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Compiled by ADAPT
Immediate impact on survivors with disabilities;
While nursing homes and other institutional settings were an understandable evacuation alternative as a first response, they are no more appropriate for the long term than are the shelters like the Astrodome. Both need to be short term so people can resume/rebuild lives in the community as quickly as possible.
In the evacuation process, people with disabilities were separated from their wheelchairs and walkers, canes and service dogs, caretakers and family members. As a result many people ended up being sent to nursing homes because they were perceived to need more assistance than they typically do. It is imperative to reunite people with family members and caregivers and service animals, and to replace their assistive equipment so they can resume/rebuild their lives in the community as quickly as possible.
People with disabilities have been grossly undercounted and unnoticed because many bypassed shelters when they were immediately sent to nursing homes, institutions and/or hospitals. These institutional settings, especially those spread across the country, are not being served by the FEMA Super Service Centers. It is imperative that an accurate accounting occur to identify all the people with disabilities of all ages who were temporarily sent to nursing homes in Louisiana and many other states, and that an inventory of their needs be compiled.
Service coordination and brokering is essential to bridge the gap between the persons with disabilities rendered homeless by Katrina and the accessible homes, transportation, services and supports they need to resume/rebuild their lives in the community as quickly as possible. Centers for Independent Living, local Arcs and People First groups, and other community-based disability organizations are experts on people with disabilities and their service and support needs. Funding them to provide service coordination/brokering for Katrina survivors would be cost effective, provide competent, knowledgeable assistance, and prevent the need to "re-invent the wheel."
Longer term impact on entire national disability community;
The needs, services and supports of poor people with disabilities must not be pitted against the needs, services and supports of the Katrina survivors. Policy formulated to assist survivors of Katrina should not provide a stop-gap bandaid solution to a gaping wound in the current disability service system. Reforming the system to heal the wound for ALL Americans will prevent the need for similar stop-gap initiatives in the future. People with disabilities and other poor people have been waiting for as long as 10 years in some states for affordable/accessible/HUD subsidized housing. Over and over, they have been told "there is no housing."
In the aftermath of Katrina, great stocks of affordable/HUD subsidized housing suddenly materialized. Like those who, thankfully, survived Katrina, poor people with disabilities also need homes, and want to end their homelessness. HUD, Congress and the President must find ways to help Katrina survivors that don't decimate the already critical lack of resources available to poor people with disabilities.
Legislation just proposed in the Senate provides that the Medicaid dollars paying for disabled Katrina survivors in nursing homes and institutions would follow them, assisting them to return to their former or new communities, and not be forced to remain in the nursing homes and other institutions. This enlightened common-sense solution should be available to ALL persons with disabilities, being exactly what people with disabilities have been advocating for the past 25 years. In addition, when this legislation passes, it should assure that people with disabilities in the states, who have again been waiting for years for funding that will allow them to return to or remain in their own homes and communities, will not be pushed to the back of the line by the Katrina survivors in need. As hard and tirelessly as FEMA and the Red Cross worked in this unprecedented national disaster, Katrina exposed the frightening lack of knowledge and experience of both agencies when it comes to people with disabilities, the systems that serve them, and the critical need for service co-ordination/brokering in order to assure that people with disabilities are not left behind to die, or left unserved when the crisis is over. Comprehensive and long-term planning efforts must be adequately funded and need to meaningfully involve people with disabilities so that the result will be an expert national network that can mobilize immediately to see to the very particular and specific needs of persons with disabilities in disaster situations. In order to assure quality outcomes, the federal government must invest in a quality process.
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