Link:
We are meeting tomorrow in South Boston at 3pm to talk about long-termhousing solutions for Katrina victims and bringing some of them to thenortheast.
…We plan to contact churches, businesses, and individuals across thestate and even New England, and then to continue to support thesepeople and their host families with a continuing stream of donations offood, goods, and money.
… If you can make the meeting tomorrow, it will be at the Technology Center at 359 Columbus Avenue, Boston, MA (map here) at 3pm tomorrow, Sunday, Sept 4th.
My thoughts: I suspect that there are more practical places for the homeless to go than all the way up here. It would be more practical for them to go to MO, AR, TX, etc. than to come all the way here. But this is a good start to think about coordinating a local response, and being useful however we can to hosts and homeless in those states.
I think I heard something about MN offering to bus and house people – if they can do it, so can we. :)The real barrier is transportation. But that’s a one-time cost – and if peace groups can rent buses to go down to DC, we can rent a couple to come up here. Plus people in the Gulf may have connections to NE, and feel comfortable coming up here. It’ll be their choice, of course, but I think every state in the union is going to have to absorb the displaced because of the school system problem, getting jobs, etc.The housing issue will be a terribly long-term one. I don’t think people realize the scale and length of this thing.But if we figure out, through research, that a coalition would be better use putting its fundraising and donations to something other than longterm housing, great, we will do that. Whatever is the most help. Obviously this is all very preliminary – we have many people and groups to contact and conspire with first.
Boston Globe: