Impact of Katrina exodus felt far and wide

An ideal refuge
Like Louisiana’s state capital, Baton Rouge, which is dealing with the same kind of population boom, St. Tammany Parish is ideally situated for New Orleans refugees. It’s far enough away from the Mississippi River levees to feel safe, yet close enough to allow evacuees the ability to commute to their old jobs and damaged homes in New Orleans. Some have called areas within this “commutable” distance a “holding zone” or “destination counties.” That’s in contrast to the many evacuees who fled a day’s drive or more away from the city to places like Houston.

The influx into Tammany Parish has led to amazing economic abnormalities. On the one hand, fast food workers are making what some might call exorbitant salaries — up to $12 an hour, and many stores are also giving out $500 monthly retention bonuses just to keep workers from disappearing. Sales tax receipts are up 50 percent and nearly all hotel rooms are booked.

"If you are a worker ... I have one message for you. Come on down. We have good paying jobs," said Jim Heap, business services manager for the Louisiana Department of Labor. 

On the other hand, stores still can't find workers, because the price of housing has skyrocketed — rents are up 30 percent or more — so much that even well-paid service workers can't afford to live in the  area.

“I know plenty of business owners that are acting as chief cook and bottle washer,” Heap said.    

The area suffers strain in other ways. Hospitals are bursting at the seams, and doctors’ offices have lines. Schools are jammed — at one point, some St. Tammany students were on a platoon system, with one set of students attending a morning session, another the afternoon-evening shift.

Schools do ‘Katrina shuffle’
“We call it the Katrina shuffle,” said schools Superintendent Gayle Sloan. “We had a high school move a junior high. We put a junior high into an elementary school. … We had to break a lot of the rules.”

There’s intense traffic congestion now, too. As the gateway to the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, St. Tammany gets drivers from all points north of New Orleans. Covington Police Lt. Jack West says auto accidents have tripled; so has the time required to write up accident reports.

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“That’s time now lost from crime enforcement,” he said. “Aggressive patrolling has been cut back because of the high accident rate.”

That’s particularly critical because crime rates seem to be on everyone’s mind in St. Tammany Parish, thanks in part to a gruesome, gang-style quadruple murder that took place in June in a trailer park in the eastern side of the parish.

“There’s this feeling that these kinds of thing never happened here before,” said Erin Moore, communications director of the St. Tammany Parish. 

Law enforcement officials say overall crime rates haven’t spiked, but incidence of certain crimes are on the rise.

The number of felony arrests has tripled in Covington; so has the number of assaults in Mandeville. Last year, there were 17 arrests for aggravated assault in the town. By July of this year, there were 40, said Mandeville Police Chief Terry DeFranco.

The increase isn’t necessarily the result of the parish’s newest residents.

“The majority have been committed by local people, not Katrina evacuees,” DeFranco said. 

Emotional impact hitting home
Some of the strife may be the result of a delayed emotional impact from the storm.

Dr. Janine Parker said that she is only now seeing the lasting effects of the storm on evacuees. Now, two thirds of displaced people she sees in her Tammany Parish office are on prescription anti-depression drugs.

“At the beginning, people were just stunned,” she said. “The ‘cope-ers’ were fine, they had their lists ... now the ‘cope-ers’ are coming back and saying, ‘I'm sad. I'm crying. I'm not sleeping. What am I supposed to do? I still have this list that goes on 40 miles. I don't see any light at the end of tunnel.’”

Parker, a medical doctor, finds herself dealing with patient’s emotional problems because they don’t have much alternative.

“Psychological treatment facilities are minimal. Psychiatrists have waiting lists coming out to the end of time,” she said. “It's scary.”

Fear also surrounds the newfound diversity that’s arrived, and increased talk about police activity may hint at something else. Discussion about crime and culture clash can be a proxy for uncomfortable conversations about racial or ethnic demographic shifts in a community.

There is little dispute that suburbs in St. Tammany face major demographic changes.

“Before, we had essentially no Latinos,” said Moore, the parish’s communications director.  “Now, there are tons of (Latino) work crews on construction sites. Now, the grocery stores have entire aisles for Mexican food.”

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