The Port Arthur News
September 03, 2006 10:40 am
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Guiseppe Barranco
The News staff writer
Heavy rains blurring Louis Johnson’s windshield not only provoked road hazards on Interstate 10 west, but also served as a dismal reminder of the toll Hurricane Katrina placed on his life one year ago.
Generally, Johnson’s commute to Louisiana was focused around rebuilding his New Orleans home, but this time is different. On the weekend before the one year anniversary of Katrina, Johnson’s goal was to remember.
“It is still depressing to see all that is going on. It’s hard, but I got to do it. I have to take care of my family,” Johnson said.
Traveling the highway from Texas to Louisiana has become common for Johnson, who in the past year has made a home in both Beaumont and Baton Rouge. All the while, he as continues trying to pick up the pieces of his former life in New Orleans — a life altered after the collapsing Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Carmel levees flooded his neighborhood leaving six feet of water in his home.
“I do not cry anymore when I come back here,” Johnson, quietly said standing in the living room of his stepmother’s Lower Ninth Ward home.
In an effort to retain roots in Louisiana, Johnson’s wife Samantha maintains a rent house she shares with their three children in Baton Rouge, while Louis keeps family finances afloat as a chief steward on the Cape Vincent docked in the Port of Beaumont.
Traversing the triangle of Beaumont to Baton Rouge to New Orleans and back again is a bi-monthly journey Johnson committed himself to largely in part to the skyrocketing costs of housing in post Katrina New Orleans.
"If I sell the house as is I would probably get $65 to $70,000," Johnson said straight faced. "But, if I fix it up. Well, there is no telling how much I could get for the house because the property values in the city are going up so high."
Property values or not, Johnson is a select few of the city’s former population that is both able and willing to return to New Orleans and rebuild in a city full of uncertainties.
With crime rates requiring National Guard presence, questionable levees and entire New Orleans’ communities void of a population; many former residents are waiting for the city to return to its former glory. Johnson is one of those pioneers re-creating that glory regardless of cost.
To Johnson, the situation seems to be baffling.
"They (city officials) keep telling people to come back home and rebuild, but the costs are just to high for people to move back.” Johnson said pointing out outrageous costs of tiny shotgun style homes from the local paper’s real-estate rag.
Along with monthly payments on the Baton Rouge rent home and high gas costs, Johnson continues to make payments on his New Orleans home.
"Not only am I paying the note, but the electricity and the insurance on a home that my family is not even living in," Johnson said out of frustration after reading a Times-Picayune article about rising housing costs in New Orleans.
Along with visiting his family in Baton Rouge, Johnson utilized the trip to re-visit the Lower Ninth Ward, a newly erected commemorative monument for storm victims and participate in the Hands Around the Dome event on Saturday.
Johnson said he will continue to travel to Louisiana as a sacrificial means to less costly end with plans to sell the home upon its completion, but is unsure were to move from there.
For now, the future is unclear for the Johnson family.
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