the longest storm

March 5, 2006 8:44 AM

The New Orleans Effect: Crime is up. Schools are overcrowded. Hospitals are jammed. Houston welcomed a flood of hurricane evacuees with open arms. But now the city is suffering from a case of 'compassion fatigue.'
posted by The Jesse Helms (37 comments total)

You get down in the Newsweek article and find that crime was already increasing in Houston (189 murders last year, 33 involved Katrina evacuees as either victims or perpetrators--so that could be 15 or 30 perps, or what?). This is all speculative talk.
posted by raysmj at 8:59 AM on March 5, 2006

It's also what you might call "senationalism."
posted by raysmj at 9:01 AM on March 5, 2006

Imagine how exhausting it must be to be an evacuee and find yourself pretty quickly unwelcome, mostly because of your skin color.

I just honestly don't think "Katrina fatigue" would be a subject of discussion if the evacuees were from Bel Air.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:03 AM on March 5, 2006

Astro Zombie - that could never happen - Bel Air natives (and wealthy people in general) have a deep social network of friends, relatives, business acquaintances, etc to fall back on to prevent mass exodus like this. It's only among people who live without a safety net that such events are even possible.
posted by jonson at 9:10 AM on March 5, 2006

raysmj, apparently you didn't read the Washington Post article:

Since Sept. 1, when an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Louisianans resettled in Houston after Hurricane Katrina, evacuees are believed to have been involved in 26 slayings, or nearly 17 percent of all homicides. The cases, according to Houston police, involved 34 evacuees -- 19 of them victims and 15 of them suspects.

That doesn't seem that speculative to me. It also shouldn't be that surprising; anytime you add between 150,000 and 200,000 new residents to an already crowded metropolitan area, you are going to see increased crime.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:12 AM on March 5, 2006

Again, though, crime was already rising in Houston--how much of a percent did it rise from last year over the year before? And it's still "believed to be," not "were involved." Fifteen suspects in how many murders over the same time? And why include victims in that 26/17 percent total? What the hell does that matter? The WaPo writer needs to take a stats class.
posted by raysmj at 9:17 AM on March 5, 2006

But raysmj, measuring the increased crime is not a statistical projection, it's based on actual knowledge of crimes involving evacuees. Are you really arguing that the massive increase in population did not cause in increase in crime? What's your point?
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:25 AM on March 5, 2006

Houston's influx of Katrina escapees are the thin end of the wedge of environmental regugees we kept hearing about in the 80s and 90's - the tens of millions who'd be fleeing north as a result of various effects of global warming. Well, get used to it Houston. There's plenty more on the way.
posted by slatternus at 9:31 AM on March 5, 2006

My point is: What was crime like before in Houston? How much is a normal, expected rise (especially, I'm guessing, without a concurrent number of new police hires and whatnot) and how much isn't? The articles basically focus on New Orleans evauees as being the big cause of all Houston's woes. And the "involved" thing is sort of weird. How many of the perps in those cases were Houston residents?
posted by raysmj at 9:35 AM on March 5, 2006

One significant thing lacking from the article is Houston's population. Wikipedia says ~2 million. So with 200K refugees accounting for 15 out of the 189 murderers the Katrina influx actually aren't pulling their share (10% increase in population but only 8% of murders) and have in fact reduced the murder rate on a per capita basis from 8.7 per 100K to 8.59 per 100K.
posted by Mitheral at 9:38 AM on March 5, 2006

City Journal (an arch-conservative publication) says this of Houston, in a call for FEMA assistance to Houston:

This city of nearly 2 million has experienced a marked uptick in its homicide rate since more than 100,000 of New Orleans’s displaced residents flocked into town in late August and early September. While Houston’s murder rate is up 23 percent for all of 2005, it spiked 70 percent in November and December compared to last year’s levels. At least 35 percent of Houston’s December increase in homicides—five of 14 over last year’s level—directly stemmed from the presence of Katrina evacuees.

So more than half of that increase came from Houston residents, I take it (although City Journal doesn't say what the total Dec. percentage increase was)? Or is the problem having fewer cops on the beat, despite an increase in new residents?
posted by raysmj at 9:39 AM on March 5, 2006

How much is a normal, expected rise (especially, I'm guessing, without a concurrent number of new police hires and whatnot) and how much isn't?

Again, this is not a statistical projection of crime rates based on total crime numbers and population; this is an observation of specific crimes known to involve evacuees. At least in those cases involve crimes perpetrated by evacuees, these are crimes that would not have been committed in the absence of the refugees from Houston, regardless of the background crime rate.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:40 AM on March 5, 2006

So more than half of that increase came from Houston residents...

That's probably true, because the real problem isn't that crimes are committed by or against Katrina refugees, the problem is the massive increase in population. Anytime you pack more people into a relatively confined area, you will see an increase in crime, particularly in the absence of any increased police presence. The influx of Katrina refugees would like have caused an increase in crime even if no crimes were committed by the refugees themselves.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:43 AM on March 5, 2006

Some people in Houston need killin'.
posted by ColdChef at 10:11 AM on March 5, 2006

In my city, it took our city council one month before we closed and locked our gates to refugees.
posted by Balisong at 10:16 AM on March 5, 2006

As a resident of Houston I'll chime in that the real problem with our city is that Houston's poor have been just as poorly served as the New Orleans poor. Then they came to Houston, home of Barbara 'I hate the poor' Bush and the prevailing attitude is, let them eat cake.

It's a damn shame all the way around.
posted by DragonBoy at 10:25 AM on March 5, 2006

Anytime you pack more people into a relatively confined area, you will see an increase in crime, particularly in the absence of any increased police presence.

This is just wishful thinking. Take a survey of the biggest cities around the world and you will quickly find there's no direct correlation between city size and crime.

Actually, what's going on in the Newsweek article and the FPP is somewhat strange. The deliberate over-simplification and all. All TJH is missing is an equals sign then it could just be 'New Orleans Survivors=Crime'. A quick Google search for 'Houston crime rise' shows how popular the meme is. Some pretty quick research does show that Houston was already experiencing a crime renaissance, including a rocketing murder rate, long before the evacuees showed up. I suppose for the people upstairs it must make a lot of sense to blame the people from New Orleans who've already been tainted in the media as being poor savages.
posted by nixerman at 10:56 AM on March 5, 2006

From my experiences dealing with Katrina evacuees here in our small town, about one out of ten or fewer came off as someone to watch out for. But those that did were something else.
posted by atchafalaya at 11:02 AM on March 5, 2006

I expect once the refugees got to Houston and the locals started turning them on to the cough medicine epidemic and that ridiculous screw music, they WANTED to start killing people.

New Orleans to Houston: Trade Hurricanes for cough syrup, trade jazz for screw, and trade mardi gras beads for diamond grilles in their mouths.

I'm surprised it isn't the suicide rate that is on the rise.
posted by Ynoxas at 11:38 AM on March 5, 2006

And they bring their drug crime too, the filthy bastards. At least the comments are compassionate, though.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:41 AM on March 5, 2006

I live in a relatively small suburban town. We took in about 1000 evacuees. It has been a huge disaster for our town from a criminal and fiscal standpoint.

Now that the hotels and trailer parks and community centers are no longer housing the evacuees, we'll see what happens to crime rates, but I can tell you that while they were housing them, our assault rate went up about 20%, car theft and house entry theft went up, drunk driving went up, it was a disaster for a town that only has a few cops and a limited judicial budget.
posted by dejah420 at 12:00 PM on March 5, 2006

I come from a medium-sized metropolitan city on one of America's coasts. When Katrina came through, the levees we thought were going to protect us broke and forced all of us from our home for months. A lot of us, especially the poor (which we had a lot of), aren't back. The hurricane was a disaster for our town, too.
posted by Pacheco at 12:12 PM on March 5, 2006

This is just wishful thinking. Take a survey of the biggest cities around the world and you will quickly find there's no direct correlation between city size and crime.

This is a different case entirely though. We are talking about a large influx of poor peoples that are going to tax the city's social services, potentially take jobs from residents and increase crowding in low income areas. Seems to be a recipe for an increase in crime amongst the locals.
posted by batou_ at 12:13 PM on March 5, 2006

Did I mention that 1300 of our citizens died and well over half of our housing stock is uninhabitable?
posted by Pacheco at 12:15 PM on March 5, 2006

I spent some time in Houston when I evacuated and hated it mostly because it was in many ways the antithesis of New Orleans - every single New Orleanian who went there has commented about how it's a frighteningly soulless city. Some of my friends are still in houston, trying to slavage some part of their business or lives. They would leave Houston if they could. They would absolutely love to. It's not as if they can go back to Gentilly, though, and it's not as if any city in America is going to let them in.
posted by honeydew at 12:38 PM on March 5, 2006

monju: It's been answered somewhat by now, but I meant to add that the speculation comes not only from the arbitrary use of stats, but the anecdotes. They go on and on about the quote-unquote culture of New Orleans (as does the article in City Journal, to which I linked), but say nary a thing about the culture of Houston.
posted by raysmj at 12:41 PM on March 5, 2006

the culture of Houston

Which, my rap albums tell me, is tricking out your car with expensive rims and candy paint and plasma TVs in the trunk, while "tippin'" (swerving back and forth across the street at a very slow rate of speed) and drinking Sprite mixed with liquid codeine ("lean").

RIP DJ Screw.

I don't know how much of this lifestyle is available to the Katrina evacuees, however.
posted by First Post at 1:09 PM on March 5, 2006

Even if the articles are correct in that Katrina evacuees were involved in N number of crimes, both make the lazy assumption that all evacuees are from New Orleans, which seems unlikely. A plurality, surely, but possibly not even a majority. Four states were declared disaster areas.
posted by dhartung at 1:38 PM on March 5, 2006

RIP DJ Screw

So young, so talented...
posted by moift at 3:36 PM on March 5, 2006

Well put Pacheco.
posted by bardic at 4:40 PM on March 5, 2006

So much for Barbara Bush's new career as seeress.
posted by rob511 at 4:51 PM on March 5, 2006

Those filthy underprivileged people standing in sewage for seven days without food or water in the Superdome should have just died then as the Neocons planned. Imagine, causing distress for Houston white folks. Scary really, they are so, well, black. Why don’t they just get over watching dead grandma’s bloated carcass being eaten by rats? They should realize things are really working out quite well.
posted by BillyElmore at 5:45 PM on March 5, 2006

BillyElmore: you idiot.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 6:12 PM on March 5, 2006

Uncanny hengeman, are you suffering from compassion fatigue?

Or maybe you missed the plan--let a few Democrats drown, clear some beach-front property for condos and golf courses, Haliburton has everything under control. Turn the port over to Arabs who know all about moving Afgan smack. It's all good.

I'll go looking for my village in Texas now.
posted by BillyElmore at 6:28 PM on March 5, 2006

"causing distress for Houston white folks"

I don't get the feeling that Houston's whites are the ones complaining.
posted by mischief at 6:30 PM on March 5, 2006

From the article:

Both officials are careful not to blame Houston's recent rise in violent crime solely on Katrina evacuees, saying such statistics were rising last year before the hurricane. They point to what they call the majority of law-abiding Louisianans now living in the city and say the crime rate per thousand for the evacuee population is not greater than it was among Houstonians before the influx of Katrina survivors.

So then um.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 6:19 AM on March 6, 2006

It's not as if they can go back to Gentilly, though, and it's not as if any city in America is going to let them in.
Yes, because you have to get a visa to move to a different city.

Genius.
posted by evariste at 6:57 PM on March 6, 2006