WASHINGTON -- United States Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., today asked President Barack Obama for a one-year extension of the Disaster Housing Assistance Program (DHAP), which is scheduled to end on February 28.

Sen. Landrieu hand delivered the request this afternoon to the following Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials during a meeting in her office: Dave Garratt, FEMA's Acting Deputy Administrator; Jim Stark, FEMA's Assistant Administrator for Gulf Coast Recovery; Milan Ozdinec, HUD's Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Public and Indian Housing; and Frank Vaccarella, HUD's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Relations.

DHAP was designed to provide temporary rental assistance and case management for households displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Currently 31,000 households reside in DHAP units, with 16,802 in Louisiana. Of Louisiana's 64 parishes, 57 have DHAP participants.

"There is a wealth of data to indicate that alternative voucher programs are inadequate to meet the needs of DHAP residents along the Gulf Coast," Sen. Landrieu wrote. "Elderly and disabled populations cannot be enrolled in time, and low-income families will be forced to sleep on the streets or move far away from their local neighborhoods. A one-year extension of the program will allow the State of Louisiana to bring thousands of additional units online, federal stimulus dollars to reopen financing for private development in the region, and the overall increase in supply to make housing affordable once again to the hard working men and women of the Gulf Coast."

On the last workday of the Bush Administration, officials from FEMA and HUD sent a letter to the State of Louisiana rejecting its request for an extension of the DHAP. The letter stated that HUD did not believe that extending DHAP was necessary to address the housing needs of the participating families. However, each attempt by the federal government to fund permanent housing voucher programs has fallen woefully short of accommodating everyone who qualifies for the program.

"People cannot be housed if there are not enough vouchers for all of them, and vouchers have no use if there are no affordable units for which they can be redeemed," Sen. Landrieu wrote. "The housing crisis, credit crunch, and a lack of available financing have delayed construction of urgently needed affordable housing along the Gulf Coast. In an environment where rents have skyrocketed, DHAP residents will not be able to secure permanent housing without some level of federal assistance until enough new units come online to drive down prices."

If DHAP is discontinued later this month, funding for case management services will also immediately expire, which would make assisting a massive population of at-risk individuals practically impossible.

"If the DHAP is allowed to end, funding for case management services will expire also, and tracking and assisting this massive population of at-risk individuals will become practically impossible."

The full text of Sen. Landrieu's letter to President Obama is available here.