Posted on 01/02/2006 11:53:19 AM PST by Founding Father
On the heels of Hurricane Katrina, more than 100,000 evacuees landed in Houston. Now officials there say the city has found itself under the gun, with an escalating murder rate and population bursting at the seams.
The murder rate is up 25 percent since last year and up 70 percent in December alone, with 14 more murders this month compared with the same time period last year. Although the connection between evacuees and the surge in violence is statistically tenuous, with only nine of the city's 122 post-Katrina homicides involving someone, either as suspect or victim, who evacuated there, city officials continue to link the increase in bloodshed to the dramatic population boom.
Many of those who sought refuge in Houston found temporary housing in apartment complexes, particularly in southwest Houston, in some of the city's grittiest, crime-plagued neighborhoods.
Just two of Houston's 19 patrol districts accounted for the rise in murders, and both are in southwest Houston, police said. The densely populated, low-income housing complexes offered evacuees some of the only available rental property in the city, said Johanna Abad, a Houston Police Department spokeswoman.
In area motels and clustered apartment complexes, where people are living in stacked dwellings that rent for as little as $199 a month, police said tension is rising as former evacuees begin planting new roots.
But only a handful of the documented homicides involve displaced New Orleanians.
Thursday night, Houston police said, a gunfight erupted at a motel in southwest Houston, leaving a former New Orleanian dead. Two groups of men engaged in battle, and the unidentified evacuee was fatally shot in the head.
On Dec. 19, police said another Katrina evacuee was found slain in a southwest Houston apartment, with gunshot wounds in the back and head.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Shhhh, don't mention that most of these evacuees are low income blacks - that would be racist.
Yep! Put concertina around the whole city.
Better file this under "W" for "Whodathunkit".
Not a bad idea. I just wish there was some lone island in the middle of the ocean where felons could be airlifted to and dropped off.
WOW!
Maybe we SHOULD rebuild New Orleans and turn it into a 400,000 inmate prison.
You've got a good point!
How about Cuba?
or perhaps under "W" for Dubbya done it!
I took the time to read the entire article. What I read was that, yes, homicide is up in Houston, and yes, it's in the low-income areas that are already a bed of crime and homicide and drug action. But in the same breath, they say that overall crime is DOWN 2% from last year to this year. What does that mean?
Madison, WI did this, too. We took in evacuees and put them in the cr@ppiest, worst part of town. And then left them there to basically fend for themselves, though for some reason the evacuees that came to us are behaving themselves; our crime rate isn't up in those neighborhoods. (I think we have 400 or so people here from NOLA.)
Just because people are poor and uneducated, doesn't mean they're criminals. This article is really making a stretch and promoting stereotypes all the way around.
Just my observation, after reading the entire article.
At the time the mass migration from NOLA to Houston was going on, I recall reading an article in which some hot shot politico in Houston was shooting off his mouth about how happy Houston was to be able to offer refuge to the evacuees.I commented then that they should wait until the evacuees show their true colors.
Looks like that's happening.
Gotta feel sorry for the non-evacuees living in Houston that have to put up with this.
Who didn't know this would happen,I know we must keep giving them more!
Damn! A one bedroom in da ghetto in the NYC area will cost you $850 a month.
You mean, Texas's problems are not all caused by illegal aliens?
2,000 sex offenders from New Orleans are wandering around out there somewhere. The dope dealers from New Orleans arent working for real work they are out looking for new product suppliers and buyers , This is bound to be cutting into Houston's entrepeneurs business. Prostitutes have to work no matter what city they arein.
These people who were criminals to begin with are not going out of business , they will just be relocating.
You can take people out of the ghetto, but........
Therte is such an island. It's named Oahu....
No, it's populated. I seek something deserted or abandoned. ;-)
Of course they have to fend for themselves. Who else should do it? The American tax payer? Didn't they fend for themselves in LA? They were given shelter and a chance to start a new life, the rest is up to them, or do you think they should be given living accomadations for the rest of their lives because they had a temporary tragedy?
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