With Regrets, New Orleans Is Left Behind

From NYT

With resignation, anger or stoicism, thousands of former New Orleanians forced out by Hurricane Katrina are settling in across the Gulf Coast, breaking their ties with the damaged city for which they still yearn.

They now cast their votes in small Louisiana towns and in big cities of neighboring states. They have found new jobs and bought new houses. They have forsaken their favorite foods and cherished pastors. But they do not for a moment miss the crime, the chaos and the bad memories they left behind in New Orleans.

This vast diaspora — largely black, often poor, sometimes struggling — stretches across the country but is concentrated in cities near the coast, like this one, or Atlanta or Baton Rouge or Houston, places where the newcomers are still reaching for accommodation.

The break came fairly recently. Sometime between the New Orleans mayor’s race in spring 2006, when thousands of displaced citizens voted absentee or drove in to cast a ballot, and the city election this fall, when thousands did not — resulting in a sharply diminished electorate and a white-majority City Council — the decision was made: there was no going back. Life in New Orleans was over.

Now, they are adjusting to places where the pace is slower, restaurants are fewer, existence is centered on the home, and streets are lonely and deserted after 5 p.m., as in this city in southwest Louisiana. These exiles, still in semi-limbo and barely established in a routine, describe their new lives less in terms of what it now consists of than of what they left behind.

“I told them, ‘I love turtle soup.’ People here go, ‘What’s that?’ ” said Pauline Hurst, a former therapy technician at a New Orleans hospital who settled here after her home was destroyed in the post-hurricane flood.

Dreadlocks, accepted in New Orleans, might mean a reservation at a fancy restaurant is suddenly “lost,” as in the telling of one exile here. A burst of gunfire might mean an instant police response rather than none at all, as in New Orleans, in the amazed recounting of another. Late-night cravings mean the IHOP rather than the famous Camellia Grill; going to work means hourlong trips on country roads, rather than, say, a 10-minute hop across the Industrial Canal from the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans.

Warily, they praise the quiet, the friendliness and the absence of crime.

“It’s the country, but it’s — lovely,” said Barbara Shanklin, a retired city bus driver who has settled 50 miles to the southwest of New Orleans in a Terrebonne Parish hamlet, Gray. Still, Ms. Shanklin added quickly, “I miss New Orleans.”

The precise calculus that went into these painful choices was complex, a mix of emotion and reason, in the telling of former New Orleanians. They voted in 2006 clinging to a hope of return, and in some cases a desire to protect decades of black political gains by returning an African-American, C. Ray Nagin, to the mayor’s office. But while 113,000 voted in May 2006, only 53,000 did last October. The mirage of the old, comfortable life in a city of densely woven neighborhoods, beguiling if sometimes dangerous street life, and inviting po’ boy sandwich shops contrasted too sharply with the grimmer present-day reality of New Orleans for these exiles.

The old house was gone. The neighborhood was empty. The friends were missing. The job had vanished. Rents were high, when you could find them. Murder had returned (with about 200 victims so far this year), even if many of their friends had not.

And the city seemed frozen in its half-ruined state, strangely alien and unfamiliar. The current population remains stuck at somewhere between 200,000 and 280,000, far below the pre-hurricane level of 450,000. These exiles do not see the New Orleans that has picked itself up; instead, they see the one that remains largely destroyed.

Away from the city, a less threatening existence awaited: blander and demanding adjustment, yet less oppressive. The quiet of languid country-town streets was deemed preferable to the absolute silence of whole abandoned blocks. Outside New Orleans, it was easier to deal with the still-fresh trauma of being homeless and losing “everything,” as several put it.

“In the beginning, I thought I might go back,” said Ms. Hurst, who came here with her sister and 88-year-old mother, also chased out by the hurricane, and lived with them for five months in a single large room at St. Mary’s Missionary Baptist Church. They now work at the church, which has become a regional relief center for storm evacuees.

The 2005 flood, Ms. Hurst said, turned everything in her home at the edge of the Broadmoor section of New Orleans “black, purple and green,” as though somebody had “just put everything in a blender.” Yet the city had not relinquished its grip on her, and she voted in the 2006 New Orleans election, at a special polling place in the white-columned Calcasieu Parish courthouse here.

Voting for the familiar New Orleans candidates was an act of normalcy. But that election, once over, did not magically conjure up the old New Orleans. Going back was a jolt.

“Everything was gone,” Ms. Hurst said. “All that was gone — community, friends — scattered. You feel like, when you go there, you’re walking into a strange country. It’s just totally different. It just feels like you’re in outer space.”

Each return visit to New Orleans brings sharp reminders of what was lost. “It hurts me, every time I go back,” said Ms. Hurst’s sister, Cynthia Jones.

Others spoke of being alienated from their old surroundings.

“There is nothing to go back to,” said Renee Roussell, whose husband found a job as a manager at a casino restaurant in Lake Charles.

Sylvia Young, a former public school teacher in the Lower Ninth Ward, now works as a mental health counselor in La Place, just up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Her old school and job are gone.

“I go, and I get depressed,” Ms. Young said.

She drove to New Orleans to vote in 2006 — “I thought for a minute I could possibly move back,” she said — but not this year.

“When I go to Gentilly,” Ms. Young said, “and I see my son’s school is not back, and the house we lived in is gone, and the house next door to Tammy and them is gone. Everything is just gone. It’s either torn down or partially being rebuilt or just nothing done to it at all.”

But, in the accounts from people who left New Orleans after the storm, the missing or ruined physical landscape is barely half of it. Even more absent now is the human landscape — the network of friends, relations and acquaintances that often, in New Orleans, helps compensate for fragmentary families and neighborhoods that can be dangerous. Life in the city takes place outside the home as much as inside; now, that would not be possible.

“It’s not New Orleans to me,” said Ms. Shanklin, the retired bus driver in Terrebonne Parish. “And I find myself asking, Where are all the people? I see all the empty houses, and I knew once there was people in all those houses.”

“Where are the people, you know? Where are the people?” Ms. Shanklin said. “It’s like somebody threw a bomb on it.”

Now, she lives in a trim little house that Habitat for Humanity built in a curving subdivision of similar dwellings definitely unlike New Orleans. The town of Houma is nearby, but there are fields all around, and it is quiet enough to hear birds. New Orleans noises — police sirens, traffic, honking car horns, children, hip-hop music — can be conjured only with difficulty. At night, Ms. Shanklin boasted, she opens her window and listens to the cows in the pasture.

But a year ago, she had a nervous breakdown and spent 10 days in the hospital. She missed New Orleans.

Ms. Roussell, in Lake Charles, said, “If anybody asks me where I’m from, I say New Orleans. It’s not easy to let go. But why go back home, when nothing is what it used to be?”

N.O. council may seek middle ground on demolitions

When the New Orleans City Council takes up the question Thursday of whether to issue demolition permits for four public housing complexes, the vote might not be an all-or-nothing decision. The council's action could be far more nuanced, as members prepare to vote on five separate measures that will determine the fate of the B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete, Lafitte and St. Bernard complexes.

Drafts of the proposed motions were still in the works Monday. But Council President Arnie Fielkow said they will mirror a series of requests made last week by the Housing Authority of New Orleans.

Four motions will ask the council to approve individual demolition permits for each of the housing developments, known as the "Big Four."

A fifth motion, if approved, would break a tie vote last week by a historic review committee that blocks the demolition of Lafitte.

Meanwhile, demolition opponents on Monday called on council members to delay their vote for at least 60 days to allow the council adequate time to independently investigate HANO's rationale for demolition.

Echoing arguments that critics of the plan have made for weeks, local ministers and housing advocates said Monday that the sturdiest of the public housing buildings should not be destroyed at a time the city needs housing as quickly as possible.

They also argued that displaced public housing residents face procedural hurdles in trying to land one of the hundreds of units in public complexes that officials say are available now or will be within weeks. The activists say there are fewer units available than the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development claims, because units don't always match the needs of potential tenants, such as larger units sought by larger families.

Looking for middle ground

In the end, critics say they would prefer that the council find a middle ground between wholesale demolition and complete renovation of the complexes. Some believe HANO should incorporate more of the Unified New Orleans Plan, a recovery blueprint built on citizen input. In the UNOP plan, residents favored some level of demolition, but also believed restoring the street grid could improve access and allow some public housing to be renovated quickly and efficiently.

HANO plans to demolish 4,500 public housing units at the four complexes and replace them with mixed-income neighborhoods. Officials said the demolition plan does not affect the agency's plan to reopen a total of 3,000 apartments within its traditional public housing stock.

Supporters say the plan offers better housing for the poor and that mixed-income neighborhoods are a better model than the concentrated poverty of traditional complexes.

A Morial legacy

In voting Thursday, council members will exercise relatively new authority.

Under an ordinance approved in 2002, new permits for the demolition of structures controlled by HANO or the Department of Housing and Urban Development can be issued only "after a City Council motion has been passed authorizing such a demolition permit."

Previously, owners of public housing, like any private property owner, applied directly to the city administration for a demolition permit.

The measure was proposed by former Mayor Marc Morial at the height of debate about converting the former St. Thomas public housing complex into the mixed-income River Gardens development that exists today. Morial at the time was waging a battle to stop HUD from taking over HANO, though in the end, the takeover succeeded, and HANO remains in receivership to the federal housing agency today.

In asking the council to approve the demolition permits this week, HANO executive administrator Karen Cato-Turner submitted paperwork explaining the redevelopment plans for the B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete and St. Bernard complexes. In those reports and in her letter, Cato-Turner argues that the redevelopment plans preceded Hurricane Katrina.

Cato-Turner also appealed to the council to break a split decision Dec. 10 by the Housing Conservation District Review Commission that, if allowed to stand, would impede demolition of the Lafitte complex near Treme.

Demolition deadlock

The commission, which reviews applications for demolitions in historically significant areas, approved HANO's request to tear down dozens of structures at B.W. Cooper and C.J. Peete but deadlocked on whether to authorize the demolition of Lafitte. The St. Bernard development is located outside the area overseen by the commission.

HANO officials have said the agency will lose $110 million in federal GO Zone tax credits and $27 million in housing block grants unless the commission's vote is reversed.

They also say that any interruption of plans to demolish Lafitte will imperil former residents' eligibility for government rental assistance.

In opposing the demolition plans, Robert Horton, a Critical Resistance member and former member of the St. Thomas public housing development, said too few of the St. Thomas residents displaced years ago were able to return once the complex was replaced by a mixed-income enclave. He and other critics of the HUD plan fear a similar outcome if public housing is redeveloped across the city.

"I don't have a problem with redevelopment. I have a problem with HUD and their history with redevelopment," Horton said during a meeting Monday with Times-Picayune editors and reporters.

The Rev. Marshall Truehill, a Baptist minister and former City Planning Commission member, said: "Let's call a timeout."

The critics included two other ministry figures, Bishop Charles Jenkins of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana and the Rev. Jim VanderWeele of the Unitarian Universalist Church. Others included Monique Harden of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights and Walter Gallas, a field office director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Even IRS unsure of tax effects

The Answer Spot addresses your post-Katrina questions. To submit a question, send it to insuranceTAXES

We are buying a house in Lakeview and the house has Road Home money associated with it. The sellers are receiving the Road Home money and signing it over to us. We are agreeing to all the covenants associated with the grant. Do we, the buyers, have to pay the taxes on the Road Home money? We did not claim any losses on our previous tax return. Who is responsible for the taxes on this money?

That is a very good question, and one that we can not answer at this time. The IRS is still considering how to handle situations such as this one, so it is unclear what tax consequences you will face.

You have mentioned that the Road Home grant is subject to federal income tax if the grant receiver filed a casualty loss in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. Could you point me to an IRS publication that describes the tax treatment of the Road Home grant? Furthermore, does Road Home issue a 1099 for the grant?

IRS Publication 525 contains a section that discusses situations in which you are recovering income from something you previously took a deduction for, which is the situation many Road Home grant recipients find themselves in. This discussion begins on page 20. To read this publication online, go to www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p525.pdf.

There is also additional information under the "Grant Proceeds" section of the Hurricane Katrina, Rita and Wilma Guidance on the Web site www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0, ,id=171341,00.html.

The Road Home program says that real estate transactions undertaken through Option 2 or 3, both of which involve the sale of your home, will generate a 1099, which is a tax document demonstrating that the seller of the property received income.

However, if you pursue Option 1 of the program, the option in which you stay in your home and rebuild, you will not receive a 1099 because no real estate transaction is taking place

Texas to Screen Evacuees It Buses

Texans who board evacuation buses during hurricanes or other emergencies must now submit to criminal background checks, the state’s emergency management director said.

The policy is an effort to keep sex offenders and fugitives from boarding evacuation buses with children, the elderly and the disabled, Jack Colley, the chief of the state’s Division of Emergency Management, told The Houston Chronicle, which posted the article on its Web site Saturday.

Mr. Colley said that sex offenders or other criminals would be evacuated on different buses. “We’re not going to leave anyone,” he said.

The intent, he said, is to make sure that vulnerable residents are not victimized.

Mr. Colley also said that state officials would be able to segregate evacuees, even in the chaos of an emergency. “We’ll have procedures,” he said, “and we’re not going to advertise what they are.”

Under the plan, anyone who boards must provide a name. Officials can ask for photo identification, but it is not needed to board, Mr. Colley said.

Officials will check names against sex offender registries and other criminal databases, Mr. Colley said.

After Hurricane Katrina, about 1,700 parolees did not check in with the authorities in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

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Nagin chides protesters, thanks alot Ray!

Mayor Ray Nagin called the planned demolition of aging public housing in New Orleans a "no win-win" situation and chided protesters who he said have never lived in the developments.

"Someone is going to be upset," Nagin said Saturday about the planned demolition of 4,500 units of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods.

Nagin called the demolition protesters an "interesting group" and questioned whether any of them had ever lived in public housing.

Nagin was speaking at a press conference in Hollygrove on to mark the construction of a $4 million, 30-unit housing development for the elderly.

The protesters, Nagin said, are "getting their 15 minutes on the camera."

Nagin said he was disappointed that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development didn't start rehabbing the Lafitte development in the Treme two years ago.

"I think we could have done a lot more," Nagin said, of the rehabilitation of old public housing units.