My hometown is Houston, Texas. It's an awfully nice place to grow up - good weather, good food, and, above all, good people. I think a lot of people either had negative or neutral impressions of Houston prior to last September, but Houston's reaction to Hurricane Katrina changed that. People realized that Houstonians opened their hearts, homes, and wallets to over 150,000 people who had to evacuate from a devastated New Orleans after the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.

But, it's been six months since New Orleans collapsed, and Houston is finally showing signs that the compassion of the 4th largest city in the United States is starting to wear thin. Schools are overcrowded, as are hospital emergency rooms and jails. The murder rate is on the rise, and so is the rate of sexually transmitted diseases. Many Katrina survivors are still without jobs, living in government-subsidized housing and draining the public coffers.

It's reasonable to expect Houstonians to wonder when New Orleans will be ready to welcome back its residents. But, three New Orleans city leaders have recently said they only want hard-working residents to come back to New Orleans (see 22 February 2006 Houston Chronicle article here). So, it appears that the members of the New Orleans City Council would prefer that Houston, the city with the biggest heart on the planet, absorb New Orleans-based public assistance devotees into its population, rather than allow them to go back home - to New Orleans, where they came from in the first place.

My friends and family (and my neighbors in Chaska who donated tons of clothing and food in September) have done a lot to help people who found themselves in a very unfortunate circumstance. At some point, something's gotta give. New Orleans needs to get back to where it was, welcome back its residents, and thank Houston, Baton Rouge, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and the rest of this incredibly compassionate country for taking in and taking care of people who truly needed the help.

To quote Lady Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

That's exactly what this country did. And now, it's time for New Orleans to step up to the plate and do the right thing.

Thanks to Newsweek for giving me the impetus for this rant.