By my understanding there are around a million people who left the hurricane zone who are homeless and jobless. While at this point unskilled labor may not be useful, here is a way to kill a lot of birds with one stone.
If unskilled people can help allocate the money and pay the people who have left New Orleans to return and help. They are jobless and homeless. Setup the tent city for those people and their families to get shelter and food. Then, pay those who are willing to help with the effort to get other people out. Of course that would actually require organization and leadershiop. There would have to be some one on the ground assigning people to take charge of various situations, and setting up the groups to handle various issues. And, the shelters and food would have to be setup and delivered.
Even more effective when the time comes to actually rebuild homes and businesses. Allocate the billions from the federal government. Hire the contractors, engineers, and skilled labor. Then, start assigning projects with the qualification that the contractors have to come back with the maximum number of unskilled laborers that will accelerate building. Then, assign payed refugees to do that labor. You rebuild homes and give jobs to those who need it most. Plus, after a few projects the refugees will become more skilled accelerating building further.
In addition, have those who want their property rebuilt with this system register their insurance with the rebuilding headquarters. And, then have the insurance claim money go directly to the government to offset the rebuilding funds. It would probably get rebuilding done much faster than the piecemeal which would happen with individual claims for each loss. Note, no discrimination between those with or without insurance or quality of insurance should occur.
