Faith-based groups finishing work in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Two religious denominations that have been pouring money and volunteers into rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina are winding down their recovery projects to return to work elsewhere on a more normal scale. Representatives of the United Methodist Church and the Salvation Army said they see an end to their rebuilding work around New […]

(RNS2-MAR17) University of Central Florida students Katie Neill, left, and Mitch Froelich, right, remove walls in a building that once housed a disco in New Orleans. Some 500 students from various colleges, working through Rebuilding New Orleans Together, are experiencing an alternative spring break as they descend on the area for several days to help repair buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina. RNS file photo by Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-Picayune.

(RNS2-MAR17) University of Central Florida students Katie Neill, left, and Mitch Froelich, right, remove walls in a building that once housed a disco in New Orleans. Some 500 students from various colleges, working through Rebuilding New Orleans Together, are experiencing an alternative spring break as they descend on the area for several days to help repair buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina. RNS file photo by Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-Picayune.

(RNS2-MAR17) University of Central Florida students Katie Neill, left, and Mitch Froelich, right, remove walls in a building that once housed a disco in New Orleans. Some 500 students from various colleges, working through Rebuilding New Orleans Together, are experiencing an alternative spring break as they descend on the area for several days to help repair buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina. RNS file photo by Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-Picayune.

(RNS2-MAR17) University of Central Florida students Katie Neill, left, and Mitch Froelich, right, remove walls in a building that once housed a disco in New Orleans. Some 500 students from various colleges, working through Rebuilding New Orleans Together, are experiencing an alternative spring break as they descend on the area for several days to help repair buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina. RNS file photo by Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-Picayune.

(RNS2-MAR17) University of Central Florida students Katie Neill, left, and Mitch Froelich, right, remove walls in a building that once housed a disco in New Orleans. Some 500 students from various colleges, working through Rebuilding New Orleans Together, are experiencing an alternative spring break as they descend on the area for several days to help repair buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina. RNS file photo by Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-Picayune.

(RNS2-MAR17) University of Central Florida students Katie Neill, left, and Mitch Froelich, right, remove walls in a building that once housed a disco in New Orleans. Some 500 students from various colleges, working through Rebuilding New Orleans Together, are experiencing an alternative spring break as they descend on the area for several days to help repair buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina. RNS file photo by Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-Picayune.


NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Two religious denominations that have been pouring money and volunteers into rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina are winding down their recovery projects to return to work elsewhere on a more normal scale.

Representatives of the United Methodist Church and the Salvation Army said they see an end to their rebuilding work around New Orleans. The Methodists will likely wrap up this year, the Salvation Army at the end of next year.

Both are major players. While there is no clearinghouse for rebuilding statistics, one estimate suggests the Methodist and Salvation Army efforts contributed to the rebuilding of more than 1,200 homes damaged by Katrina.

A third nonprofit, Rebuilding Together New Orleans, which has helped repair 251 homes, is also nearing a point when it will have to decide whether to continue rebuilding or return to smaller-scale housing repair work, said the agency’s interim executive director, Daniela Rivero.

Even as they contemplate ending their work, recovery managers say the pipeline of volunteers willing to rebuild housing is still robust. Most volunteers are making return trips after building enduring friendships with the homeowners they have helped.

“Right now, we have more manpower than money,” said Dale Kimball, manager of the Methodist church’s rebuilding operations around New Orleans. “People still want to come, and we have volunteers who are upset when we tell them they can’t come.”


The agencies that are leaving say the primary reason is that they have nearly exhausted the private donations they collected after Katrina.

With those treasuries running down, they have decided not to apply for federal grants, either for logistical reasons or for reasons related to their own organizational culture.

Agencies that are staying are preparing, some for the first time, to make use of federal money being offered to nonprofits in a pilot program managed by the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency.

“The challenge of dealing with the public dollar is just incredible,” said Jessica Vermilyea of Lutheran Disaster Response, which does not run a separate housing ministry but directs Lutheran volunteers to other agencies.

Vermilyea and other private recovery managers said administering public grants requires an accounting operation more sophisticated than the ones they have. And the LHFA’s practice of reimbursing private agencies weeks after the layout of staff salaries or the purchase of building materials means the ministries must have deep pockets, they said.

To that end, the local United Way has formed an initiative to help smaller nonprofits do the demanding back-office accountability work that public financing requires, said Steve Zimmer, the United Way’s vice president for community mobilization.


“It can be mind-boggling to learn to work it,” said Jeff Coates, of the Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership, a consortium of private recovery groups.

The Rev. Darryl Tate, a minister who oversees the Methodist church’s recovery operations in Louisiana, said his denomination’s decision to wind down its ministry at the end of the year was influenced by the complexity of working with state and federal partners, but also cash-flow challenges.

“We’ve decided to let it die a natural death,” he said. “In the last nine months, the work level has quadrupled for administrative staff to be able to comply with state and federal guidelines.”

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Tate’s operation has been one of the biggest and most sophisticated in the region. Kimball, the local manager of the ministry’s New Orleans operations, said the church has organized the work of an estimated 82,000 volunteers who rebuilt 840 homes.

Kimball said the nonprofit expects to do major repairs on another 100 homes this year. When new clients call for help, “we’re not giving them false hope. We’re telling them if more resources come available we’ll work with them, but as of now, we’ve committed most of our resources to clients in our existing file.”

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Meanwhile, the Salvation Army has elected to step back from long-term recovery work at the end of next year, but not before launching a $12 million housing blitz that aims to construct 125 new, energy-efficient homes.


In nearly five years, the evangelical organization has provided case managers to map the needs of thousands of families, offer financial assistance and introduce them to other agencies for more. The church has also financed repairs to 371 homes, by its estimate.

But the Salvation Army works only with private donations. And when its housing blitz is over at the close of 2011, it will return to its core mission of helping people out of addictions, homelessness, financial emergencies and other crises, said Capt. Ethan Frizzell, the area commander for metro New Orleans.

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Relief managers say that at this point in the recovery, they are now working with the toughest cases: people still out of their houses who have almost no resources to contribute to the work.

And as they near the fifth anniversary of Katrina, some said faith-based communities have to balance their long, extraordinary commitment to New Orleans with the demands of other relief work.

“For a nonprofit to `front’ money, we have to take away from other ministries,” said Vermilyea. “That’s a really big balancing act, and it can be a struggle for a nonprofit to make that decision.”

(Bruce Nolan writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.)

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