Friday Katrina miscellany

- The National Multi Housing Council issued an even stronger protest today calling for existing vacant apartments to be used more thoroughly in the Katrina relief effort. (See also below.) This document may however have been issued before the HUD announcement of plans to pay Katrina victims' rents that appeared midday today, so we don't know to what extent NMHC and other critics will feel HUD, FEMA, et al. have answered their calls for action. Today's announcement does make new rent money available to private landlords, and it seems likely to reduce the tension that was shaping up between disaster victims and conventionally poor people over access to previously funded public housing and public subsidies. However, the news today doesn't address NMHC's campaign to better publicize the hurricanehousing.net registration site for matching displaced tenants with willing landlords.

- A further announcement from Treasury making it easier for banking institutions to cash disaster relief checks.

- Today's Washington Post is editorializing skeptically on the proposed Gulf Opportunity Zone, noting some differences from the "enterprise zone" idea, in language more or less applicable to the federal Empowerment Zone tax breaks that we discussed here a few days ago as a possible basis for comparison. The Post notes especially that the new proposal would offer "tax breaks for investment but not for job creation."