How will the Poorest of Katrina's Victims Receive Direct Deposits?

FEMA to halt debit cards, use bank deposit

WASHINGTON - The federal government's relief agency said Friday it will discontinue its program to distribute $2,000 debit cards to hurricane victims and use bank deposits instead, two days after hastily announcing the novel plan to provide quick relief.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it will scrap the program once officials finish distributing cards this weekend at shelters in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, where many of the evacuees were moved. No cards will be issued to victims in other states.

Hurricane victims at other locations will have to apply for expedited aid through the agency's traditional route - filling out information on FEMA's Web site to receive direct bank deposits, FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule said.

"We tried it as an innovative way to get aid to evacuee populations in Texas. We decided it would be more expeditious with direct deposits," she said, citing the large staffing operation that would be required to replicate the Texas operation in other states...

Just another example of FEMA not getting it.

Demographics of the "unbanked"

-The unbanked are disproportionately poor. Four out of five of these families make less than $25,000 a year, and two out of five families have annual incomes of less than $10,000.

-The unbanked are mostly minorities. More than half of all unbanked households are nonwhite or Hispanic, and studies estimate that as many as one-third of all nonwhite households are unbanked.

-Unbanked households are young. One out of three unbanked families is headed by someone under the age of 35, and more than half are headed by persons under 45.

-The unbanked are likely to be less educated than the general population. For example, one survey of federal benefits recipients found that of those recipients without a bank account, 59 percent had less than a high school education.

The lesson here is that if the government is going to provide assistance, you had better not be poor before the disaster strikes.

The poor that can arrange to have bank accounts probably owe money which their creditors will cheerfully extract from their accounts. For alternative banking they can deposit their funds to my Nigerian account # U2DUM4ME. Lets just face facts, the cards were propaganda and the administration intends to punish the needy by any means possible.

Although this has been brought up on ATSNN I will reiterate my statement.

This was designed so the refugees will not recieve the money until they are already established back at home. Two thousand dollars is not a lot of money and the poeple who need it the most are not the ones staying with family. Those who have lost everything and are now huddled together in overcrowded "relief" shelters do not have the ability to go to FEMA's website to fill out forms. Nor do they have an adress to which the check can be mailed. You must view this situation from the government's prespective. Those who have lost everything, who were poor to begin with, are now less than the serfs they were before. They are now homeless, destitute refugees of a disaster orchestrated by the current regime. (to clarify I do not mean through bombs, I mean through inaction prior to the storm) These people are now effectively wards of the state, property of the government. I fear this news may cause more problems.