Katrina APA Community One Year Later: Still in Limbo
JACL, APA groups are heading back down to the Gulf Coast for the second legal education clinic. How much has changed?
“Nothing is the same,” said Jennifer Ryan, a 48-year-old fulltime homemaker upon her return to Metairie, Louisiana, an unincorporated suburb of New Orleans that nearly drowned in Katrina’s high waters last year. Sunken houses and debris still dot the tree-lined streets like mummified artifacts, but Jennifer still came home. Nothing is the same, but very little has changed.
“It’s part of life. It happened to a lot of people.”
Last month, Jennifer, who is of Chinese descent, and her family moved back to Metairie after an 11-month stay with relatives in Virginia. Right now, home is a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailer parked in front of Jennifer’s parents’ house. It has nowhere near the square footage of their last place, but the trailer houses Jennifer, her husband Terry and their two teenage daughters Natasha and Amanda.
“Plus a dog and a hamster,” said Jennifer with a laugh. “At least we have a place to live.”
The Ryan family is part of the nearly 300,000 displaced by Katrina who are still unable to go to bed at night in their own homes. Of that, the hobbled Asian Pacific American community is still struggling to get back on its feet with nowhere near the media attention and awareness focused on other ethnic communities in the Gulf Coast. Many have followed family members to different parts of the country and resettled while others wander nomadically between their temporary and former homes.
“One year later, they are still in limbo,” said Tram Nguyen of the Boat People SOS, an aid organization that has been on the ground helping APA victims for the last year. Images of thousand of APAs pouring into the local Hong Kong mall immediately after Hurricane Katrina are seared in many community members’ minds, and with help from within, the displaced are still trying to find their way.
We Thought It’d Be Over by Now
“We’re still dealing with a fair number of people with emergency needs one year later — we thought it’d be over by now,” said Nguyen. They need food. They still need emergency aid. Legal assistance is also needed to argue against benefits denial cases and immigration needs because a lot of the victims’ documents have been destroyed.
“Many of the victims feel they have to hear it from a lawyer,” she added.
In response, legal help is coming again. A second Community Education and Legal Clinic for APAs is scheduled Sept 16-17 in New Orleans. The first one held last April focused primarily on assistance issues. And while that is still a need, this time organizers anticipate more problems with bankruptcy, continued insurance issues and problems of fraud, said Floyd Mori, JACL director of public policy.
“To me it is very sad and greatly disappointing that more has not been accomplished to help these victims,” said Mori, who traveled to New Orleans for the last legal clinic and documented the destruction. “I am informed that the issues are now turning to depression and other health problems among the Asian American population. A lot of the hope for better things to come has dissipated and more of an attitude of gloom has entered their lives.”
During this trip, Mori will assess health needs to help develop a healthcare strategy.
BPSOS currently has five fulltime case managers working in the Gulf Coast to help victims access their benefits. In their Virginia headquarters, case manager Thanh Pham is currently working on 27 cases. For him, success is a relative word that is hard to gauge.
“[My clients] come back and forth to Virginia from Mississippi, New Orleans and Biloxi to search for jobs and apply for trailers,” said Pham, 70. When he asks his clients to transfer their case files back home there’s still reluctance. Right now, they prefer the nomadic life.
“It’s hard to tell if [the recover efforts are] successful,” he said.
We Told Them We Were Coming Back
“We try to make it,” said Jennifer. “Everything is going up price wise.” They rented before the hurricanes and only paid $650 a month. One year later, they are looking at apartments and houses that are upwards of $1,300.
“Everything is at an outrageous price.”
A year ago, they packed up some of their belongings into their car and each took one suitcase to drive away from home the day before Katrina hit.
“We have two teenage girls … We told them we were coming back,” she said.
They were thinking about driving directly to Virginia where Jennifer’s brother was waiting. They stopped in Birmingham after 13 hours and watched the news huddled in a hotel room. They heard the storm was heading for their home and later they heard the levee broke.
“I told my husband, ‘We have no choice but to go to Virginia now.’”
Three weeks later, they came back to Louisiana and were greeted with three-feet of mold.
“The place smelled so bad. We had no choice but to go back to Virginia. My husband lost his job. We didn’t have a home.”
Then one day someone from BPSOS called them. The organization had heard about the Ryan family and wanted to help. Jennifer is Chinese but lived in Cambodia until 1975 before settling in Louisiana. With the help of APA organizations, they received checks from FEMA and a church paid their rent in Virginia.
They felt lucky, said Jennifer. But a cloud was casting a shadow over their oldest daughter Natasha, then 17. She was particularly devastated and drifted in her own world in Virginia.
“After she saw what happened [to their home] she threw a fit,” said Jennifer. It was Natasha’s last year in high school and she had to leave everything behind. When Natasha got accepted to the University of New Orleans, the family decided it was time to come home.
Jennifer works part time and Terry is working several jobs to make ends meet. In a few weeks, they will be moving into a three-bedroom house rented from a family friend who will only charge them $1,100 a month.
“I’m not mad it happened. No one can control the weather. We’re moving slowly. It takes time,” she said.
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