[Vision2020] End of appartment glut in Houston

[Burt Sid]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/rssstory.mpl/special/05/katrina/3340927

Victims looking for a home could change face of city

By DAN FELDSTEIN
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Hurricane Katrina changed the lives of New Orleans residents forever.
What is beginning to dawn on Houston officials is that this city also
will change in ways that no one can predict.

>From doctors and architects to retirees and gang members, more than
150,000 Louisiana residents have landed on this city's doorstep. Some
will be here for days and months, but many will simply stay.

They will be looking for jobs and apartments. They will put their
children in schools. They will figure out how to navigate the city in
a bus.

These are not just the poor, dazed people seen in pictures of the
shelters — many of whom are finding family and moving out.

They are professionals searching for nice houses and leasing them for
the entire school year, said Terry Cominsky with Karpas Properties,
who has helped six such families in the past week.

None has a clue whether they will ultimately buy a home and stay here,
she said. Dozens of important questions come first, like how to
collect insurance money and what happens to the mortgage back home.

But they might stay. And the effect on Houston could be "profound,"
said Mayor Bill White, without offering specifics. Certainly the
city's budget will go up, as will tax revenue. Which will rise higher
is anyone's guess, he said.

Other changes are happening fast.

The 70,000-unit apartment glut is disappearing overnight. The Port of
Houston is speeding up a dredging project because many weighted-down
boats that normally offload in New Orleans first will dock here.

State professional boards are working with licensing issues for
Louisiana doctors and nurses.

Eventually, someone will point out discreetly that most of our
potential new residents vote Democratic.

As Houston City Council authorized spending up to $10 million for
Katrina-related costs Monday, expecting it would be federally
reimbursed, members posed questions and some concerns for the mayor.

Worried calls

Almost every one had received worried calls from constituents. The
thugs who shot at police and terrorized the Superdome must be here,
too, the constituents said.
Minister Robert Muhammad, southwest regional minister for the Nation
of Islam, said he had talked to the displaced and tended to agree that
some toughs had arrived. Ninety-nine percent were good folks, he said,
although many were traumatized and will have mental health issues.

But, Muhammad cautioned, "the ward wars that take place in New Orleans
have now moved to Houston."

That didn't deter City Council members. "We want them to stay. We
really don't want them to leave," said council member Carol Mims
Galloway, musing that some schools slated for closure in her district
might now remain open.

White cautioned against any appearance of profiting from another
city's misery. And Jim Kollaer, president of the Greater Houston
Partnership for 15 years and now an executive vice president with the
Staubach Co., said nobody needed to be seen as a vulture.

Finding office space for New Orleans firms helps them stay in
business, he said. The motivation is to assist them, and if they stay
because they like it here, that's fine.

Nobody knows how soon New Orleans might return to a new normal, so
nobody knows what businesses and workers will really do in the long
term, Kollaer said.

At shelters, many had employment on their minds.

Andrew Dawson, who worked as a bartender in New Orleans, was browsing
the classified ads Monday. He plans to board a Metro bus today and
start applying for bartending jobs around the city.

"If I like it, I may stay here," said Dawson, who had found refuge at
a Red Cross shelter with his wife and six other family members.

Theresa Pierce said her husband, a mechanic, was out job hunting.
Pierce was staying at the St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in
northeast Houston after losing everything in New Orleans.

"We might stay here," said Pierce. "We really are just taking it day
by day and seeing what happens."

Floyd Green, 53, said he wasn't wasting anytime. He plans to catch a
ride from the George R. Brown Convention Center early today to report
for work at a construction site near Hobby Airport.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said that the city's population
doubled in the 1970s as workers escaped the Rust Belt. With the
county's population now at 3.7 million, the latest newcomers were a
relatively small percentage.

"This is a lot smaller drain than that," Eckels said. "We can absorb
this population in our city."

Land of opportunity

Houston has been the land of opportunity for Louisiana residents for
decades, White said, from Mississippi River floods and from energy
companies that moved from there to here.
As other cities and states have made offers to move residents north,
many staying in Houston shelters have tentatively declined, wanted to
figure out what's going on with their families first, White said.

New Orleans will undoubtedly rebuild its road, water, power and sewer systems.

But as each homeowner gets an insurance check and decides what to do
with it, White said, that's when the true future of New Orleans will
be decided.

Chronicle reporters Becky Bowman, Melanie Markley and Jennifer
Radcliffe contributed to this story.