it just tears your heart out. what can you done about these basement apartments that can be so dangerous for the residents? a lot of folks can t afford anything else in some cases. but what can be done about it? i ll start with what we re doing in this office. i can t speak for everybody else. but we have approved 10,000 units of affordable housing. we have done some ground breaking for weeks. we know that s a drop in the bucket when you are talking about a city where you have nearly 300,000 people living in base basements. one of the proposals i have is to subsidize these units to bring them up to grade, up to compliance where there are windows, where we can do e gress. that s a larger policy decision, but we know money needs to be attached to this conversation as well. why is it that is it a drainage issue in these basements?
35 inches of rain. for days. think about the drainage issue for days and days. this one s extraordinary. all right, we re going to stay with this, we ll keep on covering this storm through the course of the day and the night here on msnbc. for those of you who know people or are in the area, take it seriously. we ll also report on the impact on the rest of the country, as we were saying with oil and other issues coming from that area. that s it for us, thanks for watching this hour of msnbc. so much to cover, stick with us, right now more news on andrea mitchell reports. thank you, stephanie. andrea mitchell reports with chris jansing who is right next to us. 8 million people under a hurricane warning. the texas gulf coast breacing.