Houston residents want Hurricane Katrina evacuees to go home

Howard Witt:

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," U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, told constituents last week. "We're certainly ready for those people to go home as soon as possible."

"Send 'em home," someone said to applause.

Across town, in one of the low-rent apartment complexes where some of the displaced New Orleans families landed, residents said they often are greeted by graffiti bearing similar messages. Students from New Orleans complain of being ridiculed by peers and teachers. And some evacuees assert that they've been turned down for jobs based on their accent.

"At first, Houstonians opened their arms to us, but now 'Katrina fatigue' is a reality," said Angelo Edwards, vice chairman of the ACORN (or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) 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 Houston -- a sprawling metropolitan area of 5 million people, 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.

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% of those polled said that helping the evacuees had put a considerable strain on the Houston community; 66% said the evacuees had caused an increase in violent crime and half said the city will be worse off if most of the evacuees stay.

That's a sharp turnabout from the weeks immediately after Katrina, when more than 100,000 residents volunteered to help the evacuees, and local officials were overwhelmed with donations of food, clothing and furniture.

The negative perceptions are being driven in large measure by a jump in Houston's homicide rate, which police say is at least partly attributable to criminals from New Orleans.

From Sept. 1, 2005, through mid-April, the city had 238 homicides, a 25% increase over the same period a year earlier, according to the Houston Police Department. Katrina evacuees were victims or suspects in 17% 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% as evacuees have filled available buildings, their rents subsidized for a year by the City of Houston and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Hospitals report that they are treating more uninsured patients, many from New Orleans.

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