Mississippi Home Again (One-on-One Household Assistance)

Over 70 miles of Mississippi?s coastal communities are in utter ruin.

Over 65,000 homes in Mississippi completely disappeared.

Some 383,000 homes are uninhabitable.

231 lives were lost, 5 remain unidentified. One couple was
found right before Christmas; their daughter is included
among the 67 people still missing.

Katrina?s storm surge reached upwards of 50 feet in some
areas and emptied 5 feet of seawater into thousands of
families? homes some 6 or 7 miles from the coast.

Most people did not have flood insurance: Most homes were
not within government-designated flood planes.

Katrina caused approximately $125 billion in damages;
$6.3 billion has been paid out by insurance companies.

100% of all business properties within the coastal community
of Pass Christian have been destroyed. So has the police
station, the fire station, and the city hall.

In Mississippi, post-Katrina unemployment in some areas has
reached nearly 25%.

My friend Annie and I are gifting beds and appliances to
people down there. Our project is simple and direct. When
money hits our fund (so far, about $60,000 worth) we make a
call, buy the specifics, and these items are usually available
for pickup the next day. If the recipients can't pick them up,
we deliver them. We find our recipients by going trailer to
trailer, door to door, and in some cases, slab to slab. We see
their damage. If it seems they have little chance of making it
on their own, we try to help. We mainly focus on beds, stoves,
refrigerators, and hot water heaters, as those are expensive
necessities. If they can take these items now, and we have the
funds, we gift them. If they have no where to put them yet, we
silently add them to our list, hoping that when they are ready,
we still have the money to help them. We have interviewed
hundreds of families in what's left of their homes. Our goal is
to provide these necessities to every single family on
Mississippi's coast that don't have the means to buy them again.

Tammy Agard