Valley's Katrina victims still struggling

Two years after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast and tossed nearly 3,000 families into the Arizona deserts, most of them remain here and hundreds of them still flounder.

SPECIAL REPORT: View Tribune's 2006 'Being Katrina' special report

Some are homeless. Others are keeping a roof over their heads, but need help with summer electric bills. A few are suicidal.

Their stories have spurred disaster relief and social-service agencies to extend or renew programs that had stalled, taught case workers new lessons in disaster management and raised questions about whether billions in public and private money could’ve been better spent.

“Giving people things and then expecting something is terribly unrealistic,” says Kay Jarrell, clinical assistant professor of nursing at Arizona State University.

“A lot of these people’s lives were messed up before the hurricane,” she says. “They were Katrina victims, but I think they were Phoenix victims, too.”

A family profiled in the Tribune a year ago is a case in point. Already struggling before the storm, they slowly disintegrated in the year after they were flown to Phoenix. Now two of the boys are in foster care here, their mother’s whereabouts are unknown and their father is on probation for stealing copper wire and frequently homeless.

“I’m a step from going crazy,” Clifton Drummer said as he awaited his hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court. “They took my kids. They took my car. They took my house. They just took my whole life away.”

Consider Vanessa and Robert Nelson. They’re still getting by in a Glendale apartment, but health problems keep both of them from working. The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System pays for Robert’s kidney dialysis and Vanessa’s arthritis treatment.

“It’s hard when you lose everything, trying to build back up,” Robert says. “But we’re hanging on in there.”

What was once an expansive social-service network has all but evaporated. For the most part, government agencies, non-profits and private donors who mobilized following the devastating flood have long since moved on.

Waivers that allowed hundreds of evacuees to immediately qualify for state health and welfare programs have expired. Some are still eligible, but the agencies no longer keep track of evacuees so there’s no way to tell how many have been added to the public rolls.

But the number of people asking for help keeps growing.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency sends monthly rent payments to dozens in the Valley, and recently resumed cash assistance for other needs, to the tune of nearly $4 million since January, after pleading from case workers here.

“We have people who are struggling,” says La’Tresa Jester of Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest.

Jester oversees more than 400 cases of Katrina evacuees as the agency’s division director of disaster services. She added eight new clients this month and approved $3,000 worth of emergency aid this week, covering everything from bus passes to rent.

“They lost their lives,” she says. “Two years is nothing if you’ve lost your life.”

Funding is drying up, so the two local faith-based groups still working with Katrina evacuees will hold a fund-raiser at a Phoenix church next weekend just to keep paying three case managers and offer emergency funds to those who still need it.

More than $13 million in FEMA funds went to help families in the first year with daily living expenses, in addition to the millions spent by local charities, state and federal health and welfare agencies and private donors.

Despite that investment, no one can say, on the whole, how people are faring.

Jarrell makes weekly visits with students to Central Arizona Shelter Services, where she’s been seeing Katrina evacuees among the Phoenix homeless.

She worries that the truckloads of clothes, household goods and money were showered upon the hurricane victims with no strings attached, while their broader, deeper issues were unaddressed.

“How many thousands of dollars did people spend to take care of families that had lots of problems?” she asks. “If this were to happen again, would anything change?”

The Lutheran agency was the local lead for a federally funded faith-based recovery effort called Katrina Aid Today, a $66 million grant to help families achieve self-sufficiency. A wide variety of other groups “adopted” families or offered temporary housing.

The task proved harder than many had anticipated, particularly in the Valley, where efforts were splintered and the needs were great. Social workers knew the people who would be evacuated to Phoenix and other far-flung regions lacked the resources to get out on their own.

Though many families have returned to the Gulf Coast, and others have thrived here, a good number of Katrina evacuees brought with them the same problems they had before the hurricane: poverty, joblessness, substance abuse and other dysfunctions.

Only here, they lacked family and other support systems that had propped them up. So in many cases, once the free leases expired or the funding ran out, the families were unable to afford their homes and keep themselves afloat. Many, like Clifton Drummer, were evicted.

“People got into this thing with their hearts and said I want to help,” Jester says. “But they didn’t understand what that meant.”

Case managers are learning from their experience, Jester says, and moving resources from Tucson, where they had more success, to the Valley. They’re changing their tactics, expecting less and requiring more of their clients, while still offering counsel, classes and, if necessary, funding.

Ross Patterson and his wife spent days at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where Katrina evacuees were housed for about two weeks. The Scottsdale developer, working alongside a group of pastors, quickly saw that the needs were great.

“I thought, 'Somebody’s got to do something other than pray with these people,’ “ he says.

So they incorporated Arizona Cares, a non-profit that found housing and jobs for eight families, modeled after work they did with Sudanese refugees.

Most of the Katrina evacuees, he says, were faring well late last year. But he’s heard about many others who have struggled mightily.

“Some of them got too much help too soon,” Patterson says. “And they thought it would never come to an end.”

It may take another disaster before the question of what, if anything, has been learned from Katrina. In the meantime, Jester hopes that the plight of Katrina victims can once again move people in the community to action.

“Suicide is huge. Even with our clients in Phoenix, they’re saying, 'I want to quit,’” Jester says. “So we can’t quit. We absolutely can’t quit.”

To donate to Katrina survivors living in the Valley or offer volunteer support, call Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, (877) 258-2059 or (602) 957-2153; or Tanner Community Development Corp., (602) 253-6904.

If You Go

What: Katrina – Still Standing, a benefit for local Katrina survivors

When: 7 p.m. Sept. 7

Where: Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, 1401 E. Jefferson St., Phoenix

For more information, call Lutheran Social Services, (602) 957-2153, or Tanner Community Development Corp., (602) 253-6904.

By the numbers:

2,817 — peak number of Katrina/Rita households in Arizona

$394,314 — amount of FEMA rental assistance, since Jan. 1, to 64 households

$3.8 million — other FEMA assistance, to 492 households, in 2007

$5.5 million — reimbursed to state, county and city agencies and nonprofit groups for Operation Good Neighbor.

Source: FEMA, Arizona Division of Emergency Management