Posted on 06/07/2006 7:24:34 PM PDT by Ellesu
The mayors of both New Orleans and Baton Rouge take serious issue with a U.S. census report issued Tuesday night estimating how many people have moved out of, or around, Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina. As WAFB's Jim Shannon reports, neither mayor believes the information is accurate.
If you buy what's on the census data reports, the cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge could be in for the short end of the stick when it comes to federal dollars.
"My reaction is virtually one of shock," said Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden. "I mean anybody that says that roughly we've picked up 16,000 people! That's absolutely ridiculous."
According to the data, just 16,965 people have moved into East Baton Rouge Parish since Hurricane Katrina, even though, just last month, the postal service pegged the number at nearly three times that amount, based on mail still being forwarded to Baton Rouge from New Orleans.
The Baton Rouge number is the highest of all the surrounding parishes.
Tangipahoa Parish is up just 5,240 people; Ascension Parish is up 4,273 and Livingston Parish 3,241.
As for people leaving -- the census estimates St. Bernard Parish is down 61,215 people; Orleans Parish down 278,833; and all of south Louisiana is down 344,781.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says many more people are back in the Big Easy than the figures show: "They basically used change of address information. We go a little more in depth than that. We go knock on doors. We find out who's there. What we're finding is that people are doubling up in New Orleans, so there's many more people than would be suggested in that report."
Mayor Holden argues the data module itself admits such a high threshold of error it cannot be relied on: "The very interesting part of the census data is they admit that they could have a 92% error rate. So when you can say that you can have a error rate that high, then why would you release numbers that could be detrimental to a city?"
What can be done?
Mayor Holden says he will dispute the numbers to the federal government whenever they are used to gauge population cells in East Baton Rouge Parish.
Interestingly enough, people living in FEMA villages, like the one in Baker, were not included in the numbers.
The census also took at look at south Texas and estimated the Houston area has picked up 93,000 additional people since the storms.
The census was taken in late 2005.
That's what it's all about.
The voices said unto him, "Ray, go hide out in a Texas hotel until this blows over and then come back and be a victim".
They said only 5,000 moved into Mobile County, and that Baldwin, the state's fastest growing county, lost people. On that, I have to call bullshit. The majority of whites evacuees who left Mississippi are in our metro area right now, and the idea that they are not here is ludicrous. If they weren't here, the real estate market would not be as hot as it is right now.
I predict an economic rebirth for NOLA and possibly an end to the corruption & immorality that has made the city what is was pre-Katrina.
What's that idiot Nagin doing? Making hand shadows on the wall?
I think I follow your logic. The only people who would go back in are those who are willing to work, build, and make things happen.
The free hand-out crowd is no longer attracted, especially since the word "work" comes up in the mix..
I've read that we have 60,000 new people in Mobile County since Katrina.
Actually there is money to be made in New Orleans for a long term invester. This is a gift horse buying opportunity of a lifetime. Of course saying that is easier than doing it - insurance issues, etc. But I can tell you that in 20 years many people will wish they had bought in at the bottom.
That and they would have another minority from south of the border to contend with. I like your outcome prediction as I lived 30+ years in NOLA and moved to Texas in 1989 as NOLA disintegrated...
Late 2005, huh? That means the local evacuees had already killed off 60,000 of their own selves here in Houston to get down to the 93,000 figure quoted. TIC
Hurricanes forced 350,000 to leave Louisiana
07:42 AM CDT on Wednesday, June 7, 2006
By CLAIRE CUMMINGS / The Dallas Morning News
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita drove nearly 350,000 people out of Louisiana last year, with more than a third of them landing in Texas, according to new census figures that provide the clearest picture yet of how the storms scattered Gulf Coast residents.
The Census Bureau comparison of population estimates from July 1 and Jan. 1 show that Orleans Parish lost 64 percent of its residents and had only about 150,000 – fewer than live in Irving – after the storms. St. Bernard Parish, obliterated and inundated by Katrina, lost 95 percent of its residents.
By contrast, the census found the Houston area growing by roughly 140,000 residents, a figure lower than the city of Houston's working estimate of 150,000 to 200,000.
The study, which included only the 117 coastal counties and parishes in four states, also did not account for people dispersed elsewhere, such as the 70,000 estimated by the city of Dallas to have come to the area.
Also not accounted for is 19-year-old Ashley Williams, a former New Orleans resident who has no plans to go back. She's happy with her new life in Oklahoma City.
"The hurricane changed a lot of people's lives," Williams said. "With us losing everything down there, there's nothing for us to go back to."
Williams now lives by herself and is looking to attend college soon. Her family has gone back to New Orleans to await assistance in rebuilding. Her mother works two jobs and her father is working on reconstructing the family home.
Census officials cautioned that there weren't many people to count in some areas four months after the storm, creating larger margins of error than in most census studies. Also, the region has changed since January, with more residents returning to some areas.
Among the weaknesses in the data: Only people living in households were counted, meaning that hurricane refugees living in hotels and shelters were excluded. That skewed some population counts.
Deborah Griffin, who participated in the census research, said the population increases in counties that grew can be attributed mainly to the hurricane. She said the studies should give cities and counties better direction on how to steer resources toward evacuees.
"We would hope that local planners who need to have a little more information about the characteristics of the population and the economic impacts of those populations now have some tools available ... to maybe fill in some blanks they might have," she said.
State demographer Steve Murdock said the full story of dispersion has not yet been told.
"It's a mistake to think that these numbers provide a comprehensive look at the effects of Katrina," said Dr. Murdock, who works at the University of Texas at San Antonio. "They provide a certain snapshot, but they are clearly only a partial picture."
Mike Grimes, a sociologist at Louisiana State University, also said it's too early to see net effects from the storm.
"The safest thing to say probably is that the city [New Orleans] will gradually increase in population to some level no doubt below the pre-hurricane level," he said. "It's not getting larger in a hurry right now because there's so much damage and people are having trouble with insurance."
That assertion agrees with a poll of current evacuee residents in the Houston housing assistance program, about 50 percent of whom said they plan to stay, said city spokesman Frank Michel. A quarter of them said they would return to New Orleans, and the rest said they don't yet know.
Absorbing a small city's worth of residents, many of whom are poor, has not been easy – or cheap – for Houston. The biggest cost has been for public safety, but state and federal reimbursements have paid for the bulk of other services such as housing and education, Michel said.
The Houston Independent School District took in about 7,000 student evacuees last year, and 5,000 remained when the school year ended, spokesman Terry Abbott said.
The students cost the district an extra $20 million, $15 million of which was reimbursed by state and federal agencies, Abbott said.
"We really count them as our own students," he said. "It really doesn't matter where they are from now."
In New Orleans, demographer Greg Rigamer estimated the city has rebounded to at least 221,000 people since January, or about half the size it was before the storms.
"The analogy I like to use is that it's like a stock price in the middle of the day. It's a very dynamic and fluid situation. People are continuing to return, and the availability of housing and utilities has a bearing on that," said Rigamer, head of GCR & Associates Inc., a New Orleans consulting firm.
Still, census officials said, the data offers the best look yet at who was driven from their homes, who was left behind, and who moved to the region in the months after the storms. Across the region, the data showed large jumps in the percentage of people using food stamps. In New Orleans, it showed average incomes increasing by 16 percent, in part because many of the poorest residents were forced to leave.
The black population in the New Orleans metropolitan area, which includes several largely white suburbs, dropped from 37 percent to 22 percent, while the white population grew from 60 percent to 73 percent of the total that remained.
The Census Bureau was unable to provide race or socio-economic data limited to the city of New Orleans because officials were unable to survey enough people there to generate reliable data.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
E-mail ccummings@dallasnews.com
GONE WITH THE WINDS
A look at estimated population changes in selected Gulf Coast counties and parishes between July 1 and Jan. 1:
STATE
COUNTY/PARISH POPULATION CHANGE PERCENTAGE CHANGE
Louisiana total -344,781 -10%
Cameron -1,961 -21%
East Baton Rouge 16,965 4%
Jefferson -37,273 -8%
Orleans -278,833 -64%
Plaquemines -8,118 -29%
St. Bernard -61,215 -95%
Mississippi total -42,390 -2%
Hancock -11,111 -24%
Harrison -30,713 -16%
Texas-Total 136,887 2%
Brazoria 5,636 2%
Fort Bend 15,410 3%
Galveston 4,723 2%
Harris 92,824 3%
Jefferson 2,309 1%
Montgomery 11,227 3%
State totals include only coastal counties or parishes.
SOURCE: U.S. Census
http://www.khou.com/news/state/stories/khou060607_ac_hurricanecensus.6163449d.html
Thanks. 95 - 100 - 150 - 200 thousand. Seems like a million to me, having to live around them. Had to go out and scream at them again last night to make their kids stop screaming and running back and forth sounding like they're being killed. How would anyone ever know if they really needed help?
HA! There are ton more people in Baton Rouge than that. These people nned to drive the interstate a few afternoons down there
Dude! Have you spent much time in N.O. and South Louisiana? They have this catchy little song they like to play there about the day when corruption and immorality ends. It's called "When the Saints Go Marching In". On that day, I hope to see my Lord and you too. Until then, New Orleans and South Louisiana will be corrupt and dysfunctional. I guar-ron-tee.
It is all relative. There is no place else in this country where unproductivity and dysfunction are punished less than in New Orleans. Two years from now there will be no place else where whining about being a Katrina "victim" will get you more than there. If you are a former N.O. slum-dweller (and there are thousands upon thousands of these), and you're committed to a life of sloth and hedonism, you will get your ass back to the Big Easy and let the government take it from there, just like before. And the idea that local South Louisiana politicians are going to run for office on a platform of sink-or-swim for poor, mostly-black hurricane "victims" is pure fantasy.
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