HOUSTON — Angry at what she called rudeness by Red Cross workers and frustrated at her inability to find an apartment so she can move out of a shelter, Mary Joseph gave full vent to her feelings Saturday.
"They're treating us like dogs," said Joseph, 54, as she sat outside the Reliant Arena, where she sleeps on a cot. "They just want to get us out of Houston as fast as they can. Thanks for nothing."
Across town, Bessie Buckner, 72, a Houston resident, had a different view: The Hurricane Katrina evacuees are getting preferential treatment for support like Medicare and food stamps while residents are being shut out.
"It's devastating, but there's a lot of Houstonians and there's no help for them," Buckner said. The evacuees "just come in and they get everything. That's not right."
As Houston's effort to provide shelter and support for evacuees -- the largest effort of any city in the nation -- enters its third week, frictions, although not widespread, have begun to wear away patience and goodwill on all sides.
Some say it's simply human nature, and part of the natural fallout from such a traumatic event.
More than 90% of the families who took refuge in the Astrodome and Reliant Center have found more permanent housing; many have enrolled children in schools, some have found work. Of the 24,000 evacuees initially housed in the Astrodome and Reliant Center, 1,650 have not been placed and have been relocated to the arena. Many of the services available initially have been shut down.
Some Houston residents complain that evacuees are getting public housing ahead of Houston residents and free tuition to private schools for their children. Watching evacuees use their debit cards from the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency for what appear to be non-essentials, some Houstonians are resentful.
One man wrote to the local newspaper that he will never again donate to the Red Cross.
Amid evacuee complaints about the Red Cross, agency officials asked Coast Guard Lt. Joe Leonard, in charge of the shelter program, to ban reporters from the Reliant Arena, where the evacuees are living on cots. Leonard complied.
Red Cross official Scott Snyder said Saturday that the privacy of evacuees must be protected -- an explanation that evacuees sitting outside the arena laughed at.
"What he means is he doesn't want you to know the truth," said Priscilla Pittman, 38. "It's just one run-around after another in there and nobody seems to be in charge."
