Houston Grumbles as Evacuees Stay Put
Many Katrina victims aren't leaving their new city, but the costs and crime anger residents.
By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer
August 21, 2006


HOUSTON — Almost a year after Hurricane Katrina caused the country's largest mass migration since the Dust Bowl, as many as 150,000 evacuees still live in this city, and increasingly many are indicating that they no longer plan to go home.

To many Houstonians, that's overstaying the welcome.

Houston's homicide rate has shot up 18% since the storm, and police statistics show that one in every five homicides in the city involves a Katrina evacuee as suspect, victim or both.

More than 30,000 evacuee families in Houston still live in government-subsidized housing, and a Zogby International survey sponsored by the city found that three-fourths of the adults receiving housing help were not working, raising questions about how they will survive when federal aid runs out.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Houston Mayor Bill White opened their doors to neighbors needing shelter in the nightmarish aftermath of the storm that devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast.

But privately, Texas leaders quickly began to fret that the bedraggled masses that accepted their invitation were overwhelming the state. In December, White declared that "Houston is full" after more than 250,000 evacuees, including hundreds of families rescued from the fetid Louisiana Superdome, filled the city's housing to the brim.

White and other civic leaders remain committed to helping hurricane victims rebuild their lives, and become Texans if they choose. But in the crowded, apartment-lined neighborhoods here where most evacuees wound up, the famous Texas hospitality is wearing thin. Many residents are fed up with rising crime, and some are upset that evacuees could end up being a financial drain on the city.

"It's time for them to go home," said Victoria Palacios, the manager of an EZ Loan store in southwest Houston that has been held up four times in the last year, crimes she is convinced evacuees committed because of the distinct accents of the robbers. "Ever since they came here, we've been getting robbed."

The challenges facing Houston as Katrina's Aug. 29 anniversary draws near illustrate the lasting imprint that the storm left throughout the South. Estimates vary, but as many as half a million people remain scattered far from their former homes in Mississippi and Louisiana.

A Gallup Organization survey sponsored by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, due to be released soon, found that 251,000 evacuees still live in the state. Of adults, 59% were unemployed, and 54% were still receiving housing subsidies. Eighty-one percent were African American, and 61% of the households had earned less than $20,000 a year before Katrina.

Texas officials estimated that the state had housed as many as 400,000 evacuees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which lashed the Gulf Coast on Sept. 24.

The federal government is reimbursing much of the cost Texas is incurring, and last week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that it would provide an additional $429 million in emergency funding.

But Texas officials are concerned that the lingering presence of so many needy people will strain services such as mental health programs, which are in high demand among still-traumatized evacuees.

In Houston, two-thirds of evacuees receiving housing assistance planned to stay, the Zogby Poll found. City leaders are planning for a future that assumes many of them will.

"People were waiting and hoping the situation would change in New Orleans, but many are realizing they may be here for a while," said Cindy Gabriel, a spokeswoman for Houston's Joint Hurricane Housing Task Force. "We're looking at them as Houstonians at this point."

Houston is considering adding two seats to the City Council to better represent the augmented population, which has surpassed 2.1 million people, according to some estimates.

Houston Police Chief Harold L. Hurtt is pushing to hire 400 additional officers to deal with the city's evacuee-fueled crime wave.

In the meantime, police officers are routinely working overtime shifts to increase patrols on the city's most dangerous streets.

"We've had some out-and-out criminals coming over here" from New Orleans, said Capt. Dale Brown, who heads the Houston Police Department's homicide division. "Most evacuees are clearly law abiding. But there is no getting around the fact that some of these people were committing violent crimes in Louisiana, and they are committing them here."

Homicides involving Katrina evacuees continue to be common. Earlier this month, for example, Rolando Rivas, 64, was plunking quarters into a self-service car wash early in the morning when four young men pulled a pistol on him and demanded his money. He resisted, and was fatally shot. Police later found the murder weapon on a 16-year-old near the same car wash. The gun had been stolen in New Orleans. Three teenage evacuees from New Orleans have been arrested.

www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-evac21aug21,1,2709005.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

I'm shocked.

On a side note, ya'll can keep 'em!  We don't want 'em back!

Get out of here you welfare bastards!!!

Another good deed gone awry.  The NOLA evacuees are straining all of the social services and schools in Houston to the max.

Not to be sarcastic - but I still rememeber before Katrina when Houston police told NOPD that they would never have sucha problem as we have in New Olreans - they would take care the old fashinoed texan way - I can only say - bring it on and lets cure texas of this desease

On a second note:
New Orleans crime rate is also scy rocketing with only 50% of the population as these little $xxXXX  found out that the government is not going to do anything and the court system in New Orleans is broken and NOPD unable to get a grip on the rising crime

Christian

I'm going to take a moment here to thank God that Louisiana isn't next-door to Virginia.

Sorry, Houston, and good luck with those people.

The evacuees and incoming Rita were enough to make me get off my ass and buy my first pistol. They keep proving me right every time I watch the local news.

They did a story on the 6o'clock news the other day about people from LA who were here, they were living off of charity and had no plans to go back to LA... How nice.

I will say that most people I know here agree that the "displaced" people have been a real PITA, their attitude sucks, and a year later they still want sympathy even though very few are doing anything to better their lives/get back on their feet.

sympathy, BTW, is between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.

Quoted: I'm going to take a moment here to thank God that Louisiana isn't next-door to Virginia. Sorry, Houston, and good luck with those people.

+1

Quoted: I'm shocked. On a side note, ya'll can keep 'em!  We don't want 'em back!

Gee thanks........

Oh, I am glad that I live in MN!  It may be cold at times, but I'd rather have that than the scum from NO.  Get tough TX!  

Quoted: Another good deed gone awry.  The NOLA evacuees are straining all of the social services and schools in Houston to the max.

What we need is a little marketing.  We should sell videos of the various Houston Gangsta v. NOLA Gangsta turf fights they've been having and sell them.  It could be the first in a series of the world's stupidest criminals.

I want them to get the hell out of here.  

59% unemployment? Doesn't Houston have an assload of warehouse jobs that require almost no skills?

Hmmm..unemployed thugs on the gummit teat when they lived in LA.  And no change after the move to TX?

And who is exactly surprised?

Quoted: 59% unemployment? Doesn't Houston have an assload of warehouse jobs that require almost no skills?

HA! I found a flaw in your plan!  You assuming these people will work.

one of theses shitstains up here in dallas county just hit and run my stepfather on his bike last week.  BUT, she got to learn how bad and idea it is to hit and run a MARSHAL in his own jurisdiction.   OOPS.  But you guessed, her and her useles boyfriend are "evacuees" with no jobs on the dole. No insurance OR drivers license.

Quoted: one of theses shitstains up here in dallas county just hit and run my stepfather on his bike last week.  BUT, she got to learn how bad and idea it is to hit and run a MARSHAL in his own jurisdiction.   OOPS.  But you guessed, her and her useles boyfriend are "evacuees" with no jobs on the dole. No insurance OR drivers license.

Damn, hadn't heard about that one. Glad he's OK.

Quoted: I'm shocked. On a side note, ya'll can keep 'em!  We don't want 'em back!

I am with you on that one bro!

Leave them there, we don't want them back.

Hax

didn't make news or anything, was in grand prairie, banged the bike up pretty bad, he got some roadrash on his knee and elbow as he rode it down.

Stupidest part is, she actually stopped for a minute and got out of the car, another driver talking was to my stepfather and he mentioned that he was a cop, and THEN she bugged out.  As she took off another Grand Prairie cop pulled up and went after her.

This is one of the few beautiful times when stupidity is going to hurt.

Quoted: I heard a radio interview with two NO detectives about an upswing in violent crime in NO. They said they thought that some NO vermin were starting to return to NO because of tougher law enforcement and courts in Texas. Also they claimed that very young people, young teens even, were starting to go to war to carve up the NO drug trade now that there was a vaccuum.

Those scenarios make sense.

Also - one reason why HOUSTON is having all these problems is because its one big LIBTARD city and they accomodate that crap.
If it were "Texas" and not "Houston", a lot of the undesirables would have left already.

Even up here in Spring (just n. of Houston) things have gotten worse. The constables that work my area say. All crime has gone up since the refugees showed up here. Areas around apartments and rent housing are worse, and then it spreads out to from there.
Sad to say we are getting more and more rent housing in my subdivision.

Quoted: they expected something different. those people had no jobs and nothing to hold them NO other than thats where they happend to be at the time. they got bussed to houston. they got free housing/food stamps/healthcare when they got there. Nothing changed no reason to return.

+1, when the is no more gov handout then the people will move to back to NO.

Quoted: Quoted: 59% unemployment? Doesn't Houston have an assload of warehouse jobs that require almost no skills? HA! I found a flaw in your plan!  You assuming these people will work.

Exactly correct.  They won't work.  Not as long as they are getting a free ride from Uncle Sugar.

I gotta say, though.  I laughed my ass off as they loaded all those idiots on to buses/planes and shipped them all over CONUS.  I could have told 'em this was gonna happen.

What I didn't see coming was all the mexican gangs that are slowly creeping into NO to fill the void.

Been hearing a new deal on the radio today.   In a nutshell....  Don't give any money to the beggars because you aren't doing them any favors.  Beggars caught on the streets are going to experience tough sledding as of now.

I'm plumb sick of their panhandling and want them to go home to the city that spawned them.