Eighteen Months After Katrina Feeding Eighteen Thousand Families Each Month in One Neighborhood in New Orleans - The Right to Return Eighteen Months after Katrina

By Bill Quigley

02/26/07 "ICH" -- - Each morning, Debra South Jones drives 120 miles into New Orleans to cook and serve over 300 hot free meals each day to people in New Orleans East, where she lived until Katrina took her home. Ms. Jones and several volunteers also distribute groceries to 18,000 families a month through their group, Just the Right Attitude. Who comes for food? "Most of the people are working on their own houses because they can't afford contractors," Ms. Jones said. "They are living in their gutted-out houses with no electricity."

Why do thousands of people need food and why are people living in gutted-out houses with no electricity? Look at New Orleans eighteen months after Katrina and you will realize why it is so difficult for people to exercise the human right to return to their homes.

Half the homes in New Orleans still do not have electricity. Eighteen months after Katrina, a third of a million people in the New Orleans metro area have not returned.

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