Nagin Tries to Stir Cravings for Home

Appealing to a pent-up longing for authentic file gumbo, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin came to Texas on Tuesday and tried to talk the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees still here into returning home.

Nagin’s nostalgic references to the Crescent City’s matchless cuisine had heads nodding. So did his political commentary, including a claim that unspecified “powers that be” did not want evacuees to go back to New Orleans.

But if his audience in Houston’s 3rd Ward neighborhood was any indication, Nagin will need more than culinary rhetoric to persuade still-traumatized Katrina survivors to return to a city that remains in tatters.

“He didn’t say anything I needed to hear,” Cornelius Bradley, 75, said as he limped out of the auditorium, leaning on a wooden cane. “How’s all this talk about red beans and rice going to help me?”

Nearly a year after the storm hit, there are as many as 150,000 evacuees still in Houston -- more than any other city. About half of New Orleans’ 470,000 residents have yet to return. And with polls in Texas showing that many plan to stay here, New Orleans leaders increasingly regard luring people back as a top priority.

On Tuesday, Nagin was here for the opening of New Orleans’ first “Journey Home Center.” The centers are billed as a one-stop facility where evacuees can learn about housing assistance, job training and other services to help them resume their lives in the Big Easy.

“We’re going to make the impossible possible and get our people back home,” said the Rev. Tom Watson, co-chairman of Nagin’s repopulation committee.

“We are writing -- or rewriting, if you will -- the history of New Orleans,” he told the more than 200 people who attended the ceremony.

Nagin started by saying that he planned to hold his tongue. But the notoriously spontaneous speaker still offered a blunt assessment of the state of his city as Katrina’s anniversary draws near.

“I’m going to be honest with you -- there is still a lot of devastation in the Lower 9th Ward. There is still a lot of devastation in New Orleans East,” Nagin said, adding that evacuees who return “may want to consider moving to another neighborhood until your old neighborhood comes back.”

Nagin also took several swipes at the federal government, especially the Federal Emergency Management Agency, remarking that “at times, it didn’t seem like FEMA gave a you-know-what.”

He urged evacuees to write Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to say, “Where’s my money?” and put pressure on the state’s $7.5-billion “Road Home” housing grant program, which has yet to provide any funds to the more than 100,000 people who have applied for assistance.

The mayor said that it seemed as if powerful people did not care about rebuilding New Orleans, a statement that resonated with the crowd.

“For some reason, there’s powers that be that do not want this city to come together,” he said. “And we can’t allow that.”

Although Nagin’s speech drew applause, many evacuees said they had hoped to hear more specifics, such as how New Orleans officials planned to combat crime or whether they would put a ceiling on housing costs that were rising beyond the reach of many families.

“ ‘The Road Home.’ It’s a nice message. But when is the governor going to get together with the mayor?” said Dorothy Stukes, an evacuee who was stranded in the Louisiana Superdome last year.

Stukes, 55, is part of a group called the Disaster Survivors Assn. that is helping evacuees in Houston with rides to work and other basic needs.

“Tell me, what are people supposed to go home to? The levees are not completed. The housing isn’t there. There are rotten buildings just sitting there decaying. I have three grandchildren with asthma. No way they can go back there,” she said.

Nagin did not pretend he had those kinds of answers. He stuck to the New Orleans food as his selling point.

“We want you all back to New Orleans as soon as possible,” Nagin said, wrapping up, “because the red beans ain’t the same without y’all.”