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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: In Houston, storm brews over Katrina evacuees. In Houston, storm brews over Katrina evacuees. From: Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL) | Date: May 2, 2006 | More results for: houston crime post katrina
Byline: Howard Witt
HOUSTON _ The crowd gathered inside a west Houston high school auditorium to hear from their congressman was already aggrieved over issues ranging from illegal immigration to road building when the topic turned, as it often does these days in Houston, to the estimated 150,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina still living in the city.
"I am getting fed up with the criminals and troublemakers from New Orleans," Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, told constituents one evening last week. "We're certainly ready for those people to go home as soon as possible."
"Send `em home," echoed someone in the audience, to rising applause.
Across town, in one of the low-rent apartment complexes where some of the displaced New Orleans families landed, residents say they often are greeted by ugly graffiti bearing similar messages. Students from New Orleans complain of being ridiculed by peers and teachers alike. And some evacuees assert that they've been turned down for jobs based on their distinctive New Orleans accent.
"At first, Houstonians opened their arms to us, but now `Katrina fatigue' is a reality," said Angelo Edwards, vice chairman of the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association. "The thing that gets most of us evacuees is that we didn't ask to come to Houston. We didn't ask for a hurricane to destroy our homes."
Eight months after Katrina drove nearly half of New Orleans' residents to seek shelter in this sprawling metropolitan area of 5 million, where they initially were greeted with compassion, generosity and offers of rent-free apartments, the welcome mat is being rolled up.
Rising crime, increased costs, overcrowded schools, overburdened hospitals _ all are being blamed, fairly or not, on the Katrina evacuees, many of whom came from the poorest districts of New Orleans and cannot afford to go back to rebuild their ruined homes.
The mutterings can be heard in restaurants, coin laundries and barbershops all across Houston, and a survey last month by a Rice University sociologist confirmed the rising discontent: 76 percent of those polled said that helping the evacuees had put a considerable strain on the Houston community, 66 percent said the evacuees had caused a spike in violent crime and half of the respondents said the city will be worse off if most of the evacuees decide to stay.
That's a sharp turnabout from the weeks immediately after Katrina, when more than 100,000 city residents volunteered to help the New Orleans evacuees and local officials were overwhelmed with donations of food, clothing and furniture.
The negative perceptions are being driven in large measure by a post-Katrina jump in Houston's homicide rate that police say is at least partly attributable to criminals from New Orleans.
From Sept. 1, 2005, through mid-April, the city suffered 238 homicides, a 25 percent increase over the same period a year earlier, according to the Houston Police Department. Katrina evacuees were victims or suspects in 17 percent of the slayings.
A dozen brawls in Houston high schools last year between locals and students from New Orleans, including two that resulted in arrests, also tarnished perceptions of the evacuees.
Then there are the signs of economic strain. The city's apartment vacancy rate has contracted to 3 percent as Katrina evacuees have filled available buildings, their rents subsidized for a year by the city of Houston and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The city's hospitals report that they are treating more uninsured patients, many from New Orleans.
Houston Mayor Bill White, who is widely praised by Katrina evacuees for opening his city to them, has urged Houston residents to keep the problems in perspective.
"Basically you had a population of a medium-size American city lifted up and put down in another place, so you're going to get with that population all of the issues you would have with any city," said Frank Michel, White's communications director. "What we found out is that there was some small portion of the evacuees here who were in gangs, sold drugs and preyed on their neighbors, and they transferred that activity here. But it's not out of proportion with any population of 150,000 people."
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Police Chief Harold Hurtt, for example, notes that Houston's violent crime rate was rising last year before Katrina struck, and that the police force was depleted by a high rate of retirements. Total crime in 2005 actually dropped by 2 percent compared to 2004, Hurtt said.
Officials of the Houston Independent School District, meanwhile, say tensions between the 5,000 newcomers from New Orleans and turf-conscious local students were bound to occur but have greatly eased since the beginning of the year. Overall, disciplinary incidents in the city's schools are down 12 percent this school year compared to last school year, officials say.
"The reality is things have worked out rather well," said district spokesman Terry Abbott.
That is not how Culberson sees it, however. The congressman said he is drafting a bill in the House to establish a "one-strike rule" that would immediately deport criminal offenders from New Orleans back to their home city.
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"I've heard story after story from constituents who have had terrible problems with out-of-control kids from Louisiana schools, with people who are perfectly able to work but refuse to work because they've been receiving government assistance ever since they arrived," Culberson said in an interview. "There's been plenty of time for them to get back on their feet."
Dorothy Stukes, an evacuee from New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, said she would like nothing better than to find a job in Houston and settle down. But she said she has gotten a chilly reception from prospective employers.
"I looked for a job," said Stukes, who worked as a security counselor for the New Orleans school board before she and most other school employees were laid off in the wake of the Aug. 29 hurricane. "I was in law enforcement. I worked 17 years as a criminal sheriff. But you go on job interviews and they don't say anything. They just don't call you back."
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#2. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
(Edited)
I will contact this jackass' office and suggest that he make it apply to illegals also. Shit. A few hundred thousand legal blacks vs. several million illegals, come'on.
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