HUD Promises Aid to Victims in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA —  Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel Pierce Jr., touring the neighborhood where 270 people were left homeless after a confrontation between police and a radical group, today pledged $1 million to help restore the homes that burned and announced that 49 properties will be made available as temporary housing.

In addition, he said the government would provide rent subsidies in the form of rent payment vouchers for the homeless families.

“We’re doing everything we can as quickly as we humanly can to get people out of temporary shelters into temporary homes,” Mayor W. Wilson Goode said at a news conference.

The temporary houses include 37 HUD properties, many of them in West Philadelphia near the neighborhood where 61 homes burned, and 12 others owned by the city.

Goode said he hoped work on rebuilding the neighborhood will begin by July 1. The city has already taken steps to declare it a blighted area so it can be condemned.

Pierce, Goode and Pennsylvania’s two Republican U.S. senators, John Heinz and Arlen Specter, walked through the ruins of the neighborhood today.

“It was a sad, terrifying situation. Nobody planned this disaster,” Heinz said. “Whether it is a volcano or an inferno, this is a disaster and we have a duty to help.”

The search for charred remains of the cult members in the ruins of the row house that served as headquarters for the MOVE group continued. Eleven bodies, including those of four children, have been found.

Police with warrants for four of the radicals assaulted the house Monday with bullets, water hoses, tear gas and finally a two-pound bomb intended to destroy a bunker on top of the house. The fire touched off during the assault quickly spread as firefighters, fearing snipers, hesitated before taking on the blaze.

Goode announced Thursday that the city would establish three funds totaling $8 million to aid the homeless.

In an interview, the mayor said he did not understand fully the type of explosive used in the disastrous attack on the MOVE house.