NPACH Hurricane Oral History Project

The following interviews were conducted with the support and assistance of the Congressional Hunger Center and the Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellows Program. We invite you to listen to these audio clips and read their accompanying profiles and gain a deeper understanding of the difficult challenges facing those who have been forced to abandon their homes due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This project is ongoing and will be updated on a regular basis. Please contact NPACH via e-mail at info@npach.org for further information.

Patrick Trahan, Press Secretary to The Mayor, City of Houston - 18 November, 2005
To date, the Houston/Harris County Joint Hurricane Housing Task Force has placed approximately 100,000 hurricane victims in 29,627 housing units.
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Anthony Love, President & CEO, Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County - 28 October, 2005
“The Coalition for the Homeless is an educating, advocating, and coordinating body. Advocacy is the central component in terms of going out and advocating for the needs and the issues surrounding homelessness...Coordinating is a part of it because we understand that to effectively end homelessness it would have to be a coordinated effort. No one body or entity would be able to do it by itself. We work with those agencies that provide services to people who are homeless and we try to be the body that coordinates that.”
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Tyrone Evans, Director, Bonita Street House of Hope, Houston - 9 October, 2005
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Bonita House had phased out all of its Bonita street units and was preparing to sell the facility due to financial constraints. After Katrina struck, Bonita House immediately opened the units to hurricane victims. As families move out of Bonita House, new families continually move in; since it began taking in hurricane victims, Bonita House has housed about 80 residents at a time. Bonita House is also matching families on its property with sponsors across the country that are willing to help hurricane victims with living expenses for six months.
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Danielle Celius, Katrina Survivor and Bonita House Guest - 9 October, 2005
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Bryan Greene, President and CEO, Houston Food Bank - 25 October, 2005
“The Houston Food Bank is an America’s Second Harvest Food Bank. We receive mostly surplus, donated food and we distribute it through a network of charities serving 18 counties around the Houston area. Last year we distributed over 30 million pounds of food to approximately 400 charities. These charities range from soup kitchens, shelters, programs for disadvantaged children, rehabilitation programs, church-sponsored pantries, low income day-care centers, any kind of program that uses food...most of them oriented on solving hunger..."

(Note: As of October 25th, the Houston Food Bank was still operating at double its normal output. In order to better serve the needs of hurricane evacuees and survivors, as well as to meet the needs of the rest of the Houston community, the Food Bank expects that it will need to maintain this elevated output.)
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