National
Latino, African-American Applicants Unfairly Denied Sandy Relief Funds?
[NBC Philadelphia]
Local housing rights organization Fair Share Housing Center (FSHC) says it has obtained data from the Christie Administration that shows that Latino and African-American residents applying for two major Sandy relief programs were denied by the state at higher rates than their Caucasian counterparts.
According to the FSHC, 35-percent of African American applicants and 18 percent of Latino applicants applying to the Homeowner Reconstruction, Rehabilitation Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) program were rejected by the state; while 13 percent of Caucasian applicants were denied from the same program.
Similarly, FSHC says 38 percent of African Americans and 20 percent of Latinos that applied to the Resettlement Grant Program had their applications rejected; while 14 percent of Caucasians were rejected from the same program.
President of the Latino Action Network (LAN) Frank Argote-Freyre and members of the New Jersey chapter of the NAACP reviewed the data along with FSHC and noticed inequities in both the amount of Latino and African Americans that applied for the programs, and the amount of Latino and African American residents that were approved to receive relief funds.