NYT, pg1: In Setback for New Orleans, Fed-Up Residents Give Up

[DeepModem Mom]

In Setback for New Orleans, Fed-Up Residents Give Up
By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: February 16, 2007


Dylan Langlois, center, and Kasandra Larsen said goodbye to a friend as they prepared to move out of New Orleans.
(Lee Celano for The New York Times)

....A year ago, Ms. Larsen, 36, and Mr. Langlois, 37, were hopeful New Orleanians eager to rebuild and improve the city they adored. But now they have joined hundreds of the city’s best and brightest who, as if finally acknowledging a lover’s destructive impulses, have made the wrenching decision to leave at a time when the population is supposed to be rebounding.

Their reasons include high crime, high rents, soaring insurance premiums and what many call a lack of leadership, competence, money and progress. In other words: yes, it is still bad down here. But more damning is what many of them describe as a dissipating sense of possibility, a dwindling chance at redemption for a great city that, even before the storm, cried out for great improvement.

“The window of opportunity is closing,” Ms. Larsen said, “before more people like us give up and say it’s too little, too late.”

Mr. Langlois, who has repeatedly called the health and sanitation departments, the police and City Hall, said he despaired of receiving any response. In November, the couple bought their first house, and in December, they bought their first handgun.

“My friends here are just the greatest, hard-working, tax-paying people,” Mr. Langlois said, “and I think a lot of us are feeling under siege.”

The couple are unlikely to make any money on the sale of their house.

For every household that, like this one, has given up, there is another on the verge. Tyrone Wilson, a successful real estate agent and consultant, said he and his wife, Trina, a lawyer, had given post-storm life a fair chance. But, Mr. Wilson said, at the end of the school year they are likely to take their three children back to Dallas, where they took refuge after the storm....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/us/nationalspecial/16orleans.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

[cyberpj]

1. Exactly what was desired by business and casino developers. nt

[ixion]

4. my thoughts exactly

n/t

[C_U_L8R]

2. Thank Joe Lieberman and George Bush

two truly bad people

[Karenina]

3. Ethnic cleansing

AMERICAN STYLE.