A New Orleans house flattened but for a concrete staircase on a crumbling facade was among many storm-ravaged structures that federal officials deemed fit for occupancy by Katrina victims now living in Houston, Mayor Bill White said Friday.

Yes, FEMA is still screwing up in New Orleans. Houston’s Hurricane Housing Task Force conducted a spot check of the houses FEMA had determined to be habitable (presumably by human beings) and found that 70% of the ones they checked were in no way habitable. Does the house in the photo above look like something you would tell someone was safe to live in? Well, it’s one of the houses they said was A-OK … thereby allowing the assistance to whoever owns that house to be cut. After all, their house is perfectly fine! Nothing at all wrong with it … if you don’t mind camping out in what used to be your living room and having the possibility the thing will fall in on you. People in other countries would be thrilled to have such a fine house! And that apartment building that has already been declared condemned? No, no, nothing wrong with it at all. It’s perfectly habitable by human beings! The stupidity of FEMA seemingly never ends.

I continue to be sickened by the incompetence surrounding the whole of Hurricane Katrina. It just seems to be that no one can do anything right. This though is appalling … to tell people they can no longer get housing assistance because the wreck of a house they used to live in is perfectly fine, even though the walls are falling down and the roof is busted in. I suggest that in order for a house to be determined to be habitable by someone from FEMA, they have to spend a night in it first.