FEMA Payments as checks or bank account payments... wait!

[jofish22]

I just heard this on NPR:

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BATON ROUGE - Thousand of Hurricane Katrina evacuees will not get debit cards worth two-thousand dollars that are being distributed by FEMA. An agency officials says the cards will only be available to those that are temporarily staying at the Astrodome in Houston.

David Passey says others will have to wait while the emergency aid is distributed in the form of paper checks or direct deposits to their bank accounts.

Those not at the Astrodome will have to register for the assistance by calling 1-800-621-FEMA or by going on the agency's web site at http:http://www.fema.org.

They will have to provide a location where the check can be delivered or a bank account number where the funds can be deposited.
-----------------------------------------------------[1]

In case that last sentence didn't tip you off, here's what you need to know about checking accounts in the United States:

86% of Asian Americans have a checking account.
83% of white Americans have a checking account.
60% of black Americans have a checking account.
48% of Hispanic Americans have a checking account. [2][3]

Spot the problem, anyone?

Edit: thefiske, remember, many of these people *do not have an address to which a check can be delivered.* And futhermore, if you don't have a bank account, you need a check cashing company to cash your check for you, which typically involves a fee of 2-4%: call it $60 just to cash this check.

jofish

[1] for example, http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12601032.htm
[2] CAG / ISA Asian American Marketing Report 2005
http://www.accesscag.com/pdf/ARF-Webinar-2004-Dec.pdf
[3] Edit:
As of 2000, Louisiana (which I know is not only state in question, but it'll do for illustration)
is

White 63.9% (2,856,161 people of whom statistically 485,547 do not have a checking account)
Black 32.5% (1,451,944 people of whom statistically 580,777 do not have a checking account)
Asian 1.2% (55,998 people of whom statistically 7,839 do not have a checking account)
Hispanic/Latino 2.4% (107,738 people of whom statistically 51,714 do not have a checking account)

So call it a bit over a million people.

http://www.jeffersontransit.org/CensusPDFs/Louisiana.pdf

Comments

[thefiske.livejournal.com]

And 100% of Americans can cash checks.

[eddyfoible.livejournal.com]

wow

[datawar.livejournal.com]

You also can't make a claim online using any browser except Internet Explorer.

[(Anonymous)]

While there are serious problems with what FEMA has been doing, from what I understand, the reason they stopped giving out debit cards is that *they ran out of debit cards*. Certainly that's what happened with the Red Cross. Also, there were a whole bunch of banks and related companies cashing the checks for free. That doesn't help with the address problem, though most of these people were staying somewhere. And were able to receive the checks at the hotel, house, or shelter they were staying out.

That doesn't help with the fact that FEMA was very hard to talk to, and that the checks took a long time to get there...or that they should have had more debit cards, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

-Erin