republican congressman from louisiana said about katrina god did in one weekend what we've been trying to do for twenty years in terms of public housing so god was able to close public housing in one weekend while there are many people who have been trying to do that for decades and that's sort of a theme in the response to katrina is privatization public housing was privatized private developers were given the land private developers came in and demolished the good units that were there and private developers put up other apartment complexes on those spots which look. nice and are beautiful to look at but. of the thousands of families that lived in public housing before katrina hit the numbers look like roughly ten percent have been able to get back into their neighborhoods where they were before so the government destroyed people's housing turn it over to private developers gave them billions of dollars of subsidies and contracts to be able to do it and then kick the people out who had been there and those individuals those families who lived in public housing who were nearly one hun