New Orleans  I’m looking forward to driving to Houston this week to finish a trip that was unbelievably storm delayed. Even though Beaumont, Texas not far across the Louisiana border is still without potable water, and neighborhoods in Houston are still flooded, Interstate 10 runs through it all on an open road from New Orleans to the Pacific Ocean, and I’ll be pedal to the metal to get there.

I’m hoping to sort out who is really on the ground doing the job. Having been too intimately involved in post-Katrina work in New Orleans, that is the key to recovery, not necessarily the heroes and goats in the first wake of the storm and the tally of dollars for relief. There were plenty of both though. A local mattress company and an Academy Sports location have gotten rave reviews for their open arms and generosity, just as Joel Osteen and his megachurch and gospel of prosperity has been pilloried for the lack of both. Houston is a big time corporate headquarters and some big timers have stepped up including the Michael Dell of Dell Computers with a pledge of $36 million and the John and Laura Anderson Foundation of Enron energy trading fame with $5 million. JJ Watt, the Houston Texas NFL star, supported by his mom back home in small town Wisconsin has soared from a goal of $200,000 to crest $18 million and rising. An equally enjoyable story is the complete embrace of far right conservatives like Texas governor Greg Abbot and cantankerous Senator Ted Cruz of as much money as they can score from their much hated and abused federal government. Abbot has set the price tag at $180 billion wanting Texas to have the record in this category as well.

Watt’s mom is worried about how to spend the money as well she and the donors should be. At least President Trump didn’t endorse specific charities in the way that George W Bush propped Habitat for Humanity and the Red Cross. Habitat raised over $300 million after Katrina and a dozen years later is still accounting for how it spent the money since its sweat equity model was out-strapped by the need for housing PDQ, rather than in the by and by. Houston is likely to have a similar problem with public housing displacements at over 30,000 and schools and jobs still inaccessible for many people. People will need housing, but where do you build on the same flood plains, and who is making the plans and where are people in the process? These are critical questions with 50,000 in hotel rooms now and only 1500 still in the George Brown Convention Center. These are also questions that were poorly answered after Katrina over and over as we continually had to fight against displacement and for quicker movement of funds.

People need to be at the table. In Houston under Mayor Bill White after Katrina, he wisely convened a daily morning meeting to make sure up to 100,000 Katrina survivors were welcomed and housed. At that meeting were chief executives of Fortune 500 companies and the business elite, as well as representatives from ACORN. White strong armed the Houston real estate interests to open up all of their available rental units to Katrina survivors. Current Mayor Sylvester Turner needs to do the same thing.

While doing the right thing, avoid the scamsters. Social media and crowdfunding are hot with appeals, but beware. Websites are springing up willy-nilly as always. Money is going to be needed for a long time from Houston to Beaumont. There’s no harm in making sure that your few dollars are going where the impact will be the greatest, but it may take some time to sort that out. That’s one of the things I’ll be doing this week, so stay ready and willing, but be careful.