WDSU Think Tank

Are We Building Smarter?

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:12:38 GMT

Anchor Norman Robinson blogs and broadcasts LIVE from Houston September 18 - 22.

As we wrap of our road trip to Houston, 6 On Your Side LIVE is preparing to head back to New Orleans after a week of telling the stories of the evacuees still here a year after Hurricane Katrina.

More than 60% of the evacuees have no intention of returning to the Crescent City. With that in mind, I am thinking of the many commercials that I have heard on television and radio here, from our Governor Kathleen Blanco, urging Louisiana citizens to come home. The governor, when touting the Louisiana Road Home program says, "I want you home. Through the road home program we're building a stronger, smarter and safer Louisiana."

As 6 On Your Side LIVE heads down I-10 to New Orleans, the Big easy, I can't help but wonder if we in fact are building stronger, smarter and safer in Louisiana? What do you think?

Make It Happen

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:02:04 GMT

Anchor Norman Robinson blogs and broadcasts LIVE from Houston September 18 - 22.

During the past four days in Houston, we at 6 on Your Side LIVE have experienced a wide range of emotions: the heartbreak of the down and out who are trying to hold on, the almost comical whimsy of those feigning hardship in an attempt avoid accountability, and the pride felt in meeting those who are determined to make a difference despite seemingly insurmountable challenges. It is the latter that inspired me to write this particular blog.

We have met many city, state, and federal leaders here in Houston. We have also managed to meet with many social outreach organizations, and ordinary volunteers from Houston and New Orleans who are on the ground in the Bayou City trying to make a difference. What inspired me is the dogged determination exhibited among each group, individually and collectively, to try and resolve one of the greatest human conundrums in the history of the country: what to do about housing and training the largest forced displacement of Americans since the Civil War?

Toward that end these various state, federal, charity, and volunteer agencies have formed an alliance to come up with a strategy to help people help themselves. In the words of one city leader, "We are going to provide the opportunity for the evacuees, who need it, to improve their lives through job training and temporary housing assistance. But it's up to them to make it happen;" in other words: no hand-outs, just a hand up.

A poll, conducted for the city of Houston, found that 60% of evacuees intend to remain here. So city leaders have decided to become proactive, and are now challenging the people who were evacuees, to become permanent neighbors. The city’s message: you are welcome here, but theses are the rules: we’ll help you get on your feet, but we expect you to get a job and become a productive citizen. It’s up to you to make it happen.

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurrt told me Texas is serious about law and order. And judging by its strategy to compel evacuees to get training to help themselves "make it happen," Texas is also serious about a work ethic.

The Human Factor

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 15:58:58 GMT

Anchor Norman Robinson blogs and broadcasts LIVE from Houston September 18 - 22.

While on my travels in Houston for 6 On Your Side LIVE, I have heard from many evacuees. Some had wonderful stories of new found lives and better opportunities. Others told hard luck stories that tear at your heart.

We have been criticized, by some, for focusing on those who are having difficulty adjusting and not focusing on the success stories. But I believe it’s worth mentioning that it’s the less fortunate who are in most need of help from all of us.

As much as they've been criticized for complaining about our displaced underclass, the city of Houston is at least attempting to look for ways to get its arms around the problem. Cindy Gabriel with the City of Houston's Hurricane Housing Task Force readily admits that, “Houston city leaders underestimated how long the evacuees from New Orleans would remain in Houston." She told 6 On Your Side LIVE that Houston Mayor Bill White has directed her group to manage a coordinated response using as many public and private outreach organizations as possible. The task at hand: analyze the needs of the evacuees who are elderly, destitute and without job skills. The goal: to discover ways to help them get on their feet.

This is an unprecedented task. Houston does not have public housing or a welfare program. What the Mayor proposes is a public/private partnership for job training and temporary housing assistance for those who enroll in those job training programs.

What few of us seem to realize, is that Houston took in tens of thousands of our neediest citizens. And despite the fact some Houstonians are now calling for a mass exodus, it appears city leadership is contemplating the “human” factor, and showing its compassionate side. The city knows that there is no where for these evacuees to go, and no one to help them.

If given the power, would you write off thousands of people, just because they’re characterized as destitute? Or should we, as I have heard some people say, jump for joy that the problem is now in Houston and no longer in New Orleans?

Out Of Luck With The 504 Area Code

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:47:10 GMT

Anchor Norman Robinson blogs and broadcasts LIVE from Houston September 18 - 22.

All this week we’re traveling across Houston, trying to find the people affected by Hurricane Katrina, people who are still labeled “evacuees” more than a year after the storm. Today, I want to tell you about the thousands of untold stories of struggle we uncovered at one assistance fair for the people who used to be our next door neighbors.

We visited what’s called the “Power Center” on the outskirts of downtown Houston. The people at the center were evacuees from New Orleans looking for electricity to stave off eviction from their apartments, looking for someone with the power to help them find a job, or simply someone with the power to help get them back to New Orleans.

David Ellison, a reporter with the Houston Chronicle, described the New Orleans evacuees as the ones who were really traumatized, and left trapped in the Crescent City following Katrina. The people, who were subjected to the flooding and were trapped in our man-made hell on earth, were eventually plucked from the city and deposited in Houston. Compare that situation to the evacuees who were able to leave the city before the storm hit. Many of those evacuees ended up in cities like Atlanta; cities where they had the means and resources to blend in.

There is no blending in at the “Power Center.” It’s a large gathering of evacuees, who are still struggling to find their way. Human outreach agencies from across Houston came to the center to help thousands of jobless and homeless New Orleanians find a way to keep their apartment, find healthcare, or find a job. The intent was well-meaning, but the atmosphere was demeaning.

Uniformed police herded evacuees along sidewalks lined with police barricades (the kind you find separating pedestrians from the floats along the parade routes in New Orleans at Mardi Gras). Once inside, the evacuees were passed from agency to agency. Two overworked social activists from New Orleans desperately tried to interpret and analyze each problem, so they could guide the evacuee to the right agency for help. But the process seemed to further marginalize those who already felt unappreciated.

In an attempt to make a bad situation better, the City of Houston is now urging Katrina evacuees to discontinue using phone numbers with the 504 area code on their job applications. It’s a dead giveaway that you are from New Orleans and sure-fire way to abruptly end your chance for a job interview.

No doubt, many are being helped in Houston. But there are just as many who have given up and have gone back to New Orleans. Where are they living? Those who keep track, say these second-time evacuees are now here in the Crescent City in even worse conditions: living five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten deep in a house. If you doubt this, take a drive any evening into Central City and parts of Uptown where you’ll see five and six cars parked in the front yards of these crowded homes.

For better or worse, this seems to the future for people who are now coming from Houston to the new New Orleans. Who can change it? Who can make it better? Or is that, in the words of American’s former most-trusted news man Walter Cronkite, just the way it is?

On The Road In Houston

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:48:09 GMT

Anchor Norman Robinson blogs and broadcasts LIVE from Houston September 18 - 22.

Why don't they like us?

I'm afraid to drive around Houston with a New Orleans license plate attached to my car!

Why are we being tarnished for the sins of a few bad eggs?

Why are they so mean to us?

These are just a few of the pain-filled rhetorical questions that a lot of evacuees from New Orleans are asking themselves and others who care to listen to their stories of rejection and humiliation.

University of New Olreans criminologist Dr. Peter Scharf pointed out that his research on the migration of the criminal element from New Orleans to post-Katrina Houston only involves 2 percent of the African American male population. But judging by the reaction from a lot of Houstonians, you'd think that the majority of the people displaced from New Orleans are shiftless, lazy, ignorant, and at worst, just plain thugs.

It is clear to me that most of those who are down and out on their luck are victims of circumstances beyond their control; forced from their homes by the worst natural and, yes, man-made disaster in the history of the United States. Most of them would like to be home, but there is no home for them to go to. For now, Houston is all they have.

This week 6 on Your Side LIVE will attempt to find out what the future holds for the displaced who are down on their luck, and how the city leaders in Houston and New Orleans plan to address this continuing crisis of human tragedy.

We invite you to watch our week of ground-breaking reports from the region, and invite your comments on the situation there. Are evacuees being treated fairly? Should they come back to New Orleans? Or is Houston really a better place for them to call home?

Nagin's 100 Day Progress

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:50:55 GMT

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin released a progress report on the first 100 days of his second term in office. He said progress has been made on a varity of issues including: crime, water pressure, flooded cars, debris removal, and the legal system. How much progress do you think has been made? Tell us what's getting better, or if you think things are getting worse?

How and Where Should We Rebuild

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 01:30:10 GMT

Dear friends,

As we pause to reflect and honor the memory of those who perished on September 11, 2001, we can't help but wonder: Just how safe are we?

To be selfish just for a moment, when we think of our own man made natural disaster on August 29, 2005, how safe is Southeast Louisiana from another Katrina-like event? Is rebuilding in those areas inside the flood plain really a good idea?

I was struck by an interview with noted LSU professor Ivor Von Heerden recently. He was asked if he would feel comfortable rebuilding in those places (in the flood plain). He answered without hesitation that he would not rebuild in those areas.

I'm wondering if we are in fact acting like the proverbial lemmings to the sea? Are we rebuilding smartly, or are we following a path that puts us in as much harm as in pre-Katrina?

What do you think? How and where should we rebuild, and where do we look for leadership on this issue?

Sincerely yours,

Norman Robinson