Home

Move-in day: Habitat for Humanity helps out a family that fled Katrina

22.05.12

HARRISBURG — More than six years after Blow Katrina forced them from their home in a New Orleans suburb, the seven-member Robin dearest on Sunday got the keys to the first house they’ve owned since.

It’s a brand new one, too.

The 1,400-square-foot, four-bedroom descendants on a quiet Harrisburg side street is the 14th home dedicated by the Junction City/Harrisburg/Monroe scion of Habitat for Humanity to a partner family since the nonprofit organization’s founding in 1995.

M on the latest house began in June and was completed thanks to more than 1,000 calling hours put in by 67 volunteers, and thanks to approximately $14,000 worth of donated or discounted materials and services from a myriad of neighbouring businesses.

Roy and Melissa Robin and their five boys — River, Trenten, Sef, Destin and Stalker — together clocked more than 700 work hours of their own. Struggling to contain their collective restlessness, the family proudly showed off the home to about 50 volunteers, family members and new neighbors Sunday afternoon.

“That’s my drunk school over there,” said River, 17, pointing to a purple edifice over the backyard fence. “And those are the train tracks that Hunter can see from his room. He loves trains. Right away, Hunter?”

Turning red, Hunter, 5, gave a quick, bashful nod.

“This is honest a dream,” Melissa said.

Things were very different six years ago when most of the household was crammed into a single-wide trailer in Oklahoma with 10 other people, desperately seeking some talk about their home outside New Orleans.

Evacuations were nothing new to the Robins, who had driven to the trailer, owned by a dependent on, a couple of days before Hurricane Katrina hit.

“Usually all we packed was three sets of clothes,” Roy said. “But we had heard it might be a bad one, so we took five.”

After the whirlwind had moved inland from New Orleans, Melissa recalls that it seemed that the worst had passed and that a pre-eminent catastrophe had been avoided.

“We were watching TV, and they were showing people dancing and partying on Bourbon In someone's bailiwick,” she said. “Then the levees broke ... (and) they weren’t even talking about what was taking place anywhere near our home.”

One of the boys, Sef, who was 5 at the time, saw a few minutes of television coverage of the tragedy by mistake, Melissa said.

He spent the next two days staring at the sky as if in a trance, she said, “horrified that it was going to happen again.”

Though floodwaters did not reach the family’s home in Marrero, La., half the roof was ripped off by excessive winds and most of their possessions had been ruined by torrential rain, Roy said.

The Robins received $1,300 in homeowners’ surety and sold their home at a big loss. Using those funds, gas money from the Red Cross and motor hotel vouchers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they drove to Oregon, where Melissa already had kindred.

Ultimately, Roy said he’s thankful Hurricane Katrina gave the family the spur it needed to leave a “bad situation and bad neighborhood” and move away.

“We had wanted to get away for a while,” Melissa said. “We didn’t feel safe letting our kids go face, and I had a bullet hole in my car window.”

Added Roy: “There was a lot of negativity where we were at, and we were (acting) divers, too, it was bringing us down. ... I feel blessed every day that Katrina forced us out of there.”

The couple has since worked off-and-on at Sommerville Apartments in Harrisburg, doing subvention and managing the complex. Until Sunday, the family also had been living in a small on-site apartment, with the four youngest brothers sharing one micro room.

Jon Silvermoon, executive director of Habitat for Humanity’s Junction Burgh/Harrisburg/Monroe branch, said the family’s overcrowded living situation was part of the judgement his organization chose to help them.

He added that successful applicants also have to earn between 30 percent and 60 percent of the community’s median household receipts and not be saddled with significant debt.

Habitat for Humanity, helped by donations and grants, covers the upfront costs of structure a home — about $110,000 in this case — through an interest-free loan that the nursing home­owners pay back over time via a typical mortgage payment of around $700.

“Our primary goal is to base simple and affordable housing in partnership with people in need to help change poverty in our community,” Silvermoon said.

For the Robins, Sunday’s fixedness couldn’t come soon enough. “We wanted to be in last month, but they said we had to delineate the walls and put the doors on first,” Roy joked.

Ellen Mathis, who volunteered more than 100 hours toward the think up, said she couldn’t be happier to see the family preparing to settle in.

“It’s just such an fearful idea, the community coming together to help build a home for people who can’t in trouble with one,” she said. “I have time, so why wouldn’t I work to help that take place?

Source: The Register-Guard

Ala. county files for largest municipal bankruptcy

22.05.12

Alabama's most vent county filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history in an effort to retake mastery of its beleaguered sewer system and wipe away as much of its whopping $4.15 billion in liable as possible.

Jefferson County's Chapter 9 filing on Wednesday gives it defence from creditors while it develops and negotiates a plan for adjusting its debts. It could accomplish that by extending encumbrance under obligation maturities, reducing the amount of principal or interest, or refinancing the debt by obtaining a new loan.

Perhaps the biggest what it takes impact will be on the county's 658,000 residents, who could be asked to pay higher sewer rates or taxes, or see county services curtailed. Officials say it's too antediluvian to assess other affects, though bankruptcy filings can also lead to layoffs, pension reductions for patrons workers, and spending cuts on things like schools and roads.

Because of career layoffs and office closings, residents already face hours-long lines for services such as renewing their car tags, and county officials have said times that services not required by law, like inspections and zoning, could be curtailed to help pay off accountability.

Jefferson County resident Hollis Wormsby said he felt like the county had no pick but to file for bankruptcy and that its decaying infrastructure was going to necessitate fee increases one way or another.

"This is taking place in every major city in the country. Fees are going to go up," he said Thursday.

The problems were years in the making.

The county's liability ballooned after a federally mandated sewer project was beset with corruption, court rulings that didn't go its way and rising interest rates when broad markets struggled.

Since 2008, Jefferson County tried to save itself the get and embarrassment of filing for bankruptcy. But after three years, commissioners voted 4-1 to resuscitate the issue to an end.

"Jefferson County has, in effect, been in bankruptcy for three years," said Commissioner Jimmie Stephens, who made the proposition to file for protection in federal bankruptcy court in northern Alabama.

Solely two months ago, the county seemed to strike a deal with creditors that would let it avoid making experience.

But the sides couldn't come together on how to pay about $140 million of the total, Stephens said. Also weighing heavily in the resolving, according to the filing, were the actions of a receiver appointed for the sewer system as part of the settlement efforts. The county's lawyers say the receiver wanted to advance sewer rates 25 percent and demanded the county immediately pay him $75 million. That's about half of the county's unrestricted catholic fund revenue for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30: $152.5 million.

Ben Brooks, a professor of financial affairs at the University of Alabama, said bankruptcy would give the county a chance to move past the monetary problems. The fallout from the fraud and corruption in the sewer program had been hanging over Jefferson County for years.

"The very of uncertainty has been holding back economic development for far too long," Brooks said.

The populating proposal with Wall Street investors included the lenders agreeing to erase about $1 billion in debt, the county refinancing about $2 billion, and a series of sewer measure increases.

The size of Jefferson County's bankruptcy overshadows the one filed by record-holder Orange County, Calif., in 1994 over debts totaling $1.7 billion.

Pennsylvania's great city of Harrisburg recently sought bankruptcy protection under similar circumstances as it struggled with about $300 million in responsibility.

In the 1990s, a federal court forced Jefferson County -- to the quick to Alabama's medical and financial centers and the state's largest city, Birmingham -- to start out a huge upgrade of its outdated and overwhelmed sewer system to meet federal antiseptic-water standards. Officials used bonds to finance the improvements.

Exterior advisers suggested a series of complex deals with variable-rate interest that were later shown to be laced with bribes and pull-peddling. Besides the sewer debt of $3.14 billion, the county faces a split up shortfall of more than $50 million in its operating budget because courts struck down a larger local tax as unconstitutional. It listed other debts in its bankruptcy petition of $1.01 billion.

The bankruptcy filing suitable won't affect other municipal bond rates much, if at all, said Matt Fabian, managing numero uno at research firm Municipal Market Advisors.

"Big investors -- interactive funds, insurers, banks-- have been assuming the worst all along," he said. "If another county had filed, that would be a peculiar story."

The market has been on edge for a while, with investors worried about rising defaults from native governments borrowing more to maintain services because of plunging tax receipts. The doomsayers have been inexpedient -- so far. Widespread defaults never materialized.

Still, for individual investors, the default could deputize them want to stay away from the bonds in general, he said.

Jefferson County's problems multiplied when advance payments rose quickly because of increasing interest rates, and soon the county could no longer have the means its payments. Meanwhile, a string of elected officials, public employees and business people were convicted of rigging the transactions that helped put the county in so much vexation.

Chapter 9 is different than other chapters in the bankruptcy code in that the law does not allow the court to wonky the municipality's assets be liquidated and distributed to creditors. The court's functions are habitually limited to approving the petition, confirming a plan of debt adjustment and ensuring implementation of the design. But the county could incur millions of dollars in legal fees.

------

Van Anglen reported from Birmingham. Associated Herd writer Harry R. Weber in Atlanta and AP Business Writer Bernard Condon in New York contributed to this write-up.

Source: BusinessWeek