Posted on 07/07/2006 11:49:32 AM PDT by Ellesu
HOUSTON (AP) - In the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, Katrina evacuee Samuel Smith sits on a donated futon and watches a borrowed television in a subsidized apartment the Federal Emergency Management Agency has provided for six months. The unemployed truck driver just started looking for work.That would infuriate U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a Houston Republican who wants what he calls "deadbeat" evacuees from New Orleans out of his city.
"Time has long since passed for the able-bodied people from Louisiana to either find a job, return to somewhere in Louisiana or become Houstonians," said Culberson, whose district neighbors the city's southwest pocket where many of 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees settled in Houston.
"You have to make an effort not to have a job in Houston," he said.
Labor analysts tend to agree.
But jobless evacuees, keenly aware that Houston is feeling far less compassionate than it was 10 months ago, insist that finding work in the nation's fourth-largest city isn't as simple as Houston's 5 percent unemployment rate might suggest.
Neither the city nor FEMA (website - news) track unemployed evacuees, but a Zogby poll commissioned by the city in March found that 85 percent of the 606 refugees surveyed were out of work. Sixty percent said they were looking for jobs.
The spotlight on unemployed evacuees intensified in May. Houston Mayor Bill White, standing beside newly re-elected New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, said evacuees could answer Nagin's plea to return home, or they were welcome to stay in Houston — if they got jobs.
White said he wanted refugees "looking for work wherever they can find work," which city officials say shouldn't be a problem given a healthy local economy and about 64,000 new jobs added in the past year.
Job counselor Ayodele Ogunye of WorkSource, the city's employment assistance program, said jobless evacuees complain about the overwhelming bus and rail systems that make navigation difficult, or the bureaucratic holdups like professional licenses that are invalid in Texas.
But some of it, Ogunye said, is in their heads.
The fear of a new hurricane season worried one of her clients so much that "it was like it set her back 10 months." Others don't know how to market themselves or lack confidence, which Ogunye thinks is traced to feelings of isolation in the "evacuee" corner of their apartment complexes, where no one socializes like their lifelong neighbors in New Orleans.
"I cannot help to wonder if (the unemployment) has anything to do with the uniqueness of the community," Ogunye said. "It seems like some have never had to make choices or decide for themselves."
There also might be some validity to evacuees' suspicions of employers passing on them for a fear they'll turn around and go home to Louisiana. At Career and Recovery Resources, which has tried finding work for 1,600 evacuees, manager Yvonne Chapman said she's had employers tell her they're "afraid they might go back home in six months."
Low-skill blue collar workers are the bulk of WorkSource's remaining clients from New Orleans.
But some white collar evacuees are struggling, too: Unic Little, 50, has a master's degree but says she hasn't gotten one response from more than 50 Internet job postings ranging from human resources positions to administrative work.
But truck driver Smith and his wife, Marion, hadn't looked for work because they don't know yet where they'll end up and the nearest bus stop is about a half-mile away.
Nearby, Lynette Scott uses the bus but complains it takes two hours to get to interviews. Her strong resume that includes running a New Orleans janitorial company hasn't helped in the dozen postings she's answered, so she started a T-shirt company out of her FEMA apartment.
"If I can't find work from other sources, I'll make my own work," said Scott, who designs children's shirts printed with their parent's contact information in case they get separated, an idea inspired by Katrina. "I'm not looking for a handout."
Disaster unemployment assistance expired on June 4 for about 83,000 Katrina evacuees. Among them were Granderson Johnson, 46, a former Wal-Mart photo technician who moved back to Louisiana a few days after he stopped getting his assistance check for $108 a week. Applications he dropped off at a handful of photo labs near his apartment never panned out, he said.
"It got to a point where things just weren't happening," Johnson said.
The WorkSource building — like the attitude of Houstonians — is much different than in the weeks after busloads of Louisiana residents were brought to the city. Gone is a table near the front door where evacuees could collect information on assistance programs, and the office no longer has a backlog of sympathetic employers eager to hire refugees.
"The attitude has shifted," said Rod Snyder, manager of WorkSource's southwest office.
WorkSource reports the agency has placed about half of the 24,000 refugees who sought work through their programs and training. Most of the other half abandoned the training or lost touch. Asked if there was any reason why a person who wanted a job in Houston couldn't find one, Ron Rodriguez, director of operations for WorkSource, said, "No."
That sentiment is shared at WorkSource's southwest office, where about seven of every 10 clients Ogunye meets is a Katrina refugee. The WorkSource building conspicuously stands out on a street of fast-food restaurants and strip malls — some with "Help Wanted" on the marquees.
Ogunye said "one does begin to wonder" why so many are still jobless after 10 months. Fellow counselor Melodie Lee was more blunt: "(Katrina) was awful, but let's move on. It is time you had a Plan B."
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On the Net:
Houston WorkSource: http://www.theworksource.org/
"I cannot help to wonder if (the unemployment) has anything to do with the uniqueness of the community," Ogunye said. "It seems like some have never had to make choices or decide for themselves."
some??? betcha close to 100% never had to make a decision in their lives other than "Colt .45 or lottery ticket"..
Like all Blue cities, NO has bred generations of listless bums who would rather sit and watch TV while collecting your tax money. In turn, these bums vote Democrat.
What? They don't have feet?
"Asked if there was any reason why a person who wanted a job in Houston couldn't find one, Ron Rodriguez, director of operations for WorkSource, said, "No."
That "no" says it all.
Thanks for the post.
PS here is the Work Force link.
http://www.theworksource.org/jobs/jobs.html
"It seems like some have never had to make choices or decide for themselves."
This sentence sums the whole Katrina-victim-woe-is-me-mess in a nutshell. We all have LBJ and his "Great Society" to thank for a couple of generations of welfare leeches.
Lousiana has a bigger lottery drawing (multistate), they'll move back. < /sarc >
Any Wal-Mart would hire him. Unless of course he was a total waste at the original store.
I seem to have answered my own question.
And I'm willing to bet a FEMA debit card that the vast majority of those who answered "but I'm looking" did so only out of shame, not honesty.
This entre Katrina fiasco is , if not the biggest, right up there in the top five scams ever pulled off on the American taxpayer!!!
There was never any reason for these people to take up extended public assisted refuge in Houston. We are not a border town to Louisiana.
Once the threat had passed, our "obligation" for shelter had passed.
It is much easier to administer the aid to people displaced in Louisiana through channels IN Louisiana.
How many evacuated to Arkansas or Tennessee and are still a sizeable part of the population there and getting federal dollars? All are 6 hours away from NOLA.
.lazy SOB, I used to walk 1 1/2miles TO WORK everyday for 5 years, what a stupid lazy SOB....guess if it rains he's really in trouble....here's an idea, put a chilidog on a stick and attached it to your hat and follow it for 10 mins, next thing you know...your at work..(and you get to keep the chilidog) Doogle
You really can't miss them, unless they want you to. Some of them make themselves known, loudly and crudely. Not all, I'm sure.
Half a mile? That's four blocks! You can't walk four blocks to a bus stop? WTF! Is this guy and/or his wife disabled?
The New Orleans residents displaced by Katrina have earned themselves quite a reputation for laziness, violence, ingratitude, dishonesty and greed.
It's not just Houston. I know people in Providence, RI who are dealing with these sociopaths as well - albeit on a much smaller scale.
Complaining about a half-mile walk to a bus stop?
Do these people really believe that they will be taken seriously when they make a comment like that?
Or claiming that you don't want a handout while you live in taxpayer funded housing?
Refusing to work because you're afraid of hurricanes?
This is life in a culture that is completely without shame.
...yeah right "move on"..whatever you do don't ask questions or state the obvious,just look the other way,and hand out the cash, bet you they don't have trouble hiking down to the nearest go-go bar,or liquior store when the check comes in huh?, can't wait for the friday night lotto drawing either right?
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