Direct quote from this morning’s Boston Globe:
Nantucket will likely bare the brunt of Tropical Storm Ophelia when it rages through southern Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the islands early this morning.
But the attention of state emergency planners is turning to Bourne and Camp Edwards to ease the anxiety of Katrina evacuees as they weather their first significant storm since the hurricane destroyed their Louisiana homes.
Given, many of the folk on brunt-bearing Nantucket are very, very wealthy and should be expected to make their own storm preparations.
Also given, Ophelia is predicted to have about the same impact as one of our winter Nor’easters, and Cape Codders and Islanders have a lot of experience with that kind of weather.
But there is something a little perverse about state officials admitting that they will ignore the potential needs of their own population in lieu of hand-holding some folks from 1,300 miles away.
Otis AFB is an official emergency shelter, one of the safest spots on the Cape in terms of geography – it’s over 8 miles inland, and has the highest elevation. Even if we had a catastrophic storm, the people living there are in a more secure environment than almost anyone else. Easing anxiety is a worthy goal, but it pales in comparison to, oh, keeping the only two bridges to the mainland open (this past week, both bridges were closed for hours due to the heavy rains) for emergency evacuations.
This has been the problem I and others have had since the evacuees arrived in Massachusetts.
It is NOT that the evacuees don’t deserve good treatment. Sitting on the roof of a house for 3 days, being terrified by floodwaters the whole time, must have been horrible, beyond imagination for those of us lucky enough not to have lived through a similar experience.
But the reaction of both the public and private sector has been, to put it mildly, “over the top”.
As I’ve said before, a month ago, no one gave a rat’s patoot about the people of New Orleans.
Today, it seems no one gives a flying fig about disadvantaged people here in our own back yard.
For example, consider the slew of interviews and job offers being given to the evacuees. In their beneficence, companies have waived reference checks, pre-employment exams, lengthy interviews, and all the other attendant, paranoid baloney that Massachusetts residents are used to.
Contrast this to a tale I heard yesterday from a friend, a 70 year old woman, whose job was being eliminated by a major financial services company in Mass. She’s worked for this company for 23 years, and guess what they tried to do? Force her to retire so they wouldn’t have to pay her severance.
At Camp Edwards, there are multiple staff for every evacuee, and apparently this is leading to some interesting quandries. Like, 10 social workers fighting among themselves about the appropriate counselling for one hapless evacuee (a true story).
Someone told me yesterday that social service agencies are “in chaos”, trying to deal with the over 8,000 people who have applied to volunteer at Edwards.
That’s 8,000 people who apparently haven’t found opportunities to help their neighbor in their own communities. Neighbors like:
– Hospital patients, including disabled veterans
– Kids in the Boys & Girls Clubs, the 4-H, the Scouts
– Handicapped children or adults in special needs programs
– Elderly rest home residents
You get the point.
And if anyone doubted Mitt Romney’s self-serving political motives for helping the Camp Edwards evacuees, they must have been convinced by his proposal earlier this week that Islamic houses of worship be bugged – and his subsequent refusal to apologize.
This is pretty much par for the course: government officials here have generally behaved badly to the rest of us over the past 3 weeks.
– Law enforcement personnel have made derogatory and dismissive comments about parents who have expressed legitimate concerns about importing sex offenders to their community.
– Communication from public officials has been abominable, including contradictory statements about whether the evacuees would remain in Massachusetts (about 1/3 plan to do so) and “flip-flops” on whether they would be given preference in assignment to subsidized housing (preference will be given).
– No one has really explained how someone with no assets and who doesn’t have a 6-figure income will be able to live on the Cape, when long-term residents are fleeing because the cost of living has buried them, fewer than 25 Section 8 units are available, and the homeless population is already estimated at 2,500.
I feel sorry for the victims of Hurricane Katrina who want to relocate here. In a few months, they’ll be thrown in the same category as everyone else who’s receiving state and federal assistance. The welcome in private homes will be wearing mighty thin. They’ll be in the middle of a New England winter, with no staff of volunteers to ease their anxiety, or be there to “retain their supply of creature comforts”.
In fact, for many of the evacuees, reality is setting in. In this morning’s Cape Cod Times, some are quoted as saying they’ve learned how expensive it is to live here, and others are going home, having realized that there will be abundant construction jobs in New Orleans.
Others have been turned off by what they’ve been hearing on talk radio and other media outlets. As I’ve written to the CC Times, this amount of frustration is probably reflective of how we feel about our government’s mismanagement and lousy communication, and not anger with people who have lived through a catastrophe. Still, if I were in the same boat, I wouldn’t want to live here, either.
Some of the evacuees have caught on, but others – well, not so sure.
For example, an LPN figured she could support herself, and maybe she’s right, but the numbers say otherwise.
Per Salary.com (which, if anything, overstates local pay rates), the median salary for LPN’s on Cape is a little under $36,500. Using the standard 30% rule, that income could support housing costs of about $900/month: about right for a studio or an in-law, with utilities included.
But wait.
The median salary for LPN’s in New Orleans is $34,500 – very little difference, and our LPN was used to paying $500/month back home.
So, this lady’s income could go up only about 6% while her housing increases by 80%.
The Cape Cod Center for Sustainability figures that an income of $55,200 is required for a two-bedroom rental, so let’s hope that one or both of our LPN’s grown kids doesn’t decide to move in with her.
This is all to say that I wouldn’t be surprised if the evacuees are being fed as big a line of BS as the rest of us about their long-term situation here.
Meanwhile, Houston is swamped with 200,000 evacuees, and businesses are starting to rebuild in New Orleans.
Even so, Mitt wrangled $15 million out of the federal government to take care of a little over 200 people here for less than a month. That’s almost $72,000 for each man, woman and child who got off the planes to Camp Edwards.
Wouldn’t it have been better to spend that money where it’s really needed, in the Gulf states?
Even if they choose to ignore “our own”, wouldn’t it be nice if both the public and private sector in Massachusetts were as generous to the hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi as they have been to the now fewer than 200 people here?