Gulf Coast Residents in Financial Dire Straits, Waiting for BP Claims

[babylonsister]

Gulf Coast Residents in Financial Dire Straits, Waiting for BP Claims
Claimants Wait Weeks for Payouts to Replace Income Lost Due to Gulf Oil Spill
By Andrew Restuccia 9/13/10 4:45 AM


Christine Watson, of Destin, Fla., has to come up with $1,900 this week or she’ll be evicted from her apartment. She also just received a notice that her electricity will be shut off if she doesn’t pay up soon. So Watson did something she says she’s never done before. “I’ll be honest. I gave them a bum check. I gave them a check and figured if it’s going to bounce, it’s going to bounce,” she says.

Watson lost her job as manager of a natural health and fitness store in June, when, in the aftermath of the oil spill, the store’s owner let all of the employees go. As tarballs started popping up on the nearby beach, tourism in the area dropped sharply. Profits at the store — which offers foot baths, saunas and body wraps for beach-goers — dropped in turn.

It’s been a rough year for Watson and her family. She and her husband lost everything when their construction company failed last year. Unable to pay the bills, they fell behind on their mortgage and their house went into foreclosure. Her husband hasn’t been able to find a job, becoming part of the nearly one in eight Floridians is unemployed.

A nutrition counselor, Watson found work at the natural health and fitness store. While she says it wasn’t easy, the Watson family was able to get by on the money she pulled in from working there. But now, nearly five months after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that led to the country’s biggest oil spill, Watson finds herself down and out again.

“We were very financially stable,” Watson says. “Now everything has changed. We have spent everything we have. I’m 46 and I’ve never been through anything like this.”

more...

http://washingtonindependent.com/97213/gulf-coast-residents-in-financial-dire-straits-waiting-for-bp-claims

[SpiralHawk]

1. "This is all completely natural." - Rush DraftDodger Limbaugh (R)

"Boo frikkin hoo -- too freakin bad (smirk) about these so-called economically devastated proles (smirk). Why don't they just STFU, and pull themselves up by their own Swiss Bank Accounts & Trust Funds like us morally superior Republicons?

"What the Gulf Coast needs, what is needed all across the Fruited Plains, is MORE MORE MORE MORE tax cuts for rich republicons. Smirk."

- Rush DraftDodger Limbaugh (R)

[Raven]

2. Why can't the government put a temporary hold on foreclosures and

utility turn-offs until these claims are settled?

[revolution breeze]

3. Two houses in foreclosure in my neighborhood

This is a great neighborhood, did not flood during Katrina and alot of people from St. Bernard Parish moved here after Katrina. We have rallied around them as best we could, these families have been eating at various neighbors homes since the blowout, but they won't accept the money the church has offered them. They are great neighbors, really hope they reconsider, take the money, then pay it forward later.

[blindpig]

4. Why is BP not expropriated?

It is obvious that anything and everything they do is only for the benefit of their investors.