peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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 Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 4:59 pm Post subject: more aid for the middle class in the US |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090901848.html
Red Cross paying hotel bills for thousands
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LAFAYETTE, La., Sept. 9 -- In a massive, costly and little-noticed effort to calm a housing catastrophe that reaches from Florida to Texas, the American Red Cross has quietly created a program that it says is now picking up hotel bills for at least 57,000 people who fled Hurricane Katrina. Room charges are being paid out of the $503 million that the Red Cross has collected so far for hurricane relief.
The program began early this week, when several thousand hotels and motels in and around the Gulf Coast area were notified by the Red Cross that registered guests who can show that they lived in 256 storm-affected Zip codes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would be eligible to have their unpaid room charges covered by the Red Cross.
The program does not require guests to prove financial need, although it does ask hotel managers to "please be judicious as you participate with us in this program."
Though the free lodging is available to anyone who had fled Katrina, including the more than 180,000 people who the federal government says are in shelters, most of those who have taken advantage of the program are "those who had the resources and transportation to evacuate themselves," said Stacey Grissom, a spokeswoman in Washington for the Red Cross. |
While I'm sure there are lots of lower middle class people that could use the help, should this be a priority? Why aren't hotel chains at least offering some sort of discount to these people? |
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