Sense of Duty Lures `Expats' Back Home to New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS — When Mark Folse told his mother-in-law he had decided to move his family here shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit, she handed him a magazine article about New Orleans' gang problem.
"The understated text was, 'This is where you're taking my grandchildren?' " said Folse, 49, a New Orleans native then living in Fargo, N.D.
"I took the magazine, smiled and read it," Folse recalled. He tried to point out the positives to his mother-in-law: Many criminals had not returned to the city since the storm. Crime-fighting efforts were intensifying. The criminal justice system was being overhauled.
But most important, he told her, was that his children -- ages 11 and 14 -- would be living in "one of the most unique places in the United States" at a time of unprecedented challenges.
Folse is among a number of "expatriates," as they call themselves, drifting back to New Orleans after a long absence -- drawn by a sense of duty to help rebuild, by opportunities, or by nostalgia.
There are no hard statistics on expatriates, but online homecoming tales, real estate sales records, hiring data and anecdotes suggest their presence is growing.
"What I'm seeing are people who
They aren't the only recent arrivals. Migrant workers have flooded the job market, and scores of government and private workers involved in rebuilding also have settled in the city since Katrina. And of course there are speculators scouting for opportunities.
"Many people will look at New Orleans and say, 'You couldn't pay me to move there,' " said demographer Audrey Singer of the centrist Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, who monitors migration trends including the so-called Katrina diaspora. "Then you have these people who think, 'This is a place I care about and I need to be here,' for various reasons; or those who say, 'There's a lot of work here.' "
Many expatriates say they worry that developers and speculators might mar the city's unique appearance, such as its hodgepodge of French colonial and Caribbean-style architecture; they don't want bland, prefabricated tract homes or McMansions. They also fear an erosion of the city's cultural eclecticism.
Folse is leading an online charge to encourage expatriates to return to New Orleans.
"The more people who come back, who value the city for what it was and what it is, the more difficult it will be for them to wrest it from us," Folse said.
