January 23, 2006VOL. 44, NO. 2Oakland, CA

East Bay charities see need for long-term care
for impoverished, struggling Katrina evacuees

By Barbara Erickson
Associate editor

As Gulf Coast evacuees continue to search for housing and jobs in the Bay Area, Catholic Charities of the East Bay and other faith-based groups are joining hands to offer them hope for the future.

“They’re just trying to survive,” Adam See, CCEB director of marketing and development, said of the neediest evacuees, “and this takes a substantial amount of money in the Bay Area.”
But the good news, he said, is the collaborative effort to provide support.

CCEB has joined with Acts Full Gospel Church, Allen Temple Baptist Church and Evergreen Baptist Church, all of Oakland; Lutheran Social Services, the Red Cross, United Way, the San Francisco Foundation, Eden Information and Referral and other groups to identify needs and share responsibility for the evacuees’ long-term recovery.

“You have groups coming to the table, saying, ‘These are the assets we have,’” See said. “So there is less replication, more cooperation.” He hopes that bonds forged among the organizations will continue after the need for Katrina support has ended, in order to address larger issues, such as crime and poverty.

For now, the long-term care committee, known as KARE (Katrina Assistance Recovery Effort) is giving its attention to the neediest Gulf Coast families. Those with resources are able to “pull them together and begin to rebuild their lives,” said Millie Burns, CCEB director of planning and program development. But those without savings or other assets “have lost everything, including the community network which was critical in scratching out a living in the South.”

It is these families who need help over many months, and their list of requirements is long – education and training, reuniting with loved ones, deciding where to settle, finding permanent housing and jobs. Many also need medical and psychological care, furniture and household items, food, and help with transportation costs.

Eighty families are still in East Bay hotel rooms, See said, down from 438 at the end of November. The ones still remaining need the most help, he said, and their situation is made worse by their sense of alienation in a new environment.

“They talk about the Bay Area as if it’s a foreign county,” he said, with different customs, foods and, especially, higher costs.

Catholic Charities is providing case management for the families who still lack housing or jobs, and with funding from the United Methodist Committee on Relief, CCEB is hiring two full-time and one half-time managers and supporting four volunteers to do this work.

Case managers interview evacuees, assess their needs, make referrals and try to maintain contact with the client families. They often make phone calls on behalf of clients in search of housing or other support, and if necessary, they make home visits.

These visits can reveal needs the aid agencies were not aware of. Juanita Hill, a volunteer with Acts Full Gospel Church and co-chair of KARE, said she discovered that residents of one Oakland hotel were going hungry when she saw “people coming in and eating cereal in the afternoon.”

The owner was putting out breakfast items, like bagels and doughnuts, because the evacuees told him they were hungry. “We started taking down soups and stuff they could eat,” Hill said, and the church gave each adult $25. It is hardest for hotel residents, she said, who have to rely on fast food.

Acts Full Gospel has been providing food, clothing and other necessities ever since the hurricane struck. The pastor, Bishop Bob Jackson, called Oakland pastors together to do a fund raiser, Hill said, and amassed $210,000, which was distributed to several groups, including CCEB.

The church sent truckloads of donated goods to the Gulf Coast, and it now maintains a warehouse of items in East Oakland. “We have food and clothing and small appliances,” Hill said. When a family finds housing, Acts Full Gospel delivers a 30-day supply of food to their doorstep.

Lutheran Social Services of Northern California, also a member of KARE, has taken on the role of fiscal agent for the group and provides administrative support. “The bills are paid through us,” said Barbara Droher Kline, Lutheran Social Services president.

Kline works with a national organization, Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters, that sets up groups like KARE to provide support after disasters. The participating groups meet quarterly to prepare for just such events as Katrina, and Kline said she hopes the influx of evacuees and the response from churches will help “spread this model around.”

“It’s boring to come to a meeting four times a year when there isn’t a disaster,” she said. “This may convince people it’s necessary.”

Dick Eskes, who has been a VOAD volunteer for 20 years, said the group allows emergency response groups, such as FEMA and the Red Cross, to react to the initial situation, and then comes in to form local committees, such as KARE, “to take care of unmet needs.”

The Katrina response has been different, he said, because the needy families are from outside the area, and local members have not been affected, as they were, for instance, during the Loma Prieta earthquake and the Oakland Hills fire.

Eskes and Kline also said one of the major efforts for Catholic Charities and other groups during this phase of recovery is to track down elusive clients. “They landed where they could initially,” Kline said, and then many found other quarters and failed to notify case workers.

This and uncertainty about funding sources for various groups has created some confusion in the long-term relief effort, she said.

Out of the 18,000 evacuees who came to California, Eskes said, half had incomes of less than $15,000 a year, and 60 percent don’t want to return home. This means many will need help for many months to come, and KARE is planning to stay in business for up to two years.

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead,” said Kline. “It will be a good collaboration once we iron out the confusion.”

Aid for Katrina relief
The eighth grade students at Holy Rosary School in Antioch gather for a photo after presenting a check for $1500 to Catholic Charities of the East Bay to help the agency with its aid to Katrina evacuees. The students raised the funds in one week. Receiving the donation was Adam See, CCEB director of development and public policy (eighth from right).

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