, executive director of Katrina Aid Today. “But Katrina-affected families still need help, and we are expanding our outreach efforts across the country.”

Survivors who continue to need the most help are people whom the storm displaced from their homes, according to the report. Sixty-year-old Frances Roppolo, who relocated to Denver after the storm, is one example of how the Katrina Aid Today program is helping people recover from the storm. Her home in St. Bernard Parish, La., was flooded with 15 feet of water, sewage and waste from a nearby oil refinery for about three weeks. When the water finally receded everything in the parish was contaminated.

“We had nothing and no place to go home to,” she said, of her decision to move to Denver. “We got here and found an apartment, but we didn’t have anything else.”

Soon after relocating to Denver she reached out to Lutheran Family Services of Denver and was assigned a case manager, Nija Gilman. Lutheran Family Services is just one of 134 programs in 31 states that make up the Katrina Aid Today consortium.

Ms. Gilman helped Ms. Roppolo with rental assistance and assisted her in signing up for a Fannie Mae Foundation home. Fannie Mae Foundation has donated houses around the country. Qualifying families can live rent-free in those homes for 18 months.

Ms. Roppolo moved into her Fannie Mae house this past fall.

Katrina Aid Today plans to assist about 60,000 more Katrina-affected families over the next year, and is funded through a $66 million grant to United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) and monitored by FEMA.

Katrina Aid Today is a project of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). UMCOR is the humanitarian relief and development agency of the United Methodist Church, a worldwide denomination. Since 1940, UMCOR has provided practical support to survivors of natural and civil disasters to alleviate human suffering, without regard to a survivor’s religion, race, gender or national origin.