NYT reported The small room where Tracy Jackson, Jerel Brown and their four young children share a twin bed and thin mattress on the floor is the 14th place they have laid their heads since Hurricane Katrina struck just over 14 weeks ago.
I felt sorry for these people when Katrina first hit, in fact I listed my house on two different websites as willing to take in Katrina Refugees. But a good friend of mine who is helping Katrina refugees find houses here in Tulsa told me that of 100 families she had helped find a place to stay, and get furnature for it, only one has gotten a job. I am not nearly as willing to help as I once was. There are plenty of jobs here for someone who wants to work, and if only 1 out of 100 wants to work, it sounds like the other 99 and just hoping to live off the government.Five shelters. Six hotel rooms. Twelve days in the home of a good Samaritan in a tiny Louisiana town where they were the only black people. Six weeks in Durham, N.C., in the two-bedroom apartment that a church found for Mr. Brown's mother after the storm, where no buses ran nearby and a cab to Wal-Mart cost $10. And, since shortly before Thanksgiving, this dark room decorated with a Cinderella princess poster in a shotgun shack, where nearly all they have is packed in a plastic tub and several suitcases stacked on top of each other in the cramped closet. "We don't know when we're going to have to pick up and go again," said Mr. Brown, 24, whose apartment near downtown New Orleans was destroyed by a fire after the hurricane. "It's just surviving, you know. You don't know where your next turn is going to be."
1 comment:
I agree completely. They had other people willing to help because of what they went through in Katrina, but seeing them not try to improve themeselves and get a job discourages those willing to help them make a new start.
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