The State of Iowa, the County of Allamakee, and the City of Postville banded together to provide…
…relief to former Agriprocessors workers and others devastated by Agriprocessors' downfall.
Based in Postville's Turner Hall, this coalition is headed by Allamakee County's Emergency Management chief, Chris Dahlstrom.
Here is an email I received this morning about the evictions slated to begin this morning in Postville.
The first part was sent to Maryn Olson, who is the coalition's coordinator, and copied to the entire Postville relief coalition list by one of its members. The second part is Chris Dahlstrom's response:
From: Carol Kress
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:01:07 -0600
Subject: possible evictions?
Hi Maryn -
What do I hear about possible evictions from rentals in Postville?
Is the coalition preparing to respond to this?
Will there be a need to find housing and food for homeless folks?
Might there be a possibility of organizing a meeting between the response coalition and either the landlord or financial institutions to iron out a solution to this?
I'm sending this inquiry to the whole coalition in hopes there are some inspiried thinkers in the mix.
It just seems like a proactive response might be more helpful than a reactive one.
Please call me if you have an opportunity to do so (379-2925) - I'm in Waterloo for meetings on Monday but will happily take a call to talk thing over.
Thanks a lot - there's surely a good way to approach and solve this issue before more people suffer.
Rev Carol Kress
Decorah First UMC
Decorah Faith Coalition Co-Chair
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From: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 8:53 PM
Subject: Re: possible evictions?
Is this true.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device from U.S. Cellular
As I wrote Friday, I knew about the evictions early last week and confirmed them Friday afternoon. (I couldn't do this earlier because of the difficulty reaching people due to the holiday.)
As soon as I knew the evictions were really happening, I called the state's point person for Postville to let him know, and then did a quick post just before Shabbat (the Sabbath). I followed that with a longer, detailed post Saturday night that explains the reasons for the evictions, including the state government's unilateral reduction of rent support paid to landlords.
As I noted, Friday night and Saturday Jeff Abbas of Postville Radio got his volunteers together to prepare for the evictions and arranged shelter for those evicted.
Even so, Sunday night just before 9:00 pm, the man in charge of the governmental response to the Postville crisis did not even know evictions were about to happen.