re: The exploiters are starting to come out in full force

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You just said people could gut their houses with their bare hands, never mind that many of these people are elderly like my grand father. So yeah, what you said was clueless, Katrina or not.

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You said people needed to do quickly for mold reasons, and the parts most susceptible to that are the walls and insulation, which most certainly can be done without tools.

The greater point still remains though - where are these people sitting on stockpiles of hammers and crowbars? HD or Lowes being out of stock isn't proof of any wrongdoing.

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yeah this sucks, but in all honesty this is the one way you can ensure the area gets an excess of workers to do the work. it's a give-take situation

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exactly...you are asking people to go into miserable conditions and do back breaking work while living like animals...it takes a pretty good bit of money to make normal people want to do that kind of shite.

Where do the people that come from out of town find a place to stay?

Seems like every apartment, hotel, etc would be booked for a long time to come.

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yep and local tree cutting businesses started going under in the long run.

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This makes no sense, the local tree cutters I used in Katrina and Gustav charged the same or more than those from outside the area.

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Where do the people that come from out of town find a place to stay?

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During Gustav, some of the tree cutters were camped in tents close on a vacant lot close to one of the properties I own in South Baton Rouge. The owners of the lot rented the space to them, and the city didn't care. There were similar camps scattered around town, probably will do the same for this event.

Hate to say this, but some of the exploiters will be some of the newly seeded non profits that may be created during the recovery process.

This happened in N.O. post- Katrina.

The most glaring example I can think of is a new non profit organized to link the displaced to affordable housing in New Orleans.

There wasn't much available to begin with, and what was available was price gouged.

This agency actually provided a list of phone numbers to existing non - profits in the area that also could not link folks to housing because of its scarcity.

One of the phone numbers provided was to the agency my wife was with.

The lady that contacted the agency and spoke to my wife told her that she had been all but guaranteed housing.

My wife, who had been with an established non-profit for many years, noticed a sharp increase in the number of non-profiteers that descended upon the city, most of which could actually do little or nothing and used the seed money to pay themselves the administration fees.

One of the most hard working groups were faith based volunteers, many from out of town and many local that earned nothing for their services.

They didn't mind getting their hands dirty with all of the house gutting, etc.. that needed to be done. They really made a difference.