UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Features
The Last Guard: United Methodists stay with toughest Katrina cases Robin Russell, Feb 26, 2010
UMR PHOTO BY ART RUSSELL/ARRMEDIA.COM
One of many damaged homes in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. United Methodist volunteer help is the "last guard" doing relief work in the area.
By Robin Russell Managing Editor
NEW ORLEANS—As the recovery work from Hurricane Katrina drags on into its fifth year, most relief money and volunteer help has shifted from places like New Orleans to more media-saturated, current disaster regions like quake-affected Haiti.
Many people even find it hard to imagine that post-Katrina recovery work is still taking place.
The most destitute families in Louisiana and other hurricane-affected regions, however, have yet to receive help: Some 2,500 family units in New Orleans and surrounding areas still live in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); others have not yet returned from nearby states where they fled to escape rising floodwaters. Entire blocks of houses in New Orleans’ impoverished neighborhoods are still boarded up in disrepair.
A few die-hard United Methodist volunteers, however, have not yet given up on “the least, the last and the lost” hit hard in 2005 by back-to-back hurricanes Katrina and Rita. United Methodists, in fact, are the last guard of post-Katrina recovery work.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) and the Louisiana Conference of the UMC Disaster Response Ministry (LADRM), a 501 (c) (3) organization that is affiliated with the Louisiana Conference, have held their ground, sticking it out with the most difficult recovery cases, even as most charitable organizations have run out of funds or moved on to other pressing needs.
Staff and volunteers are now helping Louisiana residents who have fallen through the cracks: the elderly and the disabled, those without flood insurance and those living paycheck to paycheck who can’t afford to fix up their own homes. Not to mention unfortunate homeowners ripped off by unscrupulous contractors who disappear after cashing insurance checks.
“Methodists are the last ones standing,” says the Rev. Darryl Tate, the LADRM’s executive director. “I’d heard that before, but now have first-hand experience with it.”
Steady funding
Part of it is UMCOR’s long-term commitment to recovery work that goes beyond providing immediate relief in disasters. With its motto of being “the first to move in, the last to leave,” the denomination’s humanitarian aid agency is known as the “guru” of case management, working with family units until they are back in their homes. After Hurricane Katrina drove more than 2 million people from their Gulf Coast homes, federal and state agencies tapped UMCOR to help oversee case management for affected families.
In Louisiana, UMCOR received the same grants as the United Way. Mr. Tate estimates that two-thirds of the State of Louisiana has benefited from United Methodist assistance, either through case management or construction help.
Because UMCOR is in it for the long haul, the agency practices good stewardship. UMCOR’s funding of the LADRM has remained steady, thanks to donations from throughout the connection in response to an appeal from Bishop William Hutchinson and grants from FEMA and the State of Louisiana. Other charitable groups, meanwhile, doled out their biggest chunks in the months immediately after Katrina struck.
“We’ve been very frugal with our money. That’s why we’re still helping,” Mr. Tate said.
Eighty-one cents of every dollar that the United Methodist Church has given to the Louisiana Conference has gone to client services, including case management and construction work, with only 19 cents per dollar toward administrative costs. “For recovery work, that is real good,” Mr. Tate said.
Bishop Hutchinson selected Mr. Tate, who had been displaced when his church was damaged by Katrina, to run the ministry. At its height, Mr. Tate managed 76 employees—96 with case management workers—and a $7 million budget, the same as the whole Louisiana Conference.
United Methodist help in New Orleans is all the more remarkable since the denomination is well in the minority in a mostly Catholic city. Before Katrina forced evacuations, about 10,000 United Methodists called New Orleans home; about 6,000 to 7,000 have returned. Overall, some 336,644 residents have returned to the city, about two-thirds of its pre-Katrina population, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.
United Methodists also have been key players in organizing interfaith disaster response teams, working alongside Lutheran and Catholic charity organizations. “Disaster recovery broke the denominational walls down,” Mr. Tate said. “We’re like brothers and sisters.”
Volunteer help from United Methodists has been steady over the five years of recovery effort. As of December 2009, more than 70,000 volunteers from every state and annual conference in the UMC, as well as 33 countries worldwide, have helped out.
They have given more than 3 million volunteer hours, which represents $54 million of in-kind free labor. Mr. Tate estimates the direct economic development impact in Louisiana from the UMC to be about $95 million from putting people to work, buying materials, getting people’s homes rebuilt.
Great need
In New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, the recovery and rebuilding can feel like a drop in the bucket. In any given block, rebuilt houses are surrounded by more that are still boarded up and marked with first-response numbers.
Project managers say that bodies—actually skeletons now—are still being recovered from houses that have been untouched since Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. Breaches in drainage canal levees left most of New Orleans flooded in 10 to 15 feet of water that took weeks to drain.
“We’re handling the most difficult cases now,” Mr. Tate said. “The only money left at the table is ours.”
Before Katrina, UMCOR money could only go to humanitarian aid. But because so many churches were affected, General Conference and UMCOR’s board of directors were able to change that directive so that when bishops issue an appeal, 10 percent of funds raised can go to churches.
“For us here in Louisiana, that was a great need,” Mr. Tate said. “We lost 32 churches in the city of New Orleans. Some were totally destroyed; most were under-insured. The problem was, if the hurricane did the damage—tornadoes, wind or hail—you had insurance. But if you had floodwater and you didn’t have flood insurance, you were hanging out there by yourself.
“We had a lot of parsonages damaged. We had 75 to 80 pastors who were displaced. The bishop had to have a special appeal to pay the salary and compensation of these pastors. Through the generosity of United Methodist churches, we were able to do that. Not one pastor missed a paycheck or pension payment or health insurance payment.”
Mr. Tate said he hopes to make one last push for rebuilding in the New Orleans area and Rita-affected areas in Cameron and Lake Charles, La. It takes $40,000 to $60,000 to rebuild a 1,200- to 1,500-square-foot house in the area. Volunteers will work as long as the money holds out.
“We’re now in the last phase of recovery. Right now, the money is all allocated. We will be finished with UMCOR money as of Dec. 31, 2010,” he said.
“My hope and dream is that when we close down the ministry, I want to walk away knowing that I’ve rebuilt a community. You’ve got people there. You’ve got churches there. It’s a justice issue. I have sleepless nights. I want this so bad for the church of Jesus Christ.”
Volunteers needed
The Rev. Ramonalynn Bethley, district superintendent in New Orleans, said local clergy depend on help from the connection, whether in volunteering to help rebuild homes or by providing tourism dollars.
“We continue to rebuild just one house at a time, and one family at a time and one neighborhood at a time,” she said. “We still have work to do, and we welcome people to our city any way they want to come, whether to play or work.”
Most volunteers are either retired folks or college students who descend on New Orleans during Christmas and spring breaks. That’s when project managers see a surge in help. In March, for instance, up to 400 student volunteers a week are expected.
Seven or eight volunteers are assigned to work on a house, tearing down damaged walls, putting up drywall, repairing floors and painting interiors. As many as 50 houses are undergoing repair at any given time.
During one week in early January, about 70 students came from Arkansas to spend part of their Christmas break working on houses in impoverished neighborhoods of New Orleans. Some came with groups from their universities’ Wesley Foundations; others had volunteered previously with Habitat for Humanity.
The Rev. Eric Van Meter, director of the Arkansas State University Wesley Foundation (and an occasional columnist for the Reporter), brought students who wanted to help in the recovery effort with their peers. With them were several students who had been involved with the Ozark Mission Project as youth and wanted to continue their work as young adults.
“They not only got to experience a new community with the people of New Orleans, but to live out Christian community with one another,” Mr. Van Meter said.
It was the first time he had been in New Orleans since Katrina, and the devastation made an impact.
“I was struck by how much remained to be done in the less affluent parts of the city,” he said. “The homeowners we worked with were grateful and patient, but beneath that were currents of frustration at being displaced for so long.
“It was hard to get a handle on the recovery effort as a whole, but if 70 college students can come in and make a small difference to a handful of individual families, that gives me hope that caring on a personal level can have a profound cumulative effect.”
Not discouraged
Meanwhile, retiree Ivan King and his wife, Raegene, of Woods Chapel UMC in Lee’s Summit, Mo., delivered tools and supplies from the LADRM station to work teams repairing homes across the city. This is their third year serving with their church’s “Matthew 28” volunteer ministry; they spend a week each year in New Orleans as volunteers, sleeping on cots at the ministry station.
“We just realized the need,” says Raegene King. “We feel we’re blessed more than the people we serve. The interaction with the homeowners is just a blessing.”
Len Carter, 71, is one of the LADRM’s project managers. Growing up in the Seventh Ward, he came back to New Orleans after a 21-year career in the Air Force. When Katrina hit land, he left for League City, Texas. It took six hours to get to Baton Rouge, some 80 miles away. “The city’s coming back, but not fast enough,” Mr. Carter said as he gave visitors a tour of the Ninth Ward. “The citizens, they’re not actually getting the help they need from FEMA and the city.”
Does he ever get discouraged helping rebuild one house after another, while thousands of families are still waiting their turn for help?
“Never—I love what I do,” he said. “When I walk into a home, they’re depressed and they have no money. And when I say, ‘We can fix this,’ and I see that smile, that’s what gets me up in the morning.”
UMR PHOTO BY ART RUSSELL/ARRMEDIA.COM
Steady funding 
Mr. Tate managed 76 employees—96 with case management workers—and a $7 million budget, the same as the whole Louisiana Conference. 
Project managers say that bodies—actually skeletons now—are still being recovered from houses that have been untouched since Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. Breaches in drainage canal levees left most of New Orleans flooded in 10 to 15 feet of water that took weeks to drain. 
there. You’ve got churches there. It’s a justice issue. I have sleepless nights. I want this so bad for the church of Jesus Christ.” 
“They not only got to experience a new community with the people of New Orleans, but to live out Christian community with one another,” Mr. Van Meter said. 
