CNN: Mardi Gras intrudes on Katrina evacuees (hotels may kick them out)

[DeepModem Mom]

Mardi Gras intrudes on Katrina evacuees
By Gary Tuchman
CNN
Thursday, January 12, 2006


NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- New Orleans is preparing to welcome back tourists who want to celebrate Mardi Gras in the Big Easy.

The revelers will be heading to hotels also being used by about 4,000 people who lost their homes amid the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina....

***

After spending time with some of the homeless hotel residents, it's clear many are at a loss about what to do. They keep getting told their trailers are coming from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the temporary homes still haven't arrived.

Some want to go out and rent apartments, but rents have skyrocketed in this "new" New Orleans, and evacuees say these places are unaffordable. Many have received "eviction notices," and they don't know what to do next....

***

(Evacuee Elise) Boyer has extra reason to be grateful -- the owners of the (Cotton Exchange) hotel have decided they will let her and the other evacuees stay indefinitely, even though they too have many other reservations for the rooms.

This demand has created a dilemma for many hotel managers throughout New Orleans: Kick out residents who are the soul of the city or turn back tourists whose money will help regenerate the Big Easy.


http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/11/btsc.tuchman/index.html

[sasha031]

1. this is so sad as everything else that is going on

in * Amerika they can go live under a brigade, I heard there are 4000 still missing...but you will never see it on tveee,

todays top story is the smuck who wrote a book about his drug addiction and the facts don't add up.

[tanyev]

2. Aren't a lot of those people employees of businesses that

will desperately need them if there are a lot of tourists in town?

[pinerow]

3. Social darwinism at its' worst...

sheesh

[zann725]

4. The story here recently that broke my heart was Katrina-homeless family

who were being evicted by landlord (from I forget which rural state they'd been relocated to). Yet when police arrived to evict them, ALLEGEDLY the entire family had shot themselves in despair. While that MIGHT be the case, I wondered about the "pressure" of the landlord to evict such non-rent paying "baggage" as quickly as possible. As I recall, the family had been relocated to a rural area where law enforcement might be a little "lax" in their rules of eviction.

In either case, the story WAS truly tragic, and will no doubt repeat itself in some version the longer homeless remain disoriented in "unknown" environments without the TRUE, long-time loyalty and support of life-time neighborhood of family and friends.