Houston's Noble Experiment

City Journal ^ | Nicole Gelinas

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

From the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina emerges a historic natural experiment: Can one city’s good governance help undo what another city’s bad governance helped create?

In the decades before Katrina, New Orleans was a place where failed urban policies let social pathology fester. Its economy was listless, its population declining. Free-market employers and middle-class residents shunned the city, because its public sector was seen as corrupt, its citizenry was uneducated, and its neighborhoods were crime-ridden. Failed criminal-justice and public-education systems helped perpetuate a large underclass, mostly black, as the city’s productive class, white and black, dwindled. Decades of government mismanagement and private-sector abandonment had turned New Orleans’s once-whimsical local nickname—“The City That Care Forgot”—into a sad epitaph before Katrina.

To escape Katrina, about half of New Orleans’s population, or about 240,000 people, fled 350 miles west on Interstate 10 to Houston, whose increasing population and expanding economy have been the inverse of New Orleans’s over the past five decades. More than seven months after the storm, Houston remains home to about 150,000 New Orleans evacuees.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

This is a long, but, I thought, fascinating article about the city of Houston's response to refugees from Katrina. It begins by talking about the help the city gave to New Orleans, and how many people took (appropriate or not) advantage of it. Includes observations of the gang-related crime that moved from N.O. to Houston, and the somewhat successful policing tactics that they are trying to use to combat it. Finally, the author tackles the impact on and response by the public school system

[Gordongekko909]

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[Gordongekko909]

I've got a thank-you to the people of Texas on my profile, which I have had since last year, and there it will stay in perpetuity.

[caryatid]

City Journal [Manhattan Institute] is a must read for any serious conservative!

   

“City Journal is the best magazine in America.”

Peggy Noonan

[texan75010]

I lived in the burbs of New Orleans two years ago. The city of New Orleans was a rat hole before the storm and the people were not just ignorant, but down right stupid, corrupt, fat, rude, violent, and repugnant.

I pity Houston. I am happy I moved to Dallas.

[texan75010]

I lived in the burbs of New Orleans two years ago. The city of New Orleans was a rat hole before the storm and the people were not just ignorant, but down right stupid, corrupt, fat, rude, violent, and repugnant.

I pity Houston. I am happy I moved to Dallas.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Good article. I lived in Houston for about 20 years and can attest that it is not like any other city that I've ever seen.

Hopefully, HPD will continue to focus on policing the evacuees (transplants would probably be more appropriate by now) aggressively and, hopefully, the underclass will continue to realize that they have been presented with an excellent opportunity to change their lives forever.

[H. Paul Pressler IV]

Thank You Houston for Taking All the Deadbeats out of New Orleans!!!

[Saints fan]

I pity Houston. I am happy I moved to Dallas.

All the people in New Orleans are ignorant,stupid, corrupt, fat,rude, violent, and repugnant? I'm happy you moved to Dallas too. Now stay there.

[daybreakcoming]

Thank You Houston for Taking All the Deadbeats out of New Orleans!!!

Yeah you bet - too bad your corrupt government couldn't do anything with them except produce more.

[travlnmn41]

>>The city of New Orleans was a rat hole before the storm and the people were not just ignorant, but down right stupid, corrupt, fat, rude, violent, and repugnant.<<
Run (and ruined) by Demonrat morons for 30 years. If ever there was proof of how ineffective their ideas are, it's New Orleans.