Professor Charles Venator-Santiago is studying how officials in Holyoke, Mass. dealt with the island\u2019s evacuees, according to a report by WNPR.<\/p>\n\n\n
Along with his team at the UConn Institute for Latina\/o Caribbean, and Latin American Studies, Venator-Santiago is looking at how this research could serve as a lesson for Connecticut cities.<\/p>\n\n\n
Among the areas, he studies were how the city of Holyoke welcomed the Puerto Rican evacuees following the hurricane. A key component was providing a centralized location for evacuees to go to for help, according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cA center called Enlace de Familias received some funding from the state and some funding from other agencies to essentially create a receiving center that coordinated everything,\u201d Venator-Santiago told WNPR. \u201cThere were representatives from federal agencies like social security, there were representatives from FEMA, there were food banks \u2014 it was one-stop shopping, if you will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
In other cities, evacuees were unable to work with officials from local, state and federal agencies in one centralized location to get key resources at the same place where other basic needs were being fulfilled, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cOne of the key findings that we found in Hartford and we found everywhere is that the bulk of the people who assumed responsibility for displaced Puerto Ricans were people living in poverty or living with low-income,\u201d Venator-Santiago told WNPR. \u201cSo, we\u2019re hoping then that we can share our information to \u2014 I don\u2019t know\u2014 address that problem, which is that the state should bear a different kind of responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
The goal of the study \u2014 commissioned by the Massachusetts Vulnerability Preparedness program \u2014 is to develop a plan for other municipalities in Massachusetts the next time there is a climate change event similar to Hurricane Maria which led to the displacement of thousands, according to the WNNP report.<\/p>\n\n\n
Other issues Venator-Santiago and his team found related to the treatment of evacuees was the refusal of the Donald Trump administration to allow interagency agreements between certain departments in the federal government. This practice, Venator-Santiago told WNPR, was in place during Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy in 2005 and 2012. The lack of that interagency agreement, Venator-Santiago said, led to evacuees staying in hotels like the Red Roof Inn in Hartford for extended periods.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cFEMA brought people to the United States \u2014 19,000 of them precisely \u2014 but didn\u2019t have an interagency agreement with HUD to house them. So, FEMA brought 19,000 people, dumped them in hotels, and just left them there. People had to fend for themselves \u2014 people with nothing and no resources,\u201d Venator-Santiago told WNPR.<\/p>\n\n\n
Eventually, he will brief officials in Connecticut on his findings.<\/p>\n\n\n
SourceA: wnpr.org<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
inadequacies in response by connecticut agencies contributed to crisis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[576],"tags":[1584],"ppma_author":[565],"class_list":["post-5084359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democracypolitics","tag-hurricane-mariauconn"],"acf":[],"mb":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jermaine Smith","author_link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/author\/jay\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"inadequacies in response by connecticut agencies contributed to crisis","authors":[{"term_id":565,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"news-editor","display_name":"News Editor","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"mfb_rest_fields":["title","uagb_featured_image_src","uagb_author_info","uagb_comment_info","uagb_excerpt","authors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5084359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5084359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5084359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5084359"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5084359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}