Katrina Reminders ..
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Shreveport Journal

After Reaching the Shelter at the End of the Line, Evacuees Are Forced to Move On


By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: April 24, 2006
SHREVEPORT, La., April 21 — There is a fine line between shell-shocked and idle, between needing help and milking the system, and in the seven months since Hurricane Katrina, the Rev. Patrick Sanders has seen both sides and then some.


Erin Trieb for The New York Times
Lillie Tims, Lakina Sanders and Richard Baily boxing up belongings at the Pelican Haven shelter, which is scheduled to close Monday.


Mr. Sanders has seen professional and working-class families, the old, the disabled and the mentally ill, out-of-work oystermen and washed-up hustlers, and, on Thursday, a mother and father who had to leave their 7-year-old son and his dog when sheriff's deputies appeared to arrest them on outstanding warrants.

"It's just been an interesting revolving door," said Mr. Sanders, a dapper man who operates the Pelican Haven shelter in an old, crummy hotel, the Pelican Inn, that was vacant before the storm.

Under the carport in front of the hotel, there are two pelican statues with faded paint. In the courtyard, the swimming pool is an empty concrete chasm. The booths in what was once the restaurant serve as cubicles for crisis counselors and case managers. Some of the rooms emanate an unholy odor not unlike that of the hundreds of refrigerators discarded after the storm.

This is the last shelter for evacuees run by either Louisiana, Mississippi or the Red Cross, and on Monday, it is closing its doors.

Everyone, even the evacuees, seems to think this is a good idea. In the months since the storm, the shelter, a blue-roofed complex near the Shreveport airport, has gone from a bustling respite for families who appreciated the private rooms with real beds instead of cots, to a drug-ridden place where, on occasion, the National Guard has kept the peace.

No one in the shelter has been there for all seven months. After making it out of their flooded apartment in Gulfport, Miss., Robin Rushing and her fiancé, Victor JohnLouis, lived with a sister near Shreveport, a daughter near Baton Rouge and in rooms they rented in a house in Napoleonville, La., until a fire broke out in the living room.

"We was in our car for a while, because I was scared," Ms. Rushing said. "I was really scared." With the help of caseworkers, the couple qualified for Section 8 housing.

Pelican Haven played host to two main waves of evacuees — those fleeing the storm, and those delivered there after the Federal Emergency Management Agency phased out its free hotel room program in February and March. The second wave proved more difficult to help.

"We used no security from September to February," Mr. Sanders said. "That group of people policed their own selves. They watched each other's children."

In the past two months, he said, there have been arrests for drugs and even rape. The 7-year-old whose parents were taken away in handcuffs was picked up by a relative soon after.

"You needed National Guard, you needed Marines," Mr. Sanders said, shaking his head. "They give this program sort of a dark cloud," he said of the second wave of evacuees.

Some of them came after exhausting their rent subsidy or feuding with relatives who had taken them in. Others, like Narciso Cruz, 52, arrived after being evicted. Around noon on Friday, Mr. Cruz reclined on a bed in his room, drinking beer out of a paper bag, his belongings piled in neat stacks around him.

He said he had been evicted from a house in nearby Bossier City after arguing with his landlord over where to park his car. He stayed in hotels until his money ran out, about two weeks ago, when he arrived at the shelter. A friend has offered him a bunk in his FEMA trailer. The two men had been acquainted back home in St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, but had bonded in a shelter in Shreveport after the storm.

Asked his opinion of the view, expressed more and more frequently as welcome mats wear thin, that many evacuees are layabouts trying to take advantage of those who would help them, Mr. Cruz shrugged, saying that his friend, seated in a corner of the room, had brought one beer for each of them before they began to pack.

"Everyone's entitled to have an opinion," said Mr. Cruz, who made his living before the storm as a fisherman. "I know I work. I worked all my life."

On Friday, caseworkers from Volunteers of America North Louisiana said 21 households would be able to move before the closing, into trailers provided by FEMA, apartments financed by federal Section 8 vouchers or even homeless shelters (people who were homeless before Katrina are generally not eligible for the agency's housing assistance). Fourteen refused help, although some were expected to change their minds. There were three whose FEMA status was uncertain.

Some residents said they were not sure where they would go. One, Bryan Hebert, said he had been offered a FEMA trailer in Bunkie, La., but did not think he could find work there. Another evacuee, John Nunnery, said his trailer was not quite ready.

A former choir director, Mr. Nunnery amused caseworkers by singing improvised songs about the storm in an extravagant, churchy voice. "What we went through, no one will ever know," he boomed. "What we saw, no one can ever see."

He said his fellow shelter residents could be discouraging, always complaining instead of supporting one another. "Seemed like we were all trying to pull each other down," he said. "It's like crabs in a barrel."



And this interesting post to me ...

RE : THERE'S A LOT OF SIMPLe OPERATIONS THAT ARE ONLY NOW GOING INTO MINISCULEe ACTION.
all along the gulf coast, and it's mostly college kids, on their sprng breaks !!

that part is wonderful !!

TRAILERS ARE STARTING TO MOVE OF THAT LOT NEAR BILLY CLINTON AREA.

BUT, THEY'E NOT going to the missippi gulf coast< or new orleans >!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHO'S GOT SOME GOOD reportage, ON ALL THIS, pLease ???

PUT NICE & CONCISE ?

( POOR GRAMMAR, I KNOW )