Newsweek:

March 13, 2006 issue - In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, Houston earned a loving moniker among many of the evacuees who sought refuge there: the Big Heart. This, after all, was the city that housed, fed and mended more than 150,000 survivors in a herculean effort that won national acclaim. Houston officials mounted what is believed to be the biggest shelter operation in the country's history, including MASH-like megaclinics that took on problems ranging from emergency care to eyeglass prescriptions.

In cities stretching from Atlanta to San Antonio, good will has often given way to the crude reality of absorbing a traumatized and sometimes destitute population. In Baton Rouge, which added 100,000 people to a pre-Katrina population of 225,000, residents bemoan the loss of the city's small-town feel and worry that trailer-park settlements will become permanent fixtures of blight. In Dallas, the city housing authority began offering rent vouchers to some of its 20,000 evacuees, only to become quickly overwhelmed and fail to pay landlords, prompting a number of eviction notices.

Public services are overwhelmed, city finances are strained and violent crime is on the rise.

Of 189 murders in the six months after the hurricane, 33 involved Katrina evacuees as either suspects or victims, according to Police Chief Harold Hurtt. Initially, the killings resulted from clashes among rival New Orleans gangs, says Hurtt. More recently, they've stemmed from robberies or narcotics, he says. Many cops are struck by the brazenness of the evacuees. "It seems like the face of crime has changed in Houston," said Officer Brandon Brown one night last week as he patrolled the sketchy Fondren area of the city, where many of the arrivals have settled. "It's more tense, more violent." Soon after saying that, he was called to respond to an alleged assault.

The Houston Independent School District has been flooded with 5,800 additional kids, out of 20,000 overall in area schools. That influx has forced it to spend an additional $180,000 per day of its own $1.3 billion annual budget—only a fraction of which may be reimbursed by the federal government—to educate the new students.

The newcomers are also taxing the area's health-care system. Already burdened by a high proportion of uninsured people before Katrina, Houston has had to contend with thousands more. The problem will likely only get worse: on Jan. 31, more-generous Medicaid rules for Katrina victims expired. As a result, countless patients who had been receiving treatment in doctors' offices may now turn to overwhelmed emergency rooms.

All of which leaves Houston Mayor Bill White scrambling to keep the city's finances afloat. He's taken heat from political opponents who carp that he should have sought greater assurances of federal support before welcoming evacuees so magnanimously. "This is going to create turmoil for many years to come," says Steve Radack of the Harris County Commission.

We'll see just how dedicated Houston is to providing adequete government services to everyone in the community. Basically the same "vision" being tried in Olympia, just on a smaller scale.