I'm from the government, and I'm here to help: A flawed scheme to save an island community from the rising sea

 Anyone exploring Louisiana's coastline knows climate change and rising sea levels are real. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Pelican State has lost 1,900 square miles of coastland since 1932. It continues to lose the equivalent of a football field every 100 minutes.

Thousands of Louisianians are being forced from their homes due to rising ocean water and skyrocketing property insurance rates. The federal government has offered various kinds of assistance to these beleaguered people, including Flood Mitigation Assistance grants to enable some homeowners to elevate their houses above the ever-encroaching water.

Unfortunately, the feds can't fix all our climate problems, as a recent story in the Baton Rouge Advocate illustrates. 

Advocate reporter Alex Lubben recently wrote an informative story about Isle de Jean Charles, an island community off the Louisiana coast. A casualty of the rising sea level, the island shrank from 35 square miles to a single square mile in recent years. 

Most of the Jean Charles population are members of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation, and many moved to the newly created community of New Isle, located forty miles inland. A $48 million grant enabled 37 new homes to be built at New Isle for these "climate refugees,"  and the grant also paid for the New Isle dwellers' homeowners insurance for five years.

A happy ending, right?

 Unfortunately, many of the grant beneficiaries are unable to pay their property taxes and insurance. One New Isle resident said he planned to sell his truck to pay $4,000 in back taxes on his new home.

Let's do the math on this federal do-good project. Grant administrators spent $46,600,000 to build 37 homes--more than a million dollars per home. The Jean Charles islanders got the homes for free but many can't afford to maintain them. 

It would have been cheaper for the federal government to have given every Jean Charles household a million dollars and let them build or buy their own homes. But that model won't work either.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 330,000 Louisiana homes will be at risk of chronic flooding by 2045 (as reported in the Advocate story). That's a fifth of all Louisiana households. Will the feds give all these homeowners a million bucks each to obtain new lodging? Not likely.

Disaster looms for thousands of Louisiana homeowners who live on the Gulf Coast, and the cost to move all these people inland is prohibitive. This a problem that the federal government can't fix.

One thing seems clear. In the coming years, only rich people will be able to live on the Gulf Coast, people rich enough to pay skyrocketing property insurance. If you're not rich, don't move there.

Photo credit: Times-Picayune and Ted Jackson

Two Homeless People Were Shot While Sleeping in Their Blankets Under a Baton Rouge Overpass: What Can We Do to Alleviate the Homelessness Crisis?

Last month, two homeless people were shot to death while sleeping in their blankets under a Baton Rouge overpass. Christiana Fowler, age 53, and 43-year-old Gregory Corcoran Jr. were found dead near a roadway not far from the Bishop Ott Homeless Shelter.

Violent death has become almost routine in most American cities. In 2019, Baton Rouge experienced 83 murders, and the toll in many US cities is much higher.

But for me at least, the deaths of Fowler and Corcoran were especially poignant. As Advocate news writer Jacqueline Derobertis reported, both victims had people in their lives who loved and cared about them. Ms. Fowler had a daughter and an ex-husband who had offered to get her hotel room on the night she died just to get her off the streets. Mr. Corcoran left four children under the age of 18.

The Advocate published photos of Fowler and Corcoran, which powerfully attested to the fact that neither one had always been homeless. Fowler appears radiant with a smiling face and a confident gaze. Corcoran's photo shows him wearing a coat and tie, serenely looking at the camera.

Homelessness is an urgent problem in America. Thousands of Americans live on the streets or in tent jungles.  According to some reports, almost half of America's homeless are in California, but who knows the truth of the matter? Almost every American city has a significant homeless population.

The experts say homelessness is linked to mental illness, joblessness, and drug abuse. Indeed, Fowler suffered from drug addiction, and Corcoran had been thrown out of work. But to better understand the nation's current homelessness crisis, we might learn something from studying the last great period of homelessness in America--the Great Depression.

That era was powerfully depicted in John Ford's great movie, The Grapes of Wrath. Based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, the movie tells the story of the Joads, a family of Oklahoma tenant farmers who were forced off their farm by a heartless landowner.

The Joads were fictional, but more than a million homeless people flocked to California during the 1930s, where they hoped to find jobs and a better life. Thanks to World War II, most of the Okies were able to regroup. Many found work in the defense and construction industries. Others settled in California's Central Valley and became truck farmers. The great Merle Haggard, who penned the song Okie from Muskogee, was the son of Okie parents.

The homelessness crisis of the Thirties differs from today's homelessness epidemic. Many of the homeless people of the 1930s survived as intact families. The Joad family, for example, was made up of four generations. And the Okies of the Thirties had job skills. Most had been smalltime farmers, who knew something about construction, agriculture, and mechanics.

It should not take another war to solve America’s homelessness crisis. Our communities have the resources to alleviate this human tragedy. Expanding mental health services will help, along with more treatment options for drug addiction. But all of us have a personal responsibility to nurture young people to develop job skills, to become self-reliant, and to be resilient. 

And we should recognize our fellow citizens who help unfortunate people get back on their feet. Ivy Alford, my father-in-law, has cooked meals for homeless men at the Bishop Ott Homeless Shelter for more than 25 years. Over the years, Ivy and his family have cooked more than 5,000 meals for the homeless.

Ms. Fowler and Mr. Corcoran had family members who reached out to them. Had there been more time, both might have lifted themselves out of homelessness. Tragically, they were murdered.  Let’s hope their death underscores the urgency of the homelessness crisis in Baton Rouge.

Christiana Fowler and Gregory Corcoran Jr.: Homeless
Photo credit: Baton Rouge Advocate