History > 2006 > USA > Weather > Hurricane Katrina

Evacuees (I)

Lawsuit Is Filed to Force FEMA

to Continue Housing Vouchers

May 20, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

Lawyers for New Orleans evacuees filed suit in Houston yesterday, asking a federal court to stop the Federal Emergency Management Agency from ending housing benefits for tens of thousands of people who fled the flooding of Hurricane Katrina. The evacuees had been issued 12-month housing vouchers by local governments but are now being told by FEMA that they must pay rent or leave.

The class-action suit, filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, says the agency has made "arbitrary, inconsistent and inequitable housing decisions without using any ascertainable standards" and describes the situation of several plaintiffs who, it contends, received vague or contradictory letters from FEMA or were denied further housing assistance for false reasons.

The suit was filed by Caddell & Chapman, a Houston firm, joined by a consortium of public interest legal groups.

The vouchers provided, in most cases, one year of housing and utilities to about 55,000 families, and were issued by Houston and other cities with the understanding that FEMA would reimburse them. Last month, agency officials said that nearly a third of the families — some 8,000 in Houston alone — were ineligible for such assistance.

But the mayor of Houston, Bill White, said many of the ineligibility rulings from FEMA were wrong. Some evacuees were told that their homes in New Orleans had not been damaged badly enough to qualify for assistance: that someone else in their household had already qualified for assistance elsewhere; that they failed to appear in person for an inspection of their home; or that their housing assistance had been withdrawn because a signature was missing from their paperwork.

Some were even told that they were not eligible for housing assistance because they had received a voucher, though the vouchers were being discontinued.

A FEMA official declined to discuss the lawsuit. "We're aware of the situation," said the official, Aaron Walker, a spokesman for the agency in Washington. "According to FEMA policy, we cannot comment on any pending litigation."

Agency officials have defended the decision to end the program, saying the vouchers were issued under the emergency housing program, which is available to virtually anyone from a disaster area but is not intended to be used for extended periods. That program ended in March. Hurricane Katrina families are being converted to the agency's long-term individual assistance program, which has stricter eligibility requirements.

FEMA officials have also said that the voucher program was unfair because not all evacuees received them — some entered the individual assistance program right away and received money to pay their own rent, which counts against the agency's per-family limit of $26,200.

The lawsuit says that in at least one previous disaster the agency has provided emergency housing for longer than a year. Federal law does not specify a time limit for emergency housing.

The lawsuit also addresses what it says are onerous requirements even for the eligible, who must now sign a new lease with their landlords, pay for their own utilities and requalify every three months. FEMA has failed to adjust its estimation of fair-market rents or provide clear criteria for requalification, the suit says.

    Lawsuit Is Filed to Force FEMA to Continue Housing Vouchers, NYT, 20.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/us/20vouchers.html

Frustration high ahead of New Orleans poll

Fri May 12, 2006 8:51 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Kemberly Samuels is frustrated, and not just because she is still unable to return to her home in New Orleans.

One of thousands exiled in Houston after Hurricane Katrina, Samuels said the two candidates for New Orleans mayor have appeared to lose interest in reaching out to displaced voters for the May 20 runoff election between the two Democrats.

The 53-year-old teacher helped marshal about 50 fellow evacuees from the Texas city this week for a five-hour bus trip home to attend a debate between Mayor Ray Nagin and his challenger, Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

"It was a slap in our face, because we feel they need our votes," said Samuels, whose efforts were led by activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. "To have us have to come out here instead of them coming to us kind of downplayed us as not being important at all."

Campaign workers deny candidates are avoiding evacuees, but admit to far less out-of-town travel than before the April primary. The candidates haven't gone to Houston to campaign or debate for the runoff, although they have made a few trips to see displaced voters within Louisiana.

But Samuels expressed some of the growing frustrations among voters here and scattered across the country as the long race to lead the massive recovery heads into its final week with no clear front-runner emerging.

Nagin and Landrieu face the tough task of distinguishing themselves while touting similar policies.

AHEAD OF STORM SEASON

Nagin said he is the man of experience dealing with state and federal authorities and the business community, and warns against a change just before the storm season starts June 1.

Landrieu, brother of Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu and son of the city's last white mayor, stresses his talent lies in building coalitions, a skill he said Nagin lacks and one required to speed up the plodding recovery process.

The agenda is all but set for the struggling city, where more than half the pre-Katrina population has yet to return, said Brian Brox, a political scientist at Tulane University.

Voters want confidence the economy will pick up, ravaged neighborhoods will rejuvenate, evacuees can return and the levees will hold when the next storm hits, he said.

"As candidates, they have slight differences in their plans, but right now they're trying to differentiate themselves on their ability to enact them and enact them quickly," Brox said. "It's connections, it's leadership, it's who is going to be the more vigorous advocate for New Orleans."

The list of problems is long. Large parts of the city, such as New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward, appear stuck in suspended animation. Streets are lined with debris and empty houses, the only visible change over eight months being the recent growth of weeds in yards. Crime is making a comeback.

Fears also abound that New Orleans faces bankruptcy, although Nagin said the city has enough money to last through the summer and he is working to finalize a $150 million line of credit with a consortium of 20 banks.

Many pundits had written Nagin off after he was criticized for a shaky initial response to the disaster and some racially charged remarks. But the former cable executive vaulted to the lead in the April primary with 38 percent of the vote, gaining large support from the black community.

After that campaign, analysts again said the mayor was in trouble, pointing out that 21 of his rivals took a combined 62 percent of the vote. That may have also been premature.

Landrieu won 29 percent in April, but had the more even split between black and white voters, according to state figures.

"I haven't done a poll, but personally I think the election's very close," said Ed Renwick, a Loyola University political science professor. He says he now believes many of the white voters are still undecided.

    Frustration high ahead of New Orleans poll, R, 1222.5.006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-05-13T005127Z_01_N124935_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-ELECTION.xml

Evacuees Find Housing Grants Will End Soon

April 27, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

HOUSTON, April 21 — Thousands of hurricane evacuees who counted on a year of free housing and utilities are being told by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that they are no longer eligible for such help and must either pay the rent themselves or leave.

Of about 55,000 families who were given long-term housing vouchers, nearly a third are receiving notices that they no longer qualify, FEMA officials said. For the rest, benefits are also being cut: they will have to sign new leases, pay their own gas and electric bills and requalify for rental assistance every three months.

The process has been marked by sharp disagreements between the agency and local officials, and conflicting information given to evacuees about their futures. Although agency officials say they never promised a full year of free housing, many local officials around the country say yearlong vouchers were exactly what FEMA agreed to provide.

[The agency was sharply criticized in draft bipartisan recommendations to be released Thursday by a Senate committee, which said the agency functioned so poorly during Hurricane Katrina that Congress should abolish it and rebuild a more powerful agency.]

In the desperate weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the vouchers helped stabilize the lives of evacuees who had bounced from place to place while trying to find missing family members and deal with mysterious skin rashes, shellshocked children and reams of red tape. At least, the vouchers promised, they would not have to worry about shelter.

Now, eight months later, the notices have panicked evacuees and raised the ire of local officials and landlords, who say FEMA is reneging on a promise and dismantling a program that is helping more people and is far less expensive than other housing solutions like trailers.

To make matters worse, advocates and local officials say, many evacuees either do not know why they have been found ineligible or have been given spurious reasons. Many notices do not even give a deadline, saying only, "You will not be asked to leave before April 30."

"We believe that many of the people who received notice that they're ineligible are eligible," said Mayor Bill White of Houston, where more than 9,000 of the 35,000 families on vouchers have been determined to be unqualified, raising fears of mass homelessness.

In an effort to persuade FEMA to reconsider, Mr. White has gone so far as to send teams of building inspectors to New Orleans to photograph evacuees' destroyed homes.

David Garrett, FEMA's acting director of recovery, said the agency had promised only to reimburse for "up to" 12 months of housing. But the cities that actually issued the vouchers, including Houston, Memphis and Little Rock, Ark., said the agency had agreed in negotiations to pay for the full term.

Although the paperwork accompanying the vouchers in Houston did say they were good for "up to" 12 months, local officials in all three cities said evacuees had been told, without contradiction from FEMA, that they would last a year.

"They knew exactly what we were doing," said Buddy Grantham, the chief operating officer of the Joint Hurricane Housing Task Force for Houston, which issued the 12-month vouchers in anticipation of being reimbursed by FEMA. "We were totally transparent."

Agency officials say fairness and the law prevent them from leaving the voucher system in place. The programs were hurriedly set up by state and local governments under FEMA guidelines for emergency housing, which is available to virtually anyone from a disaster-stricken area but is not intended to be used for extended periods.

Now, the agency is converting the families to its more traditional, and stricter, long-term housing program, the individual assistance program. Many people who qualified for emergency housing do not meet the requirements for long-term assistance, and the agency says it cannot ask taxpayers to continue to bankroll those families, although an agency spokesman, Aaron Walker, was unable to provide an estimate of how much money would be saved.

Mr. Garrett said the program was not fair to families who did not get vouchers, but instead went directly from shelters or hotels into the stricter program, under which they receive rent money every three months. The payments count against the total each family can legally receive from FEMA, $26,200, while rent and utilities under the voucher program do not. (FEMA trailers do not count either, agency officials said, because they are not as comfortable as apartments.)

The emergency housing program covers utilities, but the individual assistance program will not, unless Congress approves a request from President Bush to change the regulations.

The movement away from long-term vouchers has created widespread confusion among evacuees. A disabled evacuee in Little Rock said that when she called FEMA to ask why her rent was no longer being paid she was informed, erroneously, that she had never had a voucher. In Memphis, where there are 1,500 families on vouchers, FEMA initially asked those running the program to reclaim the furniture and basic kitchen items issued to evacuees, backing down after strenuous objections, said Susan Adams, the executive director of the Memphis and Shelby County Community Services Agency.

"It feels like a total lack of compassion," Ms. Adams said. "A total lack of humanity."

FEMA has no record of the furniture request, a spokesman for the agency said.

In interviews with more a dozen evacuees, some said they had been told they were ineligible because their home in New Orleans had not suffered enough damage, or they had insurance covering living expenses, or their paperwork lacked a signature, or they had not appeared in person for an inspection of their damaged home. FEMA recently agreed to review its findings for mistakes.

Mr. Garrett emphasized that evacuees could appeal any decision. But according to written guidelines, the agency will not continue to pay rent while a case is on appeal.

FEMA itself has difficulty explaining the ineligibility findings. The agency told Houston officials that about 1,200 of 8,500 families had insufficient damage to their homes and that 1,600 were in a category called "ineligible — other." Some 1,050 were denied on appeal, but the original reason for the denial was not given. More than 2,300 were described as being eligible only for an initial $2,000, with no further explanation.

Some evacuees said they had planned their lives around the security of the 12-month voucher. Erica Stevens, 26, said the promise of housing had drawn her and her three children to Houston after Hurricane Rita destroyed her home in Beaumont, Tex. She did not receive much other assistance, she said, because her landlord filed a FEMA claim on the house before she did, making her ineligible.

Karen Douglas, an evacuee living with two sons in a pleasant house in a Houston suburb, said that amid enrolling the elder son in school, battling insurance adjusters and looking for a job, she had managed to put the insurance proceeds from her destroyed house into investments that would mature in November, when her voucher was to expire. "It's stressful, but I thought I had it together," she said.

Then, on April 15, Ms. Douglas too got a letter. She would like to appeal but does not know why she was found ineligible. The letter says only that she had been previously notified of the reason. "I was expecting FEMA to honor the agreement," she said. "I wasn't expecting them to go midstream and pull the rug out from underneath us."

Trailer Plan Is Revived

NEW ORLEANS, April 26 (AP) — Mayor C. Ray Nagin and federal officials on Wednesday revived the effort to place thousands of trailers throughout the city as stopgap housing for people who lost their homes .

Three weeks ago Mr. Nagin halted work on new trailer sites, saying FEMA had used "bullying" tactics and built a site outside a gated community without the proper permits. But Mr. Nagin and FEMA officials now say they have bridged their differences. Officials hope to install about 8,000 trailers by the end of June. Before the impasse, FEMA had placed about 1,500 travel trailers at enclosed sites around the city.

        Evacuees Find Housing Grants Will End Soon, NYT, 27.4.2006,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/us/27vouchers.html

Katrina's Tide Carries Many to Hopeful Shores        NYT

23.4.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/us/23diaspora.html

Jeralyn and Whitney Marcell, with Rashad, 10,
in their hurricane-ravaged home in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
The Marcells, who have since resettled in suburban Atlanta,
had just bought the house when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

Katrina's Tide Carries Many to Hopeful Shores        NYT

23.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/us/23diaspora.html

Rashad Ballard, 10,

a former resident of New Orleans, on his way to school in suburban Atlanta.

Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

Katrina's Tide Carries Many to Hopeful Shores        NYT

23.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/us/23diaspora.html

Mr. Marcell tending to his daughter, Whitney,

who was born in February and named after her father.

Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

Katrina's Tide Carries Many to Hopeful Shores        NYT

23.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/us/23diaspora.html







 

Katrina's Tide Carries Many to Hopeful Shores

April 23, 2006
The New york Times
By JASON DePARLE

LITHONIA, Ga. — One afternoon last August, a young bus driver headed to an office in a suburb of New Orleans, humming the song to an old television show. He arrived just before his wife, who was pregnant with their first child and escorting four troubled teenagers from the alternative school where she worked.

At 24, the driver, Whitney Marcell, weighed 300 pounds, and answered to the name Big Man. His wife, Jeralyn, who goes by Fu, had just turned 28. She brought along the hard-faced adolescents because her own hard life had presented her with a gloriously teachable moment: Big Man and Fu, up-from-nothing products of New Orleans's roughest projects, were about to buy their first home.

"Are you sure you can afford it?" friends had sniped, but Mr. Marcell's only worry about the $86,500 loan was whether the terms would let him pay it off early. The couple signed a pile of legal papers and left the office owning a house in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.

As he packed that night, Mr. Marcell returned to the song from "The Jeffersons," a sitcom about a dry cleaner and his wife who had risen to the black bourgeoisie. Like his television heroes, George and Louise, Mr. Marcell crooned about "moving on up," then startled himself by crying.

Two days later, Hurricane Katrina struck with biblical force, destroying the Marcells' new home, and chasing them to the outskirts of Atlanta, where they became part of the largest American diaspora since Dust Bowl days. But despite the loss of nearly everything they owned, the Marcells say they have moved up again.

The median household income in their new neighborhood is nearly twice that in the Lower Ninth Ward, and more than four times that in the projects where they had lived. Though they had recently worked their way out of poverty in New Orleans, the Marcells say this mostly black suburb offers much safer streets, better schools and a stronger economy.

The Marcells' journey illustrates one surprising benefit from an otherwise terrible storm: the exodus took low-income families to areas richer in opportunity.

The New York Times analyzed relocation patterns in 17 counties in and around Atlanta and Houston, two leading destinations for Katrina evacuees. Like the Marcells, the average evacuee has landed in a neighborhood with nearly twice the income as the one left behind, less than half as much poverty, and significantly higher levels of education, employment and home ownership.

Still, it is unclear whether a better environment will bring success, for the Marcells or for others like them.

The Marcells say Atlanta has plenty of jobs, but seven months after the storm they are still jobless. They praise the school their 10-year-old attends but put much of their energy into his nascent rap career, as his reading scores lag. By the time George Jefferson was "Moving on Up," he had seven dry-cleaning stores and a "de-luxe apartment in the sky" — not, as the Marcells do, unemployment checks and subsidized housing.

Some Katrina families may be too traumatized to benefit from the moves. Others may drift back to poor areas when government aid decreases. Even if they stay, the new neighborhoods may make little difference. Other forces — like family structure, cultural heritage and personal motivation — may do more to shape success.

Nonetheless, the relocation of tens of thousands of low-income families creates a grand experiment in class mixing. While the full effects will not be known for years, Ms. Marcell is among those who think it will succeed. She was furious with Barbara Bush last fall when the former first lady, seeming to ignore the pain the storm had caused, said the evacuation was "working very well" because most displaced families "were underprivileged anyway." Yet in calling Atlanta a "land of opportunity," Ms. Marcell, from the other end of the class spectrum, is making a parallel point.

Like many black New Orleanians, she has spent years listening to boosterish accounts from friends and family in greater Atlanta. She insists there is no going back. "Everybody we know who came up here got a nice-paying job and a house," Ms. Marcell said. "We going to have our time to shine."

A Thriving Black Middle Class

DeKalb County, where the Marcells have settled, shines especially bright for African-Americans. With a population that is 56 percent black, and an average household income close to $50,000, it forms one of the nation's great showcases for the black middle class.

Incorporating part of the city of Atlanta, the county spreads out 20 miles north and east to subdivisions carved from dairy farms. A drug and crime zone runs across a southwestern flank. The Marcells' apartment, in Lithonia, is on the booming eastern edge.

It is a place that encourages African-Americans to think big. Among the local growth industries is the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which claims 25,000 members, including the Marcells. In pushing a gospel of prosperity, New Birth's pastor, Bishop Eddie L. Long, has practiced what he has preached. As reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, his compensation from a charity affiliated with the church topped $3 million over four years.

Three years ago, New Birth started a center for aspiring entrepreneurs. Darold P. Honore Jr., one parishioner Bishop Long nurtured in business, arrived from New Orleans two decades ago and is now Lithonia's part-time mayor. "It's different from the Big Easy, where everyone's pretty much contented," Mr. Honore said. "Here it's more or less moving and shaking."

To make his point, he offered a tour of subdivisions bulging with 10,000-square-foot homes, many occupied by Lithonia's black elite. A mile away, all but spilling into the Marcells' apartment, is the four-year-old Stonecrest Mall, which covers former pastureland with 1.3 million square feet of hotels, restaurants and stores.

Growth is the region's secular religion. A half-century ago, Atlanta was a second-string province the size of Birmingham, Ala. Now it is home to four million people and the world's busiest airport, with a prosperity that crosses color lines. Compared with blacks nationwide, the black population of greater Atlanta is much better paid, much better educated and much more likely to be raising children with two parents at home.

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, found that since the mid-1980's, more black New Orleanians have left for greater Atlanta than for any other place. Among them was Mr. Marcell's mother, who was 17 when he was born. She left him with his father's mother and joined the crowds in the out-bound lane.

Up From the Mean Streets

Once the economic leader of the South, New Orleans has been in decline for at least 100 years. The Marcells came of age there in an especially mean place and time: public housing in the age of crack.

Over the last 25 years, the city had lost nearly one in five residents and one in seven jobs. Seven superintendents had passed through the school system in 10 years. By the mid-1990's, no American city had a higher homicide rate. Raised in the mayhem, the Marcells each clung to a fortifying thought: "I'm better than this."

Home for Mr. Marcell was the St. Thomas project, a low-rise slum along the Mississippi River near the mansions of the Garden District. When he talks of the grandmother who raised him there, Mercedes Jackson, he dwells on two points: she worked a lot — as a hospital aide — and prayed even more. "I cannot say I ever saw a day when she did not get on her knees," he said.

His father, who had a job in a printing plant, lived nearby with a younger set of children, and visited often. With a third of the St. Thomas apartments vacant, trouble could hide anywhere. Mr. Marcell took to hiding, too, behind a genial front that gave little away. "You can't show your teeth to every guy you meet," he said. "Cause everybody not ready to be cool."

Ms. Marcell grew up in like fashion — in a working poor family stuck in the projects but steadied by faith. Her mother, Sherry Williams, raised six children in the B. W. Cooper Homes as a nursing aide. Ms. Marcell's father, a roofer, lived with the family into her teens, when her parents divorced.

Pregnant in the 10th grade, Ms. Marcell left school, but quickly earned a high school equivalency degree and put her jauntiness to work as a waitress. To improve her vocabulary, she had a younger sister, Keisha — a future high school valedictorian — drill her on word lists. "I always was talking — I won't say like a thug — but like a street person," Ms. Marcell said. "I knew I could talk better."

Crack arrived midway through the Marcells' youths, turning the projects into killing zones. A 9-year-old boy in Ms. Marcell's neighborhood lost his life to an errant bullet just weeks after writing to President Bill Clinton "to stop the killings." Among the items Keisha salvaged from the Katrina flood was her 2004 valedictory speech at John McDonogh High School, lamenting "evil and its wicked ways," a reference to the day in her junior year when three teenagers with an AK-47 executed a rival during gym class.

After finishing high school in 1999, Mr. Marcell joined his mother in DeKalb County, where she had prospered as a medical billing specialist and married a sheriff's deputy. But Mr. Marcell returned to New Orleans after a year and met his future wife in a club.

Ms. Marcell recalls hearing God tell her she was looking into her husband's face. "I asked him, did he have Christ in his life," she said. He asked her the same. They married seven months later and started family life in the Cooper project with Ms. Marcell's 6-year-old son, Rashad Ballard.

Though they worked a set of menial jobs, like parking cars and waiting tables, they also started a series of entrepreneurial ventures: a house-cleaning business, car detailing and a Friday night takeout service called "Big Man and Fu's Suppers."

In 2004, the Marcells moved up — him to a job as a city bus driver, her to a counselor's post at a school for juvenile delinquents. Rashad, a shy schoolboy off the stage but a dervish on it, started a rap career. After a few small-time gigs, he appeared on the BET network last spring for a few seconds of background dancing in a video by the rapper Chopper.

"We saw a massive change in our life just ahead," Ms. Marcell said. "Cause we knew that Rashad's career was going to hit off."

With a combined income of more than $40,000, the Marcells discovered they could get a mortgage, and they found a four-bedroom home last summer in the Lower Ninth Ward. As they moved their belongings the day after the house settlement, Hurricane Katrina rushed toward New Orleans. With Ms. Marcell four months pregnant, they were in no mood to test the storm.

They left for Georgia that night, planning a short stay with Mr. Marcell's mother. In time, most of their scattered family would join them outside Atlanta— 25 people in seven apartments, one exit from Stonecrest Mall.

Neighborhoods of Hope

Like pellets from a shotgun blast, New Orleanians spread everywhere, filing change-of-address cards from cities as distant as Anchorage and San Juan, P.R. About 365,000 city residents fled; only about a quarter have returned.

Given the physics of race and class, there was reason to worry about where they would land. Three-quarters of flood-zone residents were black, and nearly 6 in 10 were living on less than $30,000 a year. Nationally, such families tend to be crowded together in areas long on crime, short on jobs and plagued by inferior schools.

That is not the story of Katrina evacuees. In both Atlanta and Houston, their neighborhoods look much like the region as a whole. Measured against where they had lived in New Orleans, most find that a big step up.

To examine relocation patterns, The Times counted evacuees at elementary schools in metropolitan Atlanta and Houston: 13,000 students at 1,100 schools. Using the schools as proxies for neighborhoods, The Times then analyzed the surrounding Census Bureau tracts.

In both cities, the average evacuee lives in a place extraordinary only for its ordinariness. Neighborhoods where evacuees settled have virtually identical levels of education, employment and homeownership as the surrounding metropolis.

Those areas do have somewhat greater concentrations of minority residents and single mothers, and slightly lower incomes. But they are no more prone to outright poverty.

"It looks a lot better than I would have guessed," said Myron Orfield, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who studies regional inequality. "I would have guessed that Katrina families would have been relocated in tracts much more disadvantaged and more segregated than the region as a whole."

Jesse Rothstein, a Princeton economist, agreed. "These are better neighborhoods than I would have expected," Mr. Rothstein said.

The real contrast for evacuees is with the neighborhoods they have left behind.

In the flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans, annual household income was $27,000. In the average evacuee's tract in Atlanta, it is $52,000.

In New Orleans, 42 percent of the neighborhood children were poor. In evacuee tracts in Atlanta, the rate is 12 percent.

In New Orleans, about half the child-rearing families in the flood zones had fathers in their homes. In evacuee tracts in Atlanta, nearly three-quarters do.

"I love New Orleans, don't get me wrong," Ms. Marcell said. "But I thank God we are in Atlanta."

The pattern of resettlement may have been shaped in part by the success of previous migrations. Some evacuees turned first to family or friends prosperous enough to take them in, then settled nearby — a subtle form of upward steering.

The Marcells are a good example. They started at Mr. Marcell's mother's house, three exits away on Interstate 20 from where they live now. Since the Marcells were still on the public housing rolls — they had not officially left the projects — they received a voucher from the federal government for 18 months' rent at a private apartment. They wanted one near a good school, and a friend suggested Stoneview Elementary.

On a recent morning, Rashad left home just past 8 looking like a cover of Vibe magazine, with a Pepe Jeans jacket and Size 4 Timberland boots. His back bent from a bulging pack, he walked three blocks to school and entered a classroom trailer, where his teacher, David Smith, fussed at his fourth-grade charges.

"Remember: a person who will not read ... " Mr. Smith began.

A chorus roared back: "... is no better than a person who cannot read!"

Demographically, Stoneview fits the stereotype of a troubled urban school. More than 90 percent of its students are black, and 85 percent receive a subsidized lunch. Only 23 percent of fifth graders exceed state standards on reading tests, about half the metro average.

Still, a tone of crisp purpose is set by its principal, Farrell Young. Parents from New Orleans marvel at the automated phone calls they get whenever a student fails to check in. While few Stoneview students ace the reading test, 81 percent pass it, not far off the metropolitan Atlanta average of 89 percent.

Among evacuees, it is an article of faith that the local schools far surpass those back home. For Ms. Marcell, Exhibit A is Mr. Smith, who has been quick to call her whenever Rashad seems down. "Mr. Smith really cares," Ms. Marcell said.

By the time the bell rang, Rashad had crowded onto the floor beside classmates to imagine a slave ship's hold; written a paragraph about ice cream; divided 4,133 by 5; and learned a mnemonic to track the inner planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars: "M-Vem."

"What's the name of that big college in Massachusetts I want y'all to go to?" Mr. Smith asked. "When y'all go off to Haah-vaaad, remember 'M-Vem.' "

Two Sides of Resettlement

Can better neighborhoods rescue the poor? Or will bad luck and habits follow wherever they land?

Optimists may note that the United States was built on the promise of fresh starts, from the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock to Pakistani cab drivers in Queens. A change of address has turned prairie nobodies into California gold-strike kings, and a Mississippi migrant named Oprah Winfrey into a Chicago billionaire.

Yet migrant lore also includes its special brand of the blues, the lament of those who discover the streets are not paved with gold.

Don Wilson is one Stoneview parent who thinks Atlanta sparkles. Since arriving seven months ago, he has landed a job and then a promotion, to sales manager for Global HealthCare Systems, a company that sells discount cards for medical services. He said he was earning 25 percent more than he did in New Orleans as a recruiter for a technical school. "I get to make someone's life better, and at the same time be prosperous," Mr. Wilson said.

A New Orleans native, Mr. Wilson moved away, returning five years ago at the age of 40 to find a stagnant city with few prospects for blacks. In Atlanta, he sees black achievers everywhere.

"It's nothing to see people driving around in Mercedes, and they look like you," he said. "They're black. That tells you that you could do it."

"I love the environment," Mr. Wilson said. "I'm really happy."

Sheba Akmin's reaction could not have been more different. Landing in Lithonia, Ms. Akmin, a 30-year-old hairdresser, dropped five dress sizes and developed stomach ulcers. She missed home so much she drove to New Orleans just to buy groceries, returning from the 12-hour round trip with king cakes, Bunny Bread, smoked sausages and a stash of filé powder.

"I wasn't familiar with the food in Atlanta," she said.

The bustle that excites Mr. Wilson left Ms. Akmin drained. She was appalled that her neighbors did not know one another's names, and wounded by the rejection she got when applying for jobs. "People in Atlanta is bougie — they stuck up," she said. "Everybody is for themselves. It's zoom, zoom, zoom."

In March, her boyfriend, a cook, reclaimed his job at a New Orleans restaurant, and she raced back home with him. "I know there was opportunity for me" in Atlanta, she said. "But all I did is cry."

Katrina families differ from the classic American migrant in at least one important way: they did not choose to move. Simply by deciding to strike out from home, the immigrant of lore has already shown much of the drive needed to succeed. Evacuees' ambitions, unlike their neighborhoods, cannot be quantified.

Anthony Hall, another Stoneview parent, has enrolled in DeKalb Technical School, but warned: "A lot of people right now are waiting around. You got to get that out of your mind; Oprah can only help so many people."

Migrants typically prosper most in places with prosperity to share. That is why Atlanta and Houston, with more jobs at higher pay, hold a promise that New Orleans lacked. But migrations are shaped by the migrants, too, their culture, character and connections.

Social networks are especially important. Newcomers tend to thrive where they have friends. Mr. Wilson, the medical-card salesman, found his job through his New Orleans church, which had formed an Atlanta congregation. Ms. Akmin was isolated. "I didn't know anybody," she said.

Local reaction can also shape migrants' success. Greater Houston has more than 100,000 evacuees, whose presence is a source of growing strain. A series of high school brawls has pitted evacuees against local rivals, and displaced New Orleans gangs have been blamed in part for a surge of homicides. Mayor Bill White led a welcoming effort, but public sentiment is turning against evacuees.

Even in metropolitan Atlanta, which has about a third as many evacuees as Houston, many complain they are being labeled freeloaders or criminals.

For all the promise of the new neighborhoods, other problems can get in the way. The troubled New Orleans schools, for one, may have left students too far behind their new peers.

Texas officials have estimated that Katrina students, on average, lag their new classmates by at least a full grade. In Lithonia, standardized tests show Rashad reading two years below his grade level, even though he got A's and B's back home.

The move up may also prove short-lived if evacuees are forced into worse areas or if their current neighborhoods decline. Reviewing the Times data, Professor Orfield, the Minnesota scholar, saw one warning sign: evacuee schools looked worse than evacuee neighborhoods. They have more low-income students than schools regionwide, more minorities and lower test scores. That is worrisome, he said, because "the schools resegregate first and the neighborhoods tend to follow."

In Atlanta, the tipping appears to have begun, according to the Times analysis. In the average evacuee's neighborhood, the black and Hispanic population grew to 49 percent in 2000 from 31 percent in 1990. Single motherhood also rose, and the employment rate declined.

Another possibility is even more fundamental: what if neighborhoods matter less than commonly thought? As far back as Jacob Riis, the 19th-century crusader against slums, experts have argued that bad neighborhoods perpetuate poverty, steeping the poor in bad influences while walling them off from good schools and jobs.

In making a parallel case, contemporary social scientists have been particularly influenced by the Gautreaux program in Chicago, which moved black families from public housing into white suburbs, where more adults found jobs and more children went on to college. Gautreaux began in 1976 and lasted two decades.

But a successor program, Moving to Opportunity, failed to replicate the results. Operating in five cities in the 1990's, the program moved public-housing tenants of all races into neighborhoods with less poverty. An evaluation, published three years ago, showed that the transplanted adults neither worked more nor earned more than those who had stayed behind.

"The process of neighborhood influence appears to be more subtle and complex than most of us thought," said Jeffrey Kling, a Brookings scholar who helped evaluate the program.

Moving to Opportunity produced one clear benefit: it left the transplanted families feeling much safer. After years of housing-project violence, the Marcells revel in a similar sense of safety. "It's a relief to be someplace where people's not shooting," Mr. Marcell said.

One reason for the otherwise disappointing results may have been the modesty of the moves. Most Moving to Opportunity participants landed in areas only marginally better than those they had left; having moved farther up the neighborhood ladder, Katrina evacuees may reap bigger benefits.

Another explanation is that influences like family dynamics or cultural mores may matter more than neighborhoods. Among those tacitly making that case was Rashad's teacher, Mr. Smith, who recently transferred to a nearby school.

When Mr. Smith moved to DeKalb six years ago, he sought a school like the one where he had taught in Savannah, Ga., filled with the children of Asian immigrants. "You talk about students who want to learn! I was drooling!" he said. Asked how Stoneview students compared, he paused, then said, "I don't think education is stressed, or stressed enough."

'Go-Getters' With a Dream

Ms. Marcell answers talk of potential pitfalls with a forecast of success, "because we are some go-getters." But with both Marcells still unemployed, the go-getters have yet to get going.

Mr. Marcell said he initially delayed a job search to stay at home with his pregnant wife. Then he applied at four stores, a restaurant and several gas stations, he said, without getting hired. He did reject an offer to drive a bus three days a week, saying he was put off by the part-time schedule. He added, "I really don't know about bus driving down here; the streets are kind of narrow."

Now with his unemployment benefits extended, he is postponing his job search to focus on Rashad's career. "I'm trying to help my son pursue his dreams," he said.

Ms. Marcell also turned down a job, as a helper at a day care center; she decided to postpone work until she had the baby. Whitney Mercedes Marcell, a girl, arrived on Feb. 7, and Ms. Marcell said she planned to find a job when her daughter turns three months old.

In the meantime, she has revived a previous business plan, pitching kitchen cabinets to the New Orleans housing authority. Officially still one of its tenants, she has an edge when bidding on the agency's contracts. Teaming up with a Mississippi manufacturer, she thought she had her first deal just before the storm, a renovation of 36 apartments that would have brought her a fee of 7 percent, or about $15,000.

With much of the city's public housing in need of reconstruction, Ms. Marcell is trying to finalize that deal and land new ones. "I'm not going to let this go," she said. "I worked too hard for it."

Though jobless, the Marcells are not destitute and have been able to replace much of what they lost to the flood. They have a new wide-screen television, a new computer and a new living-room suite. Last fall, Mr. Marcell's 1992 Chevy Suburban was stolen. Though it was uninsured against theft, he bought a newer model, and added a DVD player.

"We are a hard-working family," Mr. Marcell said. "We feel entitled to live comfortable."

The $400 a week they get in unemployment checks replaces only about half their former take-home pay. But insurance paid off their mortgage (giving them title to the land). And with their housing voucher they pay no rent. In net terms, the rough numbers provided by the Marcells show that their income has fallen by about $175 a week — or by about $5,300 over seven months.

Against that, they have received more than $7,000 in lump-sum payments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Red Cross and relatives. And the Marcells said they arrived in Atlanta with about $8,000 in savings. "That's what we're really cutting into now," Mr. Marcell said.

Others in their family are off to a similarly slow job hunt. "I'm going to wait until my little unemployment check runs out" before going back to work, said Ms. Marcell's mother, who collected $10,000 from FEMA for the contents of her flooded apartment. After two decades in nursing homes, she said, "I was tired of working like a dog."

After 26 years in a printing plant, Mr. Marcell's father, Widdon Jackson, is collecting unemployment. Keisha, the valedictorian, was in college back home, but after months in Atlanta without work or school, she left for Houston.

The career the Marcells seem most focused on now belongs to Rashad, who raps under the name Lil' Chucky.

"I just hope that people like Oprah Winfrey, people like Puff Daddy, will get a chance to hear his cry," Mr. Marcell said.

" 'Shad got a good career going," said Mr. Marcell's father. "He going to make his family rich!"

Their spirits soared a few months ago when Mr. Marcell got Rashad on the stage at an awards show, just yards from the rap star Ludacris. Not long after that, a bigger break seemed to appear in the form of an electronic beat, a percussive track over which original lyrics can be dubbed. The beat, recorded by an engineer named Vaughn Pacsch'l but known as Afro, borrowed its refrain from another black sitcom, "Good Times."

"As soon as I heard that beat, I said this is the one," Mr. Marcell said. A good beat can sell for $1,000 or more; Afro agreed to sell three for $500, including "Good Times," and tape Rashad's version of the song.

For weeks, the Marcells honed their lyrics, mixing nostalgia for home with criticisms of FEMA's response to the hurricane. "Good Times" became "Good Tymez."

The night of the taping, everyone was tense. Mr. Marcell idled the Suburban in a gas station parking lot and ran Rashad through practice takes. Ms. Marcell returned from the station's cash machine and counted out the money she owed Afro. Rashad, still awaiting dinner, kept messing up his lines. "Get more aggressive!" Mr. Marcell said.

Shortly before 8 p.m., the Suburban rumbled into a trim subdivision where Afro answered the door in tinted glasses and braids. His wife — a nurse hoping to make it as a singer — introduced herself as Oracle, then said her real name was Destiny.

Hat cocked, pants loose, ablaze with cubic zirconium, Rashad arrived with more bling than zing. He looked pooped. "Go in the corner, get in your zone," Mr. Marcell said. "You're going to be hitting this mike in a second."

"What's wrong with you?" asked Ms. Marcell. "Loosen up."

Rashad did a 360-degree turn, splayed his legs, and lifted an arm, as though crowning himself with an exclamation point.

"Let's run it," Afro said.

Rashad flubbed his first line.

"Show some more aggression!" Mr. Marcell said.

Rashad missed the second take. His timing was off on Takes 3 and 4. He garbled the words on Take 5.

"Come on," said his mother. "Let's nail this!"

Katrina left my city flat
But I'm about to bring it back
And we going to have a good time!

"That's it!" Ms. Marcell said.

Mr. Marcell glowed and growled out a verse.

Man the government is so lazy
But if I woulda lost my wife and my unborn baby
I woulda went crazy.

"You sound really mad at Bush!" Ms. Marcell laughed. "You sound like Tupac!"

"It's 4:09 — radio friendly," Afro said.

It was almost 10 p.m., and Rashad had school in the morning.

"I'm a go home, take a bath, and go straight to bed," he said to no one in particular. Retakes followed, and lots of waiting, as Afro adjusted the mix. By 10:30, Rashad was asleep on the floor, and Mr. Marcell soon fell asleep there, too, after pledging to get the finished disc to a radio station first thing in the morning.

He dropped it off a few days later, but it was never broadcast.

Still, the evening left Ms. Marcell jazzed. She sat up past midnight telling Destiny her dreams, as Afro spun the dials, searching for the elusive formula for success.

Matthew Ericson and Alain Delaquérière contributed research for this article.

    Katrina's Tide Carries Many to Hopeful Shores, NYT, 23.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/us/23diaspora.html?hp&ex=1145851200&en=1c8633cc9a0b1bdd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Storm Evacuees Are Straining Texas Hosts

April 20, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

HOUSTON, April 15 — To the long list of adjectives used to describe Texans since last summer's hurricanes — munificent, intrepid, scrappy — add one more: fed up.

Seven months after two powerful hurricanes blew through the Gulf Coast, elected officials, law enforcement agencies and many residents say Texas is nearing the end of its ability to play good neighbor without compensation.

Houston is straining along its municipal seams from the 150,000 new residents from New Orleans, officials say. Crime was already on the rise there before the hurricane, but the Houston police say that evacuees were victims or suspects in two-thirds of the 30 percent increase in murders since September. The schools are also struggling to educate thousands of new children.

To the east of here, Texans argue that Hurricane Rita, which took an unexpected turn away from Houston shortly after Hurricane Katrina last fall to wreak havoc from Jasper to the northeast to Sabine Pass near the Louisiana border, has been forgotten in the swirl of attention given to the devastation in New Orleans.

In fact, they say, the nation never really took notice of the 77,000 homes made uninhabitable by Hurricane Rita's force, 40,000 of which were not insured, or the piles of debris and garbage that still fester along the roads. "Personally I am sick of hearing about Katrina," said Ronda Authement, standing outside her trailer in Sabine Pass, where she will live until she can get the money and the workers to put her three-bedroom house back on its foundation. "I would like to throw up, frankly, hearing about Katrina."

In its frustration, Texas has thrown its hat in the great Congressional money game, arguing vociferously for federal money to help pay for new police officers in Houston, where the force has dwindled in recent years, and to repair homes in East Texas, where many poor residents lack the means and the insurance to do it on their own.

Though the state has requested $2 billion in federal aid to pay for law enforcement, education and housing, state officials say they have received only $22 million so far.

"We were told we would be taken care of by everybody on the federal level," said Chris Paulitz, a spokesman for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, who recently helped get $380 million in aid added to President Bush's latest supplemental request for Texas. "But clearly that isn't the case. Texas opened its doors and hearts, and that is something we will continue to do today. However, we need to be reimbursed."

Houston's relationship with its added population is subtle and at times ambivalent. Residents, atomized over a broad swath of land with few interneighborhood connections, seem at one level to be dedicated to helping their neighbors, and are quick to cite numerous examples of continued volunteerism and the improved lives of children who they say are getting a better education than they received in New Orleans.

But they are also keenly aware of spikes in crime, especially in Southwest Houston, where the majority of the poorest New Orleanians settled.

"The city of Houston bent over backwards for these people, and I am glad we did it," said Scott Wilson, 43, who lives in the Montrose section. "But now we are absorbing some of their problems."

Evacuees have been victims of or accused of committing 39 of the 235 murders in Houston since last September, said Houston's police chief, Harold Hurtt. In January alone, there was a 34 percent rise in felonies over the previous year in the city.

"I can't tell you what percentage of that group is evacuees," Chief Hurtt said. "But I am sure they are really represented in that group."

Chief Hurtt said that some of the gangs that once operated in New Orleans housing projects had relocated to Houston, a city plagued with its own gang problems.

In response, the city moved 100 officers working in city jails to high-crime areas, and greatly increased overtime, a tall order for a department that has lost 800 officers to retirement over the last two years.

The city has asked the federal government for $77 million to hire 560 officers over five years. At Senator Hutchison's request, the Department of Justice recently sent the Police Department $20 million to help pay for patrolling high-crime areas.

The Houston public school system, with about 208,000 students, also wants money to pay for more teachers, additional facilities and tutoring help for its roughly 30,000 evacuee children. The New Orleans schools, surrounded by far greater poverty than Houston, are among the nation's most troubled.

Houston's school system has also experienced fighting between local and New Orleans students in its schools — 27 students from the two sides were arrested in one melee — but school crime is down over all.

"It has been a challenge," said Terry Abbott, a spokesman for Houston Independent School District, "but generally the vast majority of the children are well behaved and many are grateful to be here."

But results on standardized tests suggest that "the students from Louisiana were substantially behind the Texas kids," Mr. Abbott said.

"We have asked the state government for resources to get them up to speed," said Mr. Abbott, with an eye toward regulations of the federal No Child Left Behind law. "That will be a concern, but these children are ours now, and we don't look at them in any other way."

In East Texas, state officials are seeking roughly $1 billion in new federal block-grant money to house people whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Rita.

Texas officials concede that their coast was not pummeled nearly as badly as their neighbors in Louisiana, but they argue that their residents did not evacuate and were now trying to live in squalid, mold-infested conditions.

"I have been to the Ninth Ward," said Mark Viator, chairman of the Recovery Coalition of Southeast Texas, speaking of the most devastated neighborhood in New Orleans. "There is debris in the Ninth Ward, but you don't have people. We say, send the money where the people are."

Henry Bowie, who lives in Port Arthur, a city with high unemployment and many poor residents, is the sort of person Mr. Viator thinks should get federal housing money. His house is a patchwork of broken roofing, and light is visible through the floorboards because the house is off its foundation. Black mold grows up the sides of the walls, but Mr. Bowie, who undergoes dialysis three times a week, remains there with his wife and teenage son.

Not everyone is sympathetic to the needs of Texas, where oil refinery businesses continue to take in millions of dollars in profits monthly, even though state officials say they do not have enough workers because of a housing shortage. In testimony at a recent appropriations hearing, Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, said he did not believe Texans needed housing money.

"Texas, in the best role of traditional Judeo-Christian charity, provided benefits," Mr. Bond said. "I think it's time we get back to being a good neighbor and not a paid companion."

Senator Hutchison, who spoke next, was not amused.

Mayor Guy N. Goodson of Beaumont, where thousands of homes were damaged, said he would like to see federal reimbursements for debris removal there rise to 90 percent of costs from 75 percent, equaling what it was in Louisiana. Mayor Goodson said his area suffered inattention because its residents had done the right thing: evacuating and rebuilding without complaint after Hurricane Rita cut its path.

"There is a great disjoinder in people's minds about disaster," he said. "You see wildfires, you see a tornado, and who can forget the pictures of the Ninth Ward. A vast majority of our area is wind damage. And unfortunately from a sensory standpoint, people just don't coordinate these two very similar disasters."

    Storm Evacuees Are Straining Texas Hosts, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/us/nationalspecial/20texas.html?hp&ex=1145592000&en=da2f7e910d4474dc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Storm Evacuees Found to Suffer Health Setbacks

April 18, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

Families displaced by Hurricane Katrina are suffering from mental disorders and chronic conditions like asthma and from a lack of prescription medication and health insurance at rates that are much higher than average, a new study has found.

The study, conducted by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the Children's Health Fund, is the first to examine the health issues of those living in housing provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Based on face-to-face interviews with more than 650 families living in trailers or hotels, it provides a grim portrait of the hurricane's effects on some of the poorest victims, showing gaps in the tattered safety net pieced together from government and private efforts.

Among the study's findings: 34 percent of displaced children suffer from conditions like asthma, anxiety and behavioral problems, compared with 25 percent of children in urban Louisiana before the storm. Fourteen percent of them went without prescribed medication at some point during the three months before the survey, which was conducted in February, compared with 2 percent before the hurricane.

Nearly a quarter of school-age children were either not enrolled in school at the time of the survey or had missed at least 10 days of school in the previous month. Their families had moved an average of 3.5 times since the storm.

Their parents and guardians were doing no better. Forty-four percent said they had no health insurance, many because they lost their jobs after the storm, and nearly half were managing at least one chronic condition like diabetes, high blood pressure or cancer. Thirty-seven percent described their health as "fair" or "poor," compared with 10 percent before the hurricane.

More than half of the mothers and other female caregivers scored "very low" on a commonly used mental health screening exam, which is consistent with clinical disorders like depression or anxiety. Those women were more than twice as likely to report that at least one of their children had developed an emotional or behavioral problem since the storm.

Instead of being given a chance to recover, the study says, "Children and families who have been displaced by the hurricanes are being pushed further toward the edge."

Officials at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said the study's findings were consistent with what they had seen in the field.

"I think it told us in number form what we knew in story form," said Erin Brewer, the medical director of the Office of Public Health at the department. "We're talking about a state that had the lowest access to primary care in the country before the storm. And a population within that context who were really, really medically underserved and terribly socially vulnerable."

Ms. Brewer said that some of the trailer sites were regularly visited by mobile health clinics, but acknowledged that such programs were not universally available. Neither Congress nor the State of Louisiana eased eligibility requirements for Medicaid after the storm, and because each state sets its own guidelines, some families who received insurance and food stamps in other states were no longer eligible when they returned home.

While state officials said $100 million in federal block grants was in the pipeline for primary care and mental health treatment, the study's authors said the need was urgent.

"Children do not have the ability to absorb six or nine months of high levels of stress and undiagnosed or untreated medical problems" without long-term consequences, said Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Mailman and co-founder of the Children's Health Fund.

The households included in the study were randomly selected from lists provided by FEMA. They included families living in Louisiana in hotels, trailer parks managed by the disaster agency and regular trailer parks with some FEMA units. A random sample of children in the surveyed households was selected for more in-depth questioning.

For comparison, the study used a 2003 survey of urban Louisiana families conducted by the National Survey of Children's Health.

David Abramson, the study's principal investigator, said it was designed to measure the social and environmental factors that help children stay healthy: consistent access to health care and mental health treatment, engagement in school, and strong family support.

In the Gulf Coast region, where child health indicators like infant mortality and poverty rates were already among the highest in the country, Dr. Abramson said, "all of their safety net systems seem to have either been stretched or completely dissipated."

The study's authors raise the prospect of irreversible damage if children miss out now on normal development fostered by stable schools and neighborhoods.

One couple told interviewers their three children had been enrolled in five schools since the hurricane, in which one child's nebulizer and breathing machine were lost. The equipment has not been replaced because the family lost its insurance when the mother lost her job, they said, and the child has since been hospitalized with asthma.

In another household, a woman caring for seven school-age grandchildren, none of whom were enrolled in school at the time of the survey, said she was battling high blood pressure, diabetes and leukemia.

That woman, Elouise Kensey, agreed to be interviewed by a reporter, but at the appointed hour was on her way to the hospital, where she was later admitted. "I've been in pain since January, and I'm going to see what's wrong," she said. "It's become unbearable."

One woman who participated in the survey, Danielle Taylor, said in an interview that she had not been able to find psychiatric care for herself — she is bipolar — or her 6-year-old daughter, who not only went through the hurricane but had also, two years before, been alone with Ms. Taylor's fiancé when he died.

The public clinic Ms. Taylor used to visit has closed since the storm, she said, and the last person to prescribe her medication was a psychiatrist who visited the shelter she was in four months ago. No doctors visit the trailer park in Slidell, La., where she has been staying, she said.

Ms. Taylor said that her daughter, Ariana Rose, needed a referral to see a psychiatrist, but that her primary care physician had moved to Puerto Rico. "She has horrible rages over nothing," Ms. Taylor said. "She needs help, she needs to talk to somebody."

The survey found that of the children who had primary doctors before the storm, about half no longer did, the parents reported. Of those who said their children still had doctors, many said they had not yet tried to contact them.

The study's authors recommended expanding Medicaid to provide universal disaster relief and emergency mental health services, as well as sending doctors and counselors from the federal Public Health Service to the region.

The Children's Health Fund, a health care provider and advocacy group, is not the only organization to raise the alarm about mental health care for traumatized children after Hurricane Katrina. A report issued earlier this month by the Children's Defense Fund said youngsters were being "denied the chance to share their bad memories and clear their psyches battered by loss of family members, friends, homes, schools and neighborhoods."

Anthony Speier, the director of disaster mental health for Louisiana, said that while there were 500 crisis counselors in the field, the federal money that paid for them could not be used for treatment of mental or behavioral disorders like depression or substance abuse. Instead, he said, much of their effort goes into short one-on-one sessions and teaching self-help strategies in group settings.

"The struggle for our mental health system is that our resources are designed for people with serious mental illnesses and behavior disorders," Dr. Speier said. "But now the vast population needs these forms of assistance."

Dr. Speier continued, "What we really from my vantage point could benefit from is a source of treatment dollars."

According to the study's authors, the post-storm environment differs significantly from other crises because of its uncertain resolution.

"This circumstance is being widely misinterpreted as an acute crisis, somehow implying that it will be over in the near term, which is categorically wrong," Dr. Redlener said. "This is an acute crisis on top of a pre-existing condition. It's now a persistent crisis with an uncertain outcome, over an uncertain timetable."

    Storm Evacuees Found to Suffer Health Setbacks, NYT, 18.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/us/nationalspecial/18health.html?hp&ex=1145419200&en=edb50eb873106f34&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Craving a Voice, New Orleanians Take to the Road to Cast Ballots for Mayor

April 11, 2006, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

LAKE CHARLES, La., April 10 — Monday was the first day for early voting in the New Orleans mayor's race, and all over Louisiana and Texas, dislocated residents rose before dawn and drove for hours to cast their ballots at 10 satellite voting centers.

The unusual arrangement, established after weeks of political wrangling in Louisiana, is expected to accommodate thousands of New Orleanians separated from their city by Hurricane Katrina yet eager for a voice in the political process.

On Monday, 1,402 people throughout Louisiana took advantage of early voting, with more than half casting ballots in New Orleans. After the early voting this week, regular voting in the city will take place April 22, with a runoff expected in May.

Here at the state's western edge, buses and vans brought 112 people from Houston and San Antonio to the Calcasieu Parish courthouse, transformed into a voting precinct for the battered city 200 miles to the east.

Though bleary-eyed, none said they regretted the early awakening.

"I would have spent the night in the parking lot if I had had to," said Debra Campbell, who got up at 4:30 a.m. to be on one of the two buses from Houston. "We just need help. We need help getting our homes together."

Ms. Campbell, a former resident of the city's Seventh Ward, had never lived outside New Orleans. "Please believe us, we're suffering," she said.

Patiently, the voters — all of them black — lined up in the courthouse corridor to fill out their paper ballots, then get back on the buses and vans for the nearly three-hour ride back to Houston or the six-hour trip to San Antonio. The bus and van trips were organized by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, a national advocacy group.

Early voting centers were also set up in Shreveport, Lafayette, Baton Rouge and smaller cities. New Orleans was the only place besides Lake Charles where election officials reported a brisk turnout.

Many of Monday's voters, jammed into small apartments far from home with no house to return to and angry at the slow pace of recovery in New Orleans, said this vote was the most significant they had ever cast.

"This is the most important ballot of my life," said Gilda Burbank, a former community outreach worker at a New Orleans church. "I want to come home. I mean, I want to come home. I mean, every day, I want to come home. This is the first step. I'm so hopeful."

The election is widely viewed as a potential turning point for New Orleans, with the changing demographics since the storm raising the possibility that a white mayor could be elected there for the first time in a generation.

None of the voters talked to here on Monday mentioned this, but several said they were voting for the leading black candidate, the incumbent C. Ray Nagin, saying he had been unfairly blamed for problems after the hurricane.

"If he's going to be knocked out of office, you need to remove everybody," said Verlean Davis, who came from San Antonio and whose home and possessions in eastern New Orleans had been "totally wiped out."

Mr. Nagin has retooled his political approach for this election, appealing directly to black voters for the first time. In his first campaign, white voters gave him his winning margin.

Cara Harrison, a displaced resident of the Ninth Ward, said a defeat for Mr. Nagin would represent a setback for blacks.

"For the working poor, and the African-American community, he's our best voice," said Ms. Harrison, who drove from Houston with her sister and was among the first to vote.

Others said, however, that they would vote for Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, a white who has emphasized assembling a biracial coalition.

"Everybody needs this election, to put in somebody who's going to do something for New Orleans, so people can start rebuilding," said Marie Moss, a Kmart sales clerk washed out of her home in eastern New Orleans, who said she would vote for Mr. Landrieu.

With many voters displaced, candidates have had to travel far afield — to Atlanta, Houston and Dallas, principally — to make their appeals. Despite intense interest in the election at home, with heavy turnouts at mayoral forums, the candidates have mostly kept to a safe script.

The vote is likely to come down to race, analysts say, with the big question being whether Mr. Landrieu can attract enough black support to put him over the top in the anticipated runoff.

At a forum in New Orleans on Saturday that was broadcast live to New Orleanians staying in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, candidates were asked whether they would restore services immediately to all the city's neighborhoods. All the major candidates said it would be unrealistic to do so, given the city's crippled tax base.

But they all said they would work to bring citizens home, the aspiration of virtually all those who made the trip here Monday.

"All of our New Orleans people are distributed throughout all the states," said Linda Lacey, a voter formerly of the Eighth Ward. "I was born and raised there. We need to go back."

    Craving a Voice, New Orleanians Take to the Road to Cast Ballots for Mayor, NYT, 11.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/us/nationalspecial/11orleans.html

New Orleans candidates court hurricane evacuees

Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:34 PM ET
Reuters
By Erwin Seba

HOUSTON (Reuters) - New Orleans city election campaigns are being waged where the voters are -- in cities like Baton Rouge, Houston, Dallas and Austin, where many residents ended up after being scattered by Hurricane Katrina.

Mayoral candidates including incumbent Ray Nagin and leading rivals Democratic Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Nature Institute President Ron Forman have traveled to meet with evacuees still living outside their devastated city, which exceed the number of people who have returned.

Forman, who has raised the most money of any mayoral candidate, said between one-quarter and one-third of his $1.6 million war chest would go to reaching out-of-town voters through travel to as many as seven cities, newspaper advertising, direct mail and e-mail.

No candidate can afford to ignore voters whether they are in New Orleans or outside the city, Forman told Reuters on Saturday.

"It's both," he said. "This could be the most important election in the history of our city."

The campaign revolves around a controversial rebuilding plan supported by Nagin that foresees a population less than half of the 500,000 who lived in New Orleans before Katrina struck on August 29.

About 180,000 people were estimated to be living in the city in January, according to city emergency officials. The Federal Emergency Management Agency counts 106,000 New Orleans residents living in Baton Rouge and 69,000 in Houston. More than 100,000 others are scattered around the country.

The hurricane killed about 1,300 people along the Gulf Coast and 2,000 people are still listed as missing.

In Houston, using FEMA lists, volunteers carrying clipboards are knocking on doors in large apartment complexes on the southwest side of the city that Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt has identified as hotbeds of criminal activity.

"Some of them are very rough," said volunteer Glenda Harris.

THREE-HOUR BUS RIDE TO VOTE

The volunteers, sponsored by local and national nonpartisan political organizations, have signed evacuees up for absentee ballots or bus rides to satellite polling stations Louisiana officials plan to place in Lake Charles, Louisiana, three hours east of Houston.

But the voter registration and education campaign may determine the outcome of the April election in which 24 candidates are running for mayor in addition to about seven candidates for each of seven City Council seats.

"Houston by itself could decide who is mayor in New Orleans," said Barbara Waiters, who evacuated from the Algiers neighborhood ahead of Katrina and expects to live in Houston for at least another year.

The rebuilding plan is seen as the key to which ethnic groups will decide the future of New Orleans.

William Falk, a University of Maryland sociologist who has studied black population trends, said New Orleans may have a majority white population for years to come.

The 2000 U.S. Census showed blacks made up two-thirds of the city's population.

"We cannot imagine a majority-black city for a long time to come, barring some miraculous turnaround," Falk said at a New Orleans sociology conference on Friday, according the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

    New Orleans candidates court hurricane evacuees, R, 25.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-03-25T233356Z_01_N25230036_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-VOTERS.xml

Evacuees' Lives Still Upended Seven Months After Hurricane

March 22, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN, MARJORIE CONNELLY and ANDREW LEHREN

Nearly seven months after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and forced out hundreds of thousands of residents, most evacuees say they have not found a permanent place to live, have depleted their savings and consider their life worse than before the hurricane, according to interviews with more than 300 evacuees conducted by The New York Times.

The interviews suggested that while blacks and whites suffered similar rates of emotional trauma, blacks bore a heavier economic and social burden. And even as both groups flounder, most said they believed that the rest of the nation, and politicians in Washington, have moved on.

"I don't think anybody cares, really," said Robert Rodrigue, a semiretired computer programmer who has returned to his home in the suburb of Metairie. "New Orleans is kind of like at the bottom of the country, and they just forget about us."

The Times study is the first major effort to examine the lives and attitudes of those displaced by the storm's devastation at the six-month point, a moment when many must decide whether to establish a life in a new place or return home.

Fewer than a quarter of the participants in the study have returned to the same house they were living in before the hurricane, while about two-thirds said their previous home was unlivable. A fifth said their house or apartment had been destroyed. Many have not found work and remain separated from family members.

Still, most of those interviewed favor returning to the city, expressing a sense of optimism about the recovery process or, more often, a fierce yearning for home, as if staying away from New Orleans were like trying to breathe air through gills.

The 337 respondents were chosen randomly from a Web database of more than 160,000 evacuees, sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was set up to help victims of the disaster reunite with their families. The interviews were conducted by telephone.

The Times used standard survey methods in asking the questions and recording the answers, but the interview project differs from a scientific poll. For one thing, the demographic characteristics of the full evacuee population cannot be determined, so the group cannot be sampled with the statistical precision of a poll. For that reason, no margin of sampling error could be calculated for the study, which was conducted from Feb. 16 to March 3.

Although the interviewees do not constitute a statistical sample, the racial makeup of the group, two-thirds black, was similar to that of the pre-hurricane population of the city. Those interviewed tended to be older and more predominantly female than the population as a whole.

The blacks interviewed were more likely to have had their homes destroyed or to have lost a close friend or relative. Although a majority of both blacks and whites left their homes before Hurricane Katrina hit, blacks were more likely to have been separated from family members.

And while a majority of whites and blacks reported that they had depleted their savings since the storm, blacks were more likely to have done so, and more likely to have been forced to borrow money. Whites were more likely to have kept their jobs or found similar or better employment, and were also more likely, by a wide margin, to have already returned to the New Orleans area.

A central question for New Orleans has been how much of its population would return, and 4 in 10 of those interviewed said they definitely or probably would. Another fourth were already back.

"New Orleans is in my blood; it's in my genes," said Jacob Mitchell, 67, a hospital maintenance man who is living for the time being with his daughter in Slidell, La. "It's like I'm married to New Orleans."

Of the rest of his family, scattered to four cities in three states, Mr. Mitchell said, "If they had a house to come back to, they'd be packing up tonight."

Tayari Kwa Salaam, 56, a consultant for several nonprofit groups, is back even though her paying clients are not. "For me, this is the most Afrocentric city in the United States," she said. "There's a way that we talk and way that we be that's just home."

Ms. Salaam, who describes herself as "one level above poverty," said that although she fretted over the city's future, she immediately began looking for ways to return after evacuating to her daughter's home in Baltimore. "Once we felt that chill in the air and it wasn't even autumn yet — and just the people there," she said. "It was generally cold."

Another quarter of those interviewed said they did not plan to return. The most common reason cited was fear of a repeat of last year's disaster.

A smaller group said they had settled in and were happy in their new location.

Those age 40 and older were almost twice as likely as the rest of the respondents to have already returned, and people in their 20's and 30's were more likely to say they were not going back.

Denise Debouchel, 46, said that her husband was living in a trailer in St. Bernard Parish, which is just east of the city and suffered some of the worst destruction, and that she was still at her sister's home in North Carolina. Ms. Debouchel believes the levees will never be high enough to prevent another flood of Hurricane Katrina proportions.

"I just can't fathom going through this again," she said. "It could be the end of my marriage."

Other families cited financial considerations and stability for their children. Deadra Ellis, 40, said she had found a job in San Antonio, her husband's job had transferred there, too, and the elder of her two children was settling into her new high school. The family would like to hold onto its house in eastern New Orleans, Ms. Ellis said, but insurance costs might prove too high.

"We are all kind of homesick," she said. "But I've been scanning the real estate listings — nothing is there."

Some of the poorest people in New Orleans were not included in the project, in part because they did not have access to the database or posted the telephone numbers of emergency shelters where they left no forwarding information. Only about a third of the people who participated in the study spent any time in emergency shelters, and even fewer sought refuge at the Superdome or the convention center.

More than one in 10 of the respondents said they were homeless or needed a permanent place to live. Although three out of five said they were depressed, and many reported symptoms like trouble sleeping or edginess, only one in five said they had talked to a therapist or counselor since the hurricane.

Nearly half were living in a house or apartment rented after the hurricane, while about a fifth were living in the same home as before the storm. Almost another fifth were living in someone else's home.

Attitudes about how the city should be rebuilt were complex, with many who want to return saying they would prefer a different neighborhood to the one they left. Nearly 9 out of 10 said protecting the city from flooding was worth a significant outlay of federal money, with almost as many saying that even low-lying areas should be rebuilt along with an improved levee system.

But asked if people should be able to live in those areas, 3 in 10 said the land should instead be returned to marsh.

As with race, income levels seemed to be a determining factor in how people fared. Those with household incomes over $30,000 a year were more likely to have evacuated before the hurricane as those who made less. They were also more likely to have stayed in a hotel or motel.

About 7 out of 10 respondents rated the Red Cross and FEMA as very or somewhat helpful, but the respondents were overwhelmingly critical of the local, state and federal government's response to the hurricane.

More than two-thirds disapprove of how President Bush and Congress are handling the response to Hurricane Katrina. Almost as many are critical of Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's response, and more than half disapprove of Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who is up for re-election in April. But among Mr. Bush, Ms. Blanco and Mr. Nagin, more people approved of Mr. Nagin's response, by a wide margin.

Some shared the opinion of Reuben Friedman, 59, a retired lawyer who said that officials did the best they could in an unparalleled disaster.

"I'm not so much critical of their post-Katrina conduct as I am the failure to properly design and maintain the levees, which I think led directly to the loss of life and property," Mr. Friedman said.

Many of the black evacuees said the poor response was at least in part due to race. About half called race a major factor in the government's slow response. By contrast, almost three-quarters of the white evacuees said race was not a factor at all.

In follow-up interviews, some evacuees said the city had the potential to be better than it was before the storm, but others worried about the city's unique culture because the poor black residents who are a crucial part of it were having the most difficulty returning. Many expressed frustration about what they perceived as a lack of clear instructions about where or whether they could rebuild.

"We're kind of left in limbo," Mr. Rodrigue said. "So we can't move forward and we can't move back."

Brenda Goodman contributed reporting from Atlanta for this article, and Marina Stefan from New York.

    Evacuees' Lives Still Upended Seven Months After Hurricane, NYT, 22.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/national/nationalspecial/22katrina.html?hp&ex=1143003600&en=d2dc0b01c80fcff1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

How the Study Was Conducted

March 22, 2006
The New York Times

The New York Times study of Hurricane Katrina evacuees was based on interviews with 337 people who left the New Orleans area in the wake of the storm. Interviews were conducted by telephone Feb. 16 to March 3.

A sample was drawn from an online database created by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was the main public repository for those seeking to locate friends and family members affected by the hurricane, and those who wanted to let others know they had survived the hurricane.

The database remained on the Internet for months after the hurricane for anyone to examine.

More than 160,000 unique names were entered into the database. For those without computer access, or unfamiliar with using a computer, volunteers helped the victims.

The New York Times used that publicly available database and randomly selected names for this study, interviewing only adults who had evacuated from the New Orleans area. The Red Cross was not involved in the project.

The study differs from a scientific survey in that the total population of evacuees is unknown and therefore could not be sampled precisely or randomly.

Three of every five of those interviewed lived in New Orleans before the hurricane; the rest are originally from the area surrounding the city. Almost two-thirds of the study's participants were black and about a third were white — similar to Census Bureau figures for the city's population. But the participants were older and slightly more likely to be women than the city's population. (The precise racial, age and sex breakdown of all evacuees is not known.)

Because the answers from the 337 respondents in the study cannot be projected to a definable population, no margin of sampling error can be calculated. For that reason, the accompanying article avoids giving specific figures in most cases.

Michael R. Kagay of Princeton, N.J., assisted The Times in its analysis.

    How the Study Was Conducted, NYT, 22.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/national/nationalspecial/22mbox.html

New Orleans mayor race goes on the road to Atlanta

Sat Mar 18, 2006 7:33 PM ET
Reuters
By Karen Jacobs

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Ray Nagin and the top contender for his job as mayor of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans tried to sway voters exiled in Atlanta on Saturday as part of a makeshift campaign critics say is unfair to black evacuees.

Nagin, New Orleans' face to the world since Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city last August, faced off against Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and five others at a forum 500 miles from where the winner will oversee rebuilding efforts.

An overarching issue in the April 22 vote is how to bring 250,000 people -- more than half of New Orleans' pre-Katrina population -- back to a city sorely in need of housing and economic recovery.

Some 45,000 New Orleans residents are in temporary housing in Atlanta. Nagin and Landrieu, whose family is synonymous with Louisiana politics, also have taken their campaigns to Houston, home to as many as 150,000 evacuees.

Nagin told about 100 people at the forum in south Atlanta that with the city struggling to get housing and levee repair funds from Washington and the next hurricane season set to start June 1, now was the wrong time to change leaders.

"Do we have the luxury of allowing somebody to come into office with cute ideas and nice thoughts and be immediately thrust into the next hurricane season?" asked Nagin, first elected in 2002.

Twenty-four candidates are vying for the mayor's office in the aftermath of the disaster, which killed 1,300 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast. But only a handful attended the forum.

RACE EMERGES AS A FACTOR

Ron Forman, head of the city's Audubon Zoo, and Landrieu are considered strong challengers to Nagin, a Democrat who has angered some voters by saying he wanted to rebuild New Orleans as "a chocolate city."

Landrieu, also a Democrat, said racial divisions should be put aside as the city famous for jazz music, Mardi Gras and Creole cuisine tries to revive. His father, Moon Landrieu, was New Orleans' last white mayor when he left office in 1978.

"The storm put a magnifying glass on us and it made us see ourselves clearly," he said. "What was OK before Katrina is not OK after Katrina."

But in a sign that the election itself has become a racial issue, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson have said the process is skewed against black evacuees.

The NAACP failed last week to get the U.S. Justice Department to block the election after Louisiana's secretary of state barred the use of voting machines in other jurisdictions with many evacuees.

Instead the state is offering absentee ballots.

As much as half the city's black population was displaced and not everyone has good access to election information, the group said.

A woman who has lived in Atlanta since Katrina said she thought it was time to get on with the process, however.

"For those who live there and those who return, there is a need for strong leadership," said retired teacher Beatrice Stanley, 62. "You can't just drift, and that's what's happening now."

    New Orleans mayor race goes on the road to Atlanta, R, 18.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-03-19T003345Z_01_N18205411_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-ELECTION.xml

Evacuees From Hurricane Katrina Die in Apparent Murder-Suicide

January 25, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:29 p.m. ET
The New York Times

AUSTELL, Ga. (AP) -- A New Orleans couple who had been chased from their home by Hurricane Katrina died in an apparent murder-suicide, leaving behind an infant and a severely injured 4-year-old boy.

Police entered the couple's rented home in the Atlanta suburb of Austell early Wednesday after a call from a relative in New Orleans.

The woman ''said that her nephew had called her and stated that he had an argument with his wife and that she was hurt pretty bad, and in fact she was dead,'' said police Chief Bob Starrett.

Police Lt. Gordon Firth said they found the woman dead in the living room, and her injured son strapped in a nearby high chair.

A SWAT team found Jerome Spears, 28, in a back bedroom, dead of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot, Starrett said.

Starrett initially said the boy had been beaten so severely that both of his eyes were shut, but authorities later said he might have been shot. The boy, who Firth said is autistic, underwent surgery Wednesday morning at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

A 5-month old girl was uninjured, Starrett said.

Both children were to be turned over to the Department of Family and Children's Services.

Firth said the unmarried couple had lived in the rented house for about two months and police had no record of prior calls to that address. A string of Christmas lights still decorated the front porch Wednesday morning.

''The tragic thing is this 4-year-old boy most likely saw his mother killed and was (injured) and tied up right there where his mother was lying in a pool of blood,'' Starrett said. ''It's as bad as it could get.''

The names of the 24-year-old woman and the children were not immediately released. Starrett said authorities were having difficulty finding the couple's relatives because so many Louisiana residents scattered after the hurricane.

    Evacuees From Hurricane Katrina Die in Apparent Murder-Suicide, NYT, 25.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Evacuees-Killed.html

Katrina evacuees add to Houston murder woes

Sat Jan 7, 2006 7:57 PM ET
Reuters
By Matt Daily

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Police in Houston reported a 23 percent jump in murders over the last year as the fourth largest U.S. city grappled with 150,000 evacuees from New Orleans and no extra money to cope with the influx.

Police statistics show that 336 people were murdered in Houston in 2005, compared to 273 the previous year.

The city's murder rate was already increasing before Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, city officials say, and was worsened by a staffing shortage in the police department.

Police say at least 10 of the deaths have included suspects or victims from New Orleans, a city that had one of the highest U.S. murder rates for years, leading the country in 2002 and 2003.

Houston's spike in murders came sharply into focus over the Thanksgiving holiday when 14 people were killed during the long weekend, about twice the usual number.

"It was definitely a bad, long weekend," Houston police chief Harold Hurtt said at the time.

One of the murders resulted in the arrest of a New Orleans evacuee suspected of shooting another, and city officials say many of the crimes have taken place in apartment complexes where the evacuees are now living.

This week, Hurtt launched a program to increase police presence at the troubled complexes and other areas with increased crime.

"Some of these areas that have been identified are clusters of evacuees," he said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Mayor Bill White, who has been praised for opening the city to the refugees, admitted the influx of so many displaced people -- many of them poor and without jobs -- has had an impact.

"Some people who preyed on the vulnerable and broke the rules in Louisiana have gravitated to certain apartment complexes which already had a high concentration of crime," White said recently. "Now, those areas have a worse problem."

Houston has requested $6.5 million in police funding from Federal Emergency Management Agency to help cover the staffing costs of the new anti-crime initiative, saying it is needed because of the Katrina evacuees. Washington has not yet approved the request.

City Council member Ada Edwards cautioned that the evacuees should not be used as scapegoats.

"We did have criminals that came here from New Orleans, but we had criminals before," Edwards said.

    Katrina evacuees add to Houston murder woes, R, 7.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-01-08T005656Z_01_WRI768058_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-HOUSTON.xml