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Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Louisiana Spotlight.

I'm Andre Moreau, managing editor here at Lvb.

Today marks the one year anniversary of Hurricane Ida, which devastated much of our state.

Tonight's show will take a look at the effects Ida has had on our state's population along with a number of other issues.

Last year, the US population grew at the slowest rate since the founding of our nation at just 0.1%.

Government declining birth rates and international migration all played large factors in this nationwide decline.

But here in Louisiana, the decline was especially bad.

Louisiana had the fifth highest population loss in the nation in 2021, losing more than 27,000 people who lived here.

This quick decline in population is directly correlated with climate change, with hurricanes like LA and IDA, but it's compounded by rising insurance rates, crime and a stagnating job market.

So is this the beginning of a worrisome trend or an anomaly?

Tonight, we're going to take a deep look into the numbers and speak with experts and people who live here about what it all means.

But first, let's hear from one Louisiana resident who is moving out of the state and her reasons why no sugar bookshelf.

Coming up.

A couple more steps.

I'm going.

To cover this is.

Tour.

We want to put this thing.

Maybe against the wall somewhere.

Hi.

I'm joyful.

I'm limbo.

I am moving to Raleigh, North Carolina, in the process of moving, as you can see.

I'm actually moving next Thursday, so I have a little over a week before I move.

You guys, this one's kind of heavy.

I've lived here about four years and it's been pretty rough.

I went to school for software engineering here, and when I moved here, they had originally a lot of companies had promised the city that they would hire a certain amount of people.

There was all these promises of like tech jobs here and the companies did not fulfill that.

Some of them even closer offices completely.

So as far as tech jobs, there's not many jobs.

My first tech job here, I was only making about $20 an hour, which is okay.

But for a software engineer, that's like really on the low end and the price of living here like that barely covers expenses here.

I'm moving to Raleigh.

A big factor of moving there is they do have a lot of tech companies there.

So a lot of job opportunities, which is really exciting.

And another big thing is Raleigh is one of the lowest in the country as far as crime going.

So in comparison to New Orleans, it's like vastly different.

It's such a weight off my shoulders knowing that I'm moving to a place that's safe.

I don't have to worry about, you know, constantly being, you know, my house being broken into, my car being broken into.

What we do for our children.

Yeah, I'm here.

Joy's dad helping her move to Raleigh, North Carolina.

And one of the reasons she's moving is the crime is serious here in New Orleans, and we're concerned about her safety.

So I was I was pretty happy when she decided to move to North Carolina.

I'm going I kind of missed probably not coming here as often with joy, not being here, but like a lot of big cities, things have not gotten better.

And it's too bad because it's a great city and it's a lot of fun to come to.

There's many reasons why I'm moving.

A big factor lately has been the crime center.

Working out of the crime just seems to be exponential.

When things happen, the police don't respond.

I had two men try to break into my house.

It was 4:00 in the afternoon.

I was on a work call her banging.

I looked out my window and saw two dudes with the ladder trying to climb up.

I called the police and the lady gave me an attitude.

She was like, Why are you calling the police?

What do you expect the police to do?

Before Hurricane Ida hit, my car was broken into and I called the police department twice to get a report so I could maybe send it to my car insurance.

And we never heard back from the police.

That was just really disheartening.

I'm like, if I can't, you know, the cops aren't going to do anything about the crime.

That was my breaking point.

It's sad and bittersweet because there are a lot of great things about New Orleans that's going to be shattered, believe and hard to give up, but I feel like it just doesn't outweigh the daily living that you have to go through, like the the fear of crime and the expensive prices and the cost of living like it just that makes life so stressful that it just doesn't outweigh the the positive, unfortunately, and at least the positive parts.

I can come back and visit and see friends and still get a little bit in New Orleans without having to deal with all the bad stuff.

I would go.

By, you can hear the concern.

It is tangible and real for her.

So many things happening that are causing people to leave our state.

Joining me now to help us get a better understanding of the numbers we're talking about, Dr. Allison Plyer, chief demographer for the data center of southeast Louisiana in New Orleans.

Dr. Plyer, thanks so much for being here.

Sure appreciate it.

You've studied the numbers and this behind Louisiana's growth trends and exit trends.

What are you finding?

Well, so between 2020 and 2021, Louisiana had the fifth highest population loss, which caused a lot of concern.

I do think it's important to point out that those are estimates.

We estimated that the state was losing population from 2016 to 2020 and then when the 2020 count came in, it turned out we actually grew the population.

So I do want to throw cold water on the loss of population because it's always important to be concerned about and to discuss.

But it is it is important to realize this is an estimate and it'll be interesting to see what happens after more years of data come out.

It's stacking up against the rest of the country.

Right?

So against the rest of the country, the country had its slowest growth rate in that one year period since its founding.

It grew only point 1% during that time frame.

And so, you know, it's hard for any state to grow when the country as a whole is barely growing at all.

Why is that in the U.S.?

Why is it the lowest it's been?

Because there's basically three things that make up population growth nationally.

It's deaths, of course, you know, decrease the population.

And we had very high deaths in the last year, couple of years.

We've had a declining birth rate, rapidly declining declining birth rate.

And then our our international immigration has been about half from 2016 onward.

It started to decline from about a million a year, and it went down to 200 less than 250,000 last year.

Okay.

So that's data.

And Louisiana, which had the fifth highest population loss, which states had more.

The states that had more population loss were New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and California.

But then those are big states.

Yes.

Right.

So they're going to have but if we do it just on a rate basis, it was those same states.

But you swap out Massachusetts for Hawaii.

So it was still Illinois and California and New York had higher population rate losses than Louisiana.

But these are states that have huge populations to begin with and they're completely different.

Yes.

Than our state.

Yeah.

We just heard from Joy.

She's leaving the state for a number of reasons.

Kind of heartbreaking, really, and also maddening.

Outward migration is a factor to move, but clearly not the biggest or only.

What does your research telling you are the top reasons.

Yeah.

So when we think about population loss, it has to do with death and birth and outmigration.

Right.

So deaths in Louisiana have been growing even before COVID hit.

Right.

And of course, that makes sense.

The baby boomers are aging.

We've been seeing increased death rates.

So the numbers on that were we had about 44,000 deaths in 2015.

It went up to 46,000 by 2019.

But then in 2020, it jumped to 50,000.

And by 2021, we had 55,000 deaths.

So that's a really large number.

Births have been declining, right?

So we had about 64,000 births in 2014.

And it was as it had it had declined to 58,000 by 2020 and down to 56,000 by 2021.

This is a national trend of declining birth rates, and I think this is almost worth an entire show because it covers every demographic group, which is the first time in history.

Usually after an economic recovery, after the Great Recession, you'd expect birth rates to rebound.

They have not.

We see that millennials and people younger than that are simply choosing to have fewer children and they don't feel sort of the economic wherewithal to have kids the way that prior generations did.

And we are not a state that has cities like Ohio, has Columbus, which some people don't know this, but is on a par with Austin, Texas, with drawing hundreds of thousands of people in a decade.

That's unheard of here.

Yeah, but it sounds like a great thing if it could happen.

Yes.

Or even half that.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, and that's the other thing we saw that the outmigration from Louisiana started in about 2017 and then has continued since then.

So for a while we were gaining population, particularly as we recovered from Katrina.

But about the middle of last decade, we start to see net outmigration.

So you mentioned the COVID and the death rate, of course.

What is the certain population, though, most affected by death?

Right.

Maybe even COVID five?

Well, actually, across death rates, we know that black folks die at about a third higher rate than white folks in Louisiana.

Well, okay.

All right.

Crime, guns, what roles to those play?

You know, I have a surprising answer for you on this one.

Gun death rates are the second highest in Louisiana of all states, but the majority of them are suicides.

Wow.

And that is true nationally.

So we know, of course, that, you know, crime and and homicides get a lot of media coverage.

Suicides do not get media coverage, but they represent the majority of gun deaths in Louisiana and we know that just having a lot of guns makes suicides more likely, more possible.

And we also are having an incredible mental health crisis in Louisiana.

We used to be one of the happiest states.

And in the last couple of years since COVID, we have some of the highest rates of anxiety and depression in the state.

But 40% of all Louisiana adults in as recently as June reported that they felt anxiety and depression.

Yeah, here at LCB, we have covered that topic a great deal.

There's much more that needs to be covered.

It leads me to the next question, though.

From a policy standpoint, is there anything that can be done to curb a growing death rate because you mentioned suicide and mental health?

Yeah, well, we have, you know, insufficient mental health providers.

It sounds like you might have covered that before.

We also have a lot of bad health indicators in general, you know, things like infant mortality.

We have the second highest infant mortality rate in the nation.

Right.

And so, you know, we I think, as a state really need to think harder about how are we going to create, you know, the kind of resources that people need to be here to be healthy in the kind of challenges that we face.

We have a Pennington Center in Baton Rouge, which does fantastic research and information for that.

That's a great resource.

It feels like there's a connection issue, too, with people really knowing where help could come from, perhaps.

What about natural disasters?

How do they affect those numbers?

Yes.

So Louisiana has had more disaster declarations than any other state by far in the last two years.

Every single parish in Louisiana has had upwards of 12 disaster declarations such that every single Louisiana resident has experienced a disaster in the last two years.

And those disaster declarations in Louisiana are about six times higher than most counties.

Some counties around the country haven't had any disasters.

Many, many have, but usually one or two.

But we've had 12 every single parish assemblies.

How about that?

The data collected in the 21 estimates saw a sharp decline in certain areas in the state.

Which were those?

Well, not surprising that the people number of people in Calcasieu declined by about 11,000 in that time period.

Again, we're talking, you know, 2020 to 2021.

There may have been some, you know, some recovery since then.

There were declines of about 6000 people out of Orleans and Jefferson and then some smaller declines out of East Baton Rouge and Cato Parish.

All right.

So we don't see as we look at these numbers, we know the frequency of storms.

It's not going away.

In fact, it's going to be increasing, the severity increasing.

And so could that create like a mass exodus of population migration out?

Yeah.

You know, people ask me that a lot, and I think it's really worth delving into a little bit.

So the number one reason that people move from, say, one metro area to another is for work opportunities.

Even people migrate from one country to another.

Typically it's for work opportunities, right?

So even if like joy, you know, concerned about the crime reasonably, she had to know she had a work opportunity at the other end.

Right.

And she had one here, she thought.

Yes.

Right.

Did not develop the.

Exactly.

In a way.

Exactly.

So work opportunities are always going to draw people.

So what can happen when you have the kind of disasters that we do is typically the middle class is the first one to say, hmm.

Insurance rates are going out the roof.

Maybe other costs are going out the roof.

You know, this is not sustainable.

I'm out of here.

Right.

And so then the people who can't leave typically are poor folks.

They also have, you know, social networks that are closer.

So they don't have, you know, places to go, family to stay with.

Right.

You know, whenever we make a move, we typically see if we have family friends there.

Right.

So so poorer folks don't have those kind of networks.

So they tend to stay and then the wealthy actually tend to stay in disaster prone areas.

They can self-insure.

Right.

So they might like their camps in parts of Louisiana where we have great, you know, sportsman's activities or along the coast of Florida, a lot of wealthy people, you know, they just self-insure and they stay.

So you what you're likely to see with continuing disasters is the middle class being the folks that tend to leave.

And that's largely about insurance.

And that's why insurance and that topic is so important.

And as we saw, the joy, an educated workforce can attract companies.

And you've got to attract those companies.

Tell us about your findings about higher education.

In our state.

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

You know, a lot of times in our state, we think that that, you know, tax incentives and other things will attract companies.

And every time companies say what we really need is educated workers, we can't do anything unless we have some educated workers.

Right.

And states have always been at the forefront of supplying that education in order to develop the workforce.

And Louisiana has cut their investments in full time education higher ed, by about 38% since from 2000 to 2021.

That's the third largest decline of all states.

So, you know, and I think we all remember that happening.

Right, right.

Right.

When the states universities were getting their their budgets cut.

That kind of cut is extremely detrimental to to to economic growth and to.

Those huge cuts during the Jindal administration.

And you see 38% now, but they've come back better.

Yeah, they have come to your senses.

So it's terrific to imagine.

Exactly.

It was way lower than that before.

But do these numbers signify the beginning of a trend that we're just going to expect to continue losing population over the coming years?

I don't try to be a doomsday person at all, but none of the things add up to, wow, the door is open, come on and you know.

Yeah.

Well, again, you know, wherever there are jobs, people will come.

Right.

And so it might be that some people leave and other people come.

And what we do know is some of the incredible work around coastal restoration is is a multibillion dollar industry that is jobs.

We do know that that the infrastructure bill, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, is going to be creating a lot of jobs.

You know, installing Internet, expanding Internet access and and bridges, etc.. You know, the recent bills that were signed in around climate and inflation reduction all are projected to create lots and lots of jobs.

So the question is, who is going to fill those jobs?

Right.

Currently?

We have a lot of trouble with folks filling jobs because we are immigration is so low.

We don't have the folks coming to our country.

A lot of women can't get childcare and can't reenter the workforce since COVID closed, a lot of childcare centers.

You know, 1.6 million Americans every month can't work because of long COVID.

Wow.

There are so many things that we're not looking at in terms of why people aren't working.

And so the question at this point, I think, is how do we keep people healthy, right, so that they can be productive for all the jobs that are going to be here?

And then there's the question of, you know, what's it going to take for people to be able to afford to live here?

Which I know is another topic people think about.

You know, you could have a situation like Alaska where it's, you know, people come seasonally.

A lot of people work remotely.

Right.

And then the people who do live there and work there demand very high wages.

So that's a there will always be people here as long as there are jobs.

The question is, what will the scenario be?

I love the data.

It's fascinating.

Thanks so much for being here.

Coming up, I'm going to sit down with legislators, economists and activists to talk about the numbers and the migration out of Louisiana, some of the key issues going on there.

But first, we're going to hear from Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon about the insurance issues facing our state.

I'm Jim Donelon and I'm the commissioner of insurance for the state of Louisiana.

Well, we're in a crisis.

There's no question about it.

And some of it is beyond our control.

Laura 150 mile an hour winds.

IDA 150 mile an hour winds.

Those 2/2 most powerful storms in our state's history, and that resulted in 800,000 claims being filed over the past two years and companies paying or reserving to pay a total of $22 billion.

Huge amount of money that has had a devastating effect on our market.

The insurance companies that failed, that was on them and it was on them because they did not adequately reinsure themselves for the exposure that they had taken on.

All six were re insured based on the most liberal of projections from cat modelers.

There are three major catastrophe modelers that all of the insurance companies use to evaluate their coastal exposure.

All six of the failed use the same CAT modeler and they missed it by a lot.

They missed it by six by $600 million, $100 million each on average in not 2020, not Laura, Delta and Zeta, but Ida, which hit a more expensive, more populated part of the state.

These seven companies left $100 million of unpaid claims behind when they failed.

It's a challenging part of our job.

It's the most important part of our job to monitor for solvency, because we're here primarily to protect consumers of of insurance products.

And the first thing that they owe their policyholders is enough resources to fulfill the promises they make to their policyholder owners when they take their premiums.

And in this case, those three companies in my state did not meet that obligation.

Now, we're always going to be more expensive.

We've always been one of the three most expensive states for homeowner's insurance.

We're at greater risk than I think anywhere else in the United States.

Below I-10 i 12.

We are the bull's eye for hurricane landfall.

That's part of the cost of living where we do.

And a lot of folks want to live their own bayous in in communities that they've been in for generations.

And and and it can be done.

And it falls to us, the regulators and policy makers, to see to it that the stock of construction in homes and commercial buildings are built strong enough to make it withstand these horrific hurricane events when they do come.

And that will make affordable insurance available for for those policyholders.

Sobering stuff.

The shifts in Louisiana's insurance market are making it hard on people and businesses that are considering entering Louisiana's market.

Joining me now to discuss the effects of these recent changes is our panel.

Congressman Garret Graves represents Congressional District six and is a ranking member of the U.S. House Infrastructure Committee as well as the Select Committee on Climate.

Stephen Barnes is the director of the Kathleen Blanco Public Policy Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

And Simon Milas is the campaign director for Restore the Mississippi River Delta, which aims to rebuild Louisiana's coastal landscape and protect people, wildlife and, of course, jobs.

Representative Graves, I want to start with you.

What have these recent losses in insurance and in population, etc., businesses, what does that mean for Louisiana?

Look, this is an awful setback.

You just heard Commissioner Donelon say that Louisiana already has some of the highest homeowner insurance rates in America.

We're well aware we have some of the highest auto insurance rates in America.

But by losing, I think, up to eight insurers that we've lost already.

It gives us less competition.

It gives us fewer choices or options, which means things are going to be more expensive.

And so it makes our state increasingly uncompetitive, which is obviously not a direction that we need to be going in right now.

Louisiana's got some of the best natural strengths or assets in the world and we've got to maximize their use in order to improve the competitiveness of Louisiana to be a brain magnet state, not a brain drain.

Yet when you do the Chamber of Commerce statement, you don't want to see a Louisiana.

Will you accept the challenge?

But that's almost what it feels like right now.

You have recently reached out to CEOs across the country to hear their top concerns and about bringing business here.

What are they telling you?

Look, I hear it over and over again.

It's infrastructure, which is everything from traffic to flood infrastructure, livability of communities, education, crime, taxes and our liability laws are insurance unaffordability I hear of over and over again.

There are five challenges that we have to hit head on.

Mrs. Miller's What are the recent losses in population do from an environmental standpoint?

It's really tough to tie these extreme weather events to population.

It's oftentimes not just the storm itself, it's the recovery afterwards that's difficult.

And when you're hit with repetitive storm seasons like we have here in Louisiana, it's just really hard to pick it up and to go back.

But I will say, after devastating horn storms in 2005, we learned the lesson that we can't keep doing things the same way.

We changed the way that we protected ourselves.

And I think one thing that we can continue to do is let people know what their risk is.

The insurance commissioner mentioned efforts from organizations like yours about restoring our coastline as a solution for these rising insurance costs.

Building stronger, more resilient.

But is this effort something that has to be done on a private level or not federal level?

We're in a situation here in Louisiana where it's all hands on deck.

We need local, state, federal, and we need private investors.

Here in Louisiana, we're big believers in multiple lines of defense.

Not one solution.

We need several solutions.

It starts all the way from the barrier islands, all the way into levees, evacuation routes, including home elevations or relocations.

Thank you, Steven.

The Blanco Center has done extensive research on financing behind coastal projects like offshore oil and gas, coastal restoration.

What are some of the issues that you guys, the Blanco Center, have highlighted in your coastal financing report?

Well, the challenges we face along our coast are clearly one of the great challenges for this generation and for Louisiana.

We are currently working through an enormous infusion of money into that program thanks to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

But that's one time money.

And so as we look further down the road, we know that we're going to need to do more work to help identify new sources of revenue.

So we've historically also relied heavily on oil and gas related resources, especially those coming from the Gulf of Mexico.

And there's been a lot of work done recently, including work by Congressman Graves and Senator Cassidy, to try to see if we can increase the amount of revenue that goes to the federal government, which is then in turn shared with the states to help support the program.

But I think even beyond that, we're going to have to start taking a really hard look as a state on what we can do to help continue to push forward those efforts and make Louisiana a safer place for future generations.

Representative Graves, do you believe that we need to shift our coastal infrastructure to prepare for the changes to come in the energy sector?

Look, first of all, I think that rather than focusing entirely on effectively abandoning oil and gas and moving toward renewable energy sources, I think we've got to look at numbers and data that show that you're going have a 50% growth in global energy demand over the next 28 years, 50% growth, which means we need wind, solar, wave, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, and we need oil and gas.

And if oil and gas is produced safer and cleaner in the Gulf of Mexico than virtually anywhere else in the world, we should be that global supply chain for those energy resources.

Now, going back to what Simon was talking about a minute ago, look, have we been able to prove that the right investments in our coastal communities can make them safe?

Yes, absolutely.

Look at what happened in the five parish area when Hurricane Ida hit around the greater New Orleans area.

Look at what happened in Lafourche Parish from Golden Meadow North.

Those areas were largely unscathed because of the investments we've made.

We've been dealing with about 100 years of coastal mismanagement and trying to catch up with it.

We've probably invested or have our eyes on about $30 billion in investment, investment in the right places, the right types of projects, whether it's coastal restoration, hurricane protection, pump stations.

They work.

And we've got to double and triple down on those solutions in order to make coastal Louisiana a safe, sustainable place to live.

If we are to clean later, though, and you say we are.

Is that message getting out there?

No.

We are absolutely operating on this awful false narrative out there.

Look, we need to increase our dependance or increase our production of renewable energy sources without question.

But to entirely abandon oil and gas whenever it's demand is going to actually increase over the next 28 or 30 years.

That's a mistake.

When you have the place that produces it safer and cleaner than anywhere.

And oil, I guess, funds the restoration.

So how do we make sure we get that message out?

I guess that's right.

Well, and that's where you work on that.

That's one of the things that we've been doing.

And there's there's great information out there.

The National Energy Labs and other academic institutions have developed proving that very point.

So we've been trying to spread that information out rather than the false narratives that many have been sharing, suggesting that it's some of the dirtiest.

Okay.

Thank you, Salman Simon, same question to you.

Getting that message out, not getting a group to talk about it.

Getting it out.

Yeah.

We've learned a lot of lessons from what we've done in the past, even how we share those oil and gas revenues.

A portion of that went to the parishes.

That was really helpful for them to make their own investments at the local level.

So a lot of times Louisiana is the first.

Sometimes that's not a good thing here.

It actually can be something that we can build upon because we have a comprehensive master plan to make investments.

We've put these things together, protect ocean restoration infrastructure together, and we know how to wisely invest those dollars.

So I think Louisiana can be a leader.

Is is a leader here?

Yeah, we just need to let everyone be on the same page about that.

Dr. Barnes, even will the crisis in our insurance industry and other economic impacts, are there things that we're overlooking with that, with those problems?

Well, you know, I think there's no doubt that the insurance costs that we're facing are a real problem.

I think we need to look for short term solutions while at the same time working on some longer term systemic changes in how we think about Louisiana, how we think about development, how we think about building construction and so on, to make sure that we can move Louisiana towards a different built environment that is less susceptible to some of those storm risks.

That includes investments in the Coastal Master Plan, but that also includes a lot of work at the local level to develop, develop building codes and development plans and then stick to those things and really helped to push people in the right direction to have a more resilient infrastructure, because it's not about all of Louisiana being a high risk area.

It's about making sure that we're making the right big picture investments in storm protection, and then making local decisions to try to put businesses and neighborhoods in the right location so that they're well protected from these larger events.

And I think one thing we've done is, unfortunately, as a nation, we've been very reactive to disasters, and we can no longer do that.

First of all, it's not just devastating hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.

We are competing against wildfires, devastating floods.

We're seeing that today.

So we need a country to understand that by investing in Louisiana today, it'll save you ten times as much down the line.

And I know our congressional delegation has been trying to tell folks that for a very long time.

Yet, Garret Graves, we heard from Joy from New Orleans earlier, who's leaving our state because of a lack of tech jobs, because of crime, because of a lot of reasons.

How does Louisiana, if you talk to CEOs, attract business with all these things standing in the way?

Andrea, first of all, I think we've got to look at the state of Louisiana, just like a private company would look at its assets or strengths.

Some of the things we have, I think other states would kill for the Mississippi River system, connecting us to 31 states going north or the world going south.

One of only two places in America with six class one railroads, natural resources coming out of our ears.

We've got these strategic advantages.

The state of Louisiana back in the mid to early to mid 1900s, we played those cards fairly well.

This place was the economic engine of the South, and those strengths that were powerful then, they're still relevant and powerful today.

The state has not played those cards well.

We've made selfish political decisions.

We've made self-centered decisions that have benefited the few rather than the state holistically.

I think the first thing we have to do is better play those cards and address some of the opportunities like infrastructure and helping to make sure we address our traffic and our sustainability or flood protection efforts, making sure that we address the crime and education issues, making a competitive tax code.

And of course, as I mentioned earlier, addressing these liability laws where we don't have the highest auto insurance rates in America, that is going to cause us to attract business where we're going to become the brain magnet, not the brain drain that we're seeing right now.

It is critical that we diversify our economy.

We strategically use those strengths in a way that's going to grow the economy and grow employment opportunities in south Louisiana.

Really?

Same question.

I want to just get a brief comment from each of you, because it just it sounds to me just sitting here that we are missing the mark and getting the word out and not this is not a political thing at all.

It's just getting the truth out.

Andre, if I told you that I was building $1,000,000,000 factory here in Louisiana, the first question you would ask me is how many jobs?

How can we train those people up?

That is what we're investing in coastal Louisiana, just in restoration and protection.

There's an entire workforce, an entire sector that is building, that is being built around the work that we're doing today.

If we do it right, we protect ourselves, we reduce our risk.

But we also can export that knowledge to other places around the United States and even around the world that are facing the same problems that we're having.

So we really need to look at the silver lining of the opportunity that we have here.

We can keep Louisiana kids here.

We can educate them.

And they can work on something for 20, 30 years that protects their own future.

But so I would I would highlight that a lot of the same things we heard from Congressman Graves that the business community is talking about, the CEOs are talking about are the very same things that we're hearing a lot more discussion about from the economic development community.

When we look at quality of life and really cultivating Louisiana as a as a place people want to be, and that includes good education, low crime, addressing issues related to poverty.

And actually in an even I don't want to say new, but one that's got a heightened emphasis today is broadband access.

Yes.

You know, which is something that we've got to make sure we're making the right decisions to help move all of those things forward and get the word out.

And so actually, as part of our partnership at the blanket center with one Acadiana, we're helping to push out a dashboard with data tracking every one of those metrics for the Acadian region so that as they work to cultivate that quality of life, the public's able to to kind of measure and see, you know, are we making progress?

And if not, what can we change to make sure that we're helping to really move those things forward?

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughtful input, all of your knowledge bridge on this subject.

We're going to continue this conversation with our final panel.

But first, we're going to hear from a person who has been affected by a number of issues we've touched on tonight.

We sat down with the Goldman Prize winning activist Sharon Levine.

She is Louisiana's Erin Brockovich, you might say, to hear her story.

Who?

My name is Sharon Levine, and I'm a lifelong resident of Saint James Parish.

I'm living in a travel trailer.

That's my home was destroyed during Hurricane Ida.

My insurance company dropped me as of June 20th, and I haven't started to rebuild yet.

I haven't found a contractor yet.

People are cold.

They are busy.

The insurance company wouldn't give me much of nothing to rebuild.

When I file a claim with them, I think people on May of last year, because I was having leakage from from my roof, they wouldn't give me the money to fix my roof.

Then when Hurricane Ida came, they took the roof off.

So now I need the money to build inside the house.

I have seen a difference in climate change.

I've seen more and more hurricanes, and I've seen the temperature.

The heat is more intense now than it was a long time ago.

I have seen a change when I was a little girl.

Like we had everything.

We had food that we grew, we had livestock that we ate and we were healthy then.

We weren't.

We weren't sick.

We didn't have so many people dying all of a sudden.

Stretch of land in Louisiana that used to be known as plantation country, where enslaved Africans were brought against their will and forced to work.

Today, though, this part of the state is known as Cancer Alley and residents whose ancestors have lived here for generations, are now fighting for clean air.

In Saint James, the fifth District, where I'm from, we have 12 industries and refineries within a ten mile radius.

As to many industries.

One human being to breathe.

That's why I started this fight to save the lives of the people in Saint James Parish and especially in my area, fifth District.

I was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis in 2016, and that's why I did my research.

That's when we found out that it came from industrial pollutants.

I have two brothers with cancer.

I have a sister long passed with cancer.

We have other relative with cancer right now as I speak.

We have neighbors on either side of where I live.

Died with cancer.

It's like a death sentence.

We were waiting to die.

If nothing is done, we want to die.

Either move away.

We don't have the funds to hallway.

When I found out that this area was Cancer Alley, I felt bad.

Because why should you call our area where we live and where we grew up?

Cancer Alley.

So people will not want to come here knowing that that's a death sentence because it counts as the whole corridor.

It's like 85 mile stretch from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

And public officials are allowed to come here.

They look at the profits.

These petrochemical plants, they do bring jobs to the community.

But the other side, they bring sickness and they bring death.

So I think we need to sit down, evaluate our parish and see what we can come up with that wouldn't be harmful to people's health and harmful to our environment.

There's something we can come up with.

We don't have to have all of this industry that's poisoning us.

And the plants are not from here.

They are from out of the country, some of them.

And they don't care about us.

They don't even know about us.

It's not their home.

This is our home.

And we want our home.

We want to stay here.

Sharon Levine.

We should care.

We should want to help.

A lot to unpack there.

And we're going to discuss Sharon's story more in a moment.

But first, let me introduce you to our panelists now who we're so fortunate to have with us in our LTV studios.

Nic Hunter is the mayor of Lake Charles, also a small business owner whose community has been hit hardest by recent storms.

He knows that well.

Cash on a Hill is executive director of the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center.

And joining us again, Simone Miller's campaign director for Restore the Mississippi River Delta Mayor.

Nick, let me start with you.

Your parish has been through so much the past couple of years and starting with Laura, that other hurricanes resulting in a 5% population loss after soaring population figures before actually the ninth largest decline in the country right now.

So today, how is Lake Charles faring?

Well, Andre, thank you.

I'll tell you, we're doing a heck of a lot better today than we were a year ago, a year and a half ago.

These days, I try to focus a lot more on today and tomorrow versus yesterday.

It has been a long road for us over these last couple of years.

Supplemental disaster aid from the federal government took a long time to come to us, but we finally got it and it's right around the corner.

So I'm very comfortable calling a win a win when you get it.

And I think that our population in southwest Louisiana needs to know now that we have the resource as we've always had the people, we've always had the people in southwest Louisiana that I know are resilient and tenacious.

And you've always said that.

Yeah, well, yeah, I just I'm biased, but I just feel like we got some of the best people in the world and and now we have the equitable, commensurate response from the federal government.

So, Lake Charles, we've still got some strides to make.

A lot of blue tarps.

A lot of people still need that help.

But that money, hundreds of millions of dollars, is about to hit the streets to help those people.

So I feel pretty good right now.

All right.

You've been mayor since 2017.

And in that time, there's been Hurricane Harvey August 2017, which fortunately did not crush you nearly as much as it could if it wasn't the same area Hurricane Laura did, though.

August 2020.

Hurricane Delta right after October 2020.

Winter Storm Uri, they call it February 2021.

Record low temperatures freezing, and then a 100 year flood event that followed in May of 21.

Are we beginning to see the effects of climate change in real time?

Do you sense that?

Well, thanks for that nightmare.

Yeah.

Recap of the last couple years, but.

And you're still.

Here.

I'm still here.

I asked for this job twice.

So the term climate change, unfortunately, has a lot of political emotions attached to it.

Call it what you want.

Call it climate change.

Call it a change in the weather.

Call it more severe and more frequent weather events.

We're seeing it.

We're seeing it.

It has affected southwest Louisiana.

And whatever it is, it's rough.

It's rough.

It is rough.

Yeah.

Mellaz same question to you.

Are all these disasters that we've seen all over the nation, not just here but here also, is that something that we think is climate change in the making and happening?

We're just seeing it that the pictures don't lie.

We are seeing devastating floods.

We're seeing wildfires because of drought.

And obviously we've been feeling the effects of devastating back to back hurricane seasons.

We can't forget the mighty Mississippi is also been near flood stage several times.

And so we're seeing that the pictures don't lie about it.

I think one thing that is different here in coastal Louisiana is the coastal change.

We've lost a lot, but we've also made some significant strides to bring that back.

So it's that combination of things, the extreme weather plus just changes to our coastal landscape.

That's why we need to know and folks like in Lake Charles need to understand their risk better.

Let me ask you, Mrs. Hale, we just heard from Sharon Levine and what a powerful story still living in a trailer after all of that time from Hurricane Ida.

What effect from your end do these disasters have on fair housing in our state?

Well, I think we we heard so much from Ms.. Levine, and there are so many issues to address.

And just in that very short snippet we heard so much, that still remains to be done.

And so I just want to be clear that when we speak about fair housing, we are talking about actually federal civil rights laws that are really designed to ensure equitable access to housing, to housing opportunity.

We're talking about issues related to racial justice.

We're talking about issues related to economic justice.

And so when we think about how disasters impact fair housing, we need to be clear that there are issues at the federal, state and local levels that should be addressed.

Right.

And so we want to be able to ensure, for instance, does everyone have the ability to recover no matter what their community looks like?

And unfortunately, we see that oftentimes they don't.

Oftentimes communities that are more politically connected will have the ability to recover in ways that smaller, more rural communities may not.

We need to be thinking about and talking about the ways in which federal dollars are spent once they come to communities for recovery are the areas that have more resources and more connected people.

Are they able to recover in ways that communities of color are not?

And so there really are issues of equity rooted in a fair housing recovery plan.

And some of what we see just really needs to be addressed with a look at equity and fairness in terms of recovery.

In largely in her place insurance, if I'm not mistaken.

I believe she pays for that.

Right, but been written off and has not gotten the help she has needed.

So remains in a trailer at this time.

Let me ask you, was fair housing a problem in our state before Laura and Ida?

Absolutely it was.

If we think about and understand fair housing as a term of art that describes a system in which everyone has equitable access to housing opportunity.

If we think about fair housing as a system in which where you work or what you make as an income or the color of your skin does not dictate the community that you have access to.

And if we understand fair housing has a system by which everyone has access to communities that are thriving and equitable.

And just then we absolutely have a long way to go in Louisiana.

And there is work that definitely needs to continue to be done when it comes to the ability for people in south Louisiana to be able to access homeowners insurance.

And we need to be clear that as companies continue to go under or as they refuse to operate across south Louisiana, that is going to cut off access to homeownership for people in our community and it may also force families to leave the area.

May one, the 2020 census showed that before Hurricane Laura, Lake Charles, of course, was growing at 12% for a decade, 2010 to 2020 because of the industrial boom.

People are moving, their jobs are plentiful, salaries were high.

Are those businesses?

Are those people starting to make their way back to ATI?

We've spoken with all the major employers in southwest Louisiana and not only the petrochemical employers, but all of the major employers in southwest Louisiana to a tee.

Everyone has said they are coming back, some even taking this as somewhat of an opportunity we have one gaming institution, for instance, that's actually building on land as opposed to building back on the riverboat casino method.

So these companies are coming back, they are reinvesting in the community.

We have good paying jobs in southwest Louisiana.

We have a lot of plentiful jobs.

And I think that people want quality of life that's important.

People want a community that they can feel safe in, but people also tend to need jobs.

I mean, if you have some good paying jobs in a community, that tends to be one of several aspects that helps attract people.

So while I absolutely believe that we still have some population losses from the storms, I do think as the years go by, we will see that population return.

Thank you, Mayor Michel, back to you.

Now back to housing.

We talked earlier about the insurance crisis that's happening in our state, the cost of living and the cost of insurance.

Is that going to drive people out?

Plus, the housing issues that we have?

Oh, it absolutely will.

We already see that happening.

And we know that cost of living that people just can't meet will require people either to be pushed to the margins.

Right.

They may end up in areas that don't meet their needs.

They may end up in unsafe housing conditions.

They may end up on the streets or they may be forced to leave the city in which they've grown up, in which their family is located, or the state altogether.

And so there are cost of living issues that are affecting renters and homeowners across the state.

Really, no one is safe.

And we are living in a state where our minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25.

To the extent that we are going to continue to keep minimum wage at that very low level, and so far, our state legislature seems fine with keeping minimum wage at $7.25.

We're going to continue to see families that simply cannot afford adequate housing.

I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat, it doesn't make any difference.

We're Louisianans or Americans.

We deserve better.

We deserve fairness.

We deserve action.

Absolutely.

We seem to be.

Mayor Hunter, what have you heard from the people of your area about the cost of living and how they're coping in their recovery process?

Well, a lot of complaints about the insurance industry.

And I was around for Hurricane Laura.

I wasn't excuse me.

Hurricane Rita wasn't an elected official at that time.

But it just seems like there has been some philosophical shift in the insurance industry.

We don't we didn't have these problems 15 years ago.

And so that's been a complaint and also the cost of insurance.

And we have felt it as a city.

Also with my own private properties, I have felt it.

And so it's a real thing.

And we're seeing rates to 300% what they were two years ago.

And that is really difficult to deal with.

We've drowned ourselves in problems in talking about this.

Let's touch on some solutions that we can bring about.

And what's one thing perhaps anybody, everybody from a policy standpoint that we could do right now?

As mentioned earlier, I think this idea that of being proactive instead of reactive, I, I know Mayor didn't want to wait around for the help.

Right?

There were things that through different federal programs like hazard mitigation or community development block grants, those could have been things that he did on the front end to hopefully lessen some of the impact on the back end.

So we we have to be more proactive when we're doing that.

I also want to make a point that, you know, some some folks are leaving, but some folks just simply don't have the means.

The opportunity to leave their livelihood is based on a natural or public resource that's in their backyard.

Their greatest investment is the boat that is also their livelihood in their backyard.

So people are so tied to where we are here in Louisiana for their jobs, for their community, for their culture.

So I think that we also have to do a better job of being in those communities, listening to their concerns, making sure that we're understand that they understand their risks, that we're communicating that to the right decision makers as well.

I want to make sure that we leave here talking about the community and how much it's affected and how much it can drive change.

Because we're all a community.

Keeping people here.

Attracting people here.

Anybody?

Just briefly, a policy change that could make an impact there.

I'll throw out one thing.

We have some major companies here in Louisiana.

We have some major companies in southwest Louisiana.

I would like to see some of those white collar jobs also come along with those major investments.

And I think that they should try to locate them in some of our underserved communities.

You know, go go build a office headquarters and try and employ some people from those communities.

But if we could try and inject some additional economic diversification into some of our urban centers, at least in southwest Louisiana, I think that's a fair ask for some of these companies who are getting some other incentives.

And a lot.

Of those white collar jobs, they were here in New Orleans.

They wound up moving to Houston, shutting down some of the corporate offices that were here to get those back.

And Michelle, same question to you.

Streamlining access to aid after disasters is critically important.

You know, if we think back to Ms.. Levine story, where she's still living in a trailer, we hear so often from community members that they have been unable to access state, local or federal aid after a disaster because they weren't able to gather the volumes of paperwork that are required.

It's really important that when we plan these aid program, we should stop focusing on the very small possibility that a few people might commit fraud and focus on the ability and the need of the community as a whole to be able to access these recovery dollars and programs.

That we've got to learn and make changes.

Thank you, everyone, for your input.

It's been a great conversation and in our final segment of the show, we're going to be speaking with the producer of Louisiana Spotlight, Ben Johnson.

We're going to find out what he experienced making this month's episode.

So, Ben, what was it about this topic that made you want to tackle it and report on it?

Well, this was a personal topic to me.

I've had many friends that are either planning to or have left the state.

And I'm you know, as a homeowner here in Louisiana, I've definitely felt the rise in insurance prices and just cost of living here.

And I felt that it was timely for all Louisianans.

It's something that's affecting all of us and kind of creating what seems to be a somewhat of a crisis in our state.

Yeah.

Was there anything that you learned along the way with interviews and all the research that surprised you?

My interview with Insurance Insurance Commissioner O'Donnell and surprised me a lot about just how we got in this predicament, how, you know, these insurance agencies didn't ask for enough reinsurance to cover their they weren't ready.

They weren't they weren't ready.

And so that's kind of surprisingly surprising to me.

You know, we heard that, you know, there's kind of been a shift in the insurance industry in our state.

And I think we're definitely starting to feel that shift right now.

Yeah, like Charles, definitely saw that.

And we the rest of the state has also what are we looking for?

Coming up on Louisiana Spotlight.

So we have kind of narrowed down our next topic and we're thinking we're going to do it on the teacher shortage in our state.

It's not only a state issue but a national issue, but one that is really affecting Louisianans.

And our children are educating our kids.

So I think the next topic will be in either November or December.

On the teacher shortage.

All right.

Look forward to it.

Thank you so much.

It's been a really interesting discussion.

A lot to talk about.

We want to thank everyone involved, doctor flier, Representative Graves, Doctor Barnes, Mrs. Miller's Mayor Hunter and Mrs. Hill for sharing their knowledge of this issue.

And what about you, our viewers?

What do you think?

We encourage you to comment on tonight's show by visiting LPI that August Louisiana spotlight and clicking on the join the conversation link.

We would love to hear from you.

Thanks so much for watching, everyone, and good night.

For a copy of this program.

Call one 800 9737246 or go online to WWE W dot LP B dawg.