‘Where do I go?’ Louisianians look for places to stay on MS Coast after Hurricane Ida
Hurricane Ida evacuees from Louisiana are seeking — with little success — affordable, long-term rental accommodations on the Gulf Coast while electricity is still weeks away for much of the sweltering state.
Hundreds are flocking to the Coast for gas, food, water and shelter after the Category 4 storm, heeding warnings from local officials to leave their damaged or powerless homes without running water or air conditioning.
Some have found available space with friends, family or well-meaning strangers. Others are still on the hunt for scant numbers of pricey, overbooked Airbnbs, local spare rooms or hotels ahead of Labor Day weekend.
What space is available on the Coast?
Besides surfing Airbnb or hotel websites in the area, additional resources are available for evacuees.
Mississippi Hotel and Lodging Association Executive Director Linda Hornsby said she emailed her statewide members on Monday. Some of the hotels are already full for the Labor Day weekend, especially the Coast casinos, but there are hotel rooms available, she found.
People can call their reservation number at 888-388-1006 to find out where rooms are available, on the Coast and in other parts of the state.
“There’s definitely long-term availability,” she said.
Some have kitchenettes for cooking and “a lot of them are waiving their pet regulations,” she said.
Hornsby said she stayed during Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago in 2005. Water was crashing into her home on the back bay of Biloxi, and she and her son had to escape on foot. As bad as that was, “The weeks and months afterward were so much worse,” she said.
Chamber seeks housing, office space
The Hancock County Chamber of Commerce is partnering with the New Orleans Chamber to find temporary housing for some of these Louisianians. The “Love thy Neighbor” campaign requests Coastal residents volunteer rental properties, VRBO, Airbnb, We Work, office space or any other resources.
“We’re in the process of putting together a webpage that will take some of the guess work out of finding temporary housing for those displaced by Hurricane Ida,” according to a Hancock County Chamber press release. “If you have any space available for rent, please let us know.”
Contact Hancock Chamber director Tish Williams at tish@hancockchamber.org or 228-216-9048 to volunteer space.
Louisiana residents in need
The mayor of New Orleans is asking residents not to return to the city, given that power could be out for weeks. Jefferson, Plaquemines and Lafourche parish officials, among others, have issued mandatory evacuation orders, and some have said publicly that evacuees should not return.
“Many of the life-supporting infrastructure elements are not present, they’re not operating right now,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a news conference in LaPlace on Tuesday. “If you have already evacuated, do not return.”
“People are trying to evacuate from Louisiana to the Gulf Coast. To anywhere and everywhere really. It’s hard finding lodging, it’s hard finding a place to get gas, a vehicle. We’ve been looking and there’s nothing out there,” Long Beach resident and Louisiana native Diana Cruse said.
“I have one friend that really needs a place to go, and I posted in the different Facebook groups around here in Long Beach asking about hotel rooms or anything, and a young woman in Gulfport offered up her couch or her spare bedroom. But where do I go to get gas to get her and get there? It’s really frustrating.”
Airbnb had only one available rental on the entire Coast on Wednesday, at $119 a night. Some have been dropped after booking an available hotel room on the Coast.
Evacuees tell what it’s like
“I did pick a guy up from Royal Street in New Orleans, and he was trying to find a place in Bay St. Louis. A hotel. Well every time he booked it, a few minutes later it would cancel,” said Shawntel Cuevas, a Diamondhead-based taxi driver. “There’s nowhere to go. Even when I called Mobile and Pensacola, there were no rooms.”
The available hotel rooms on the Gulf Coast are priced well over $100, a steep cost for evacuees looking for accommodations for a minimum of three weeks, the amount of time that most Louisiana officials say electricity could be out.
Heather Galliano is staying in Bay St. Louis with her sister after evacuating from Larose in Lafourche Parish. The mother of two said she expects to be on the Coast for weeks — her power company told her it was a 21-day minimum before electricity is restored. As of Wednesday, about 80% of lines were still down in the area.
“I’ve never felt so helpless in my life,” said Galliano. “We have no power, no water, no natural gas. I have two small children. And it wouldn’t be so bad if we had water. But with no running water, I can’t wash anybody or their clothes.”
Galliano considers herself fortunate because she only has roof damage after the storm, despite losing her shed and the shop for her brand-new taxidermy business.
“Most of my friend’s houses aren’t livable,” she said. A lot of her neighbors and friends are seeking accommodations post-storm on the Gulf Coast because of the convenience and location.
“It’s two hours up the road, it’s easy for us to go back and forth. Where like Texas or Florida, that’s like a five-plus-hour drive, it’s just easier for us to be on the Coast so we’re not having to go back and forth,” she said.
“I’m very fortunate, I have a sister. But some of these people have nowhere to go. And kind of everywhere you go it’s $100 plus and if we’re going to be here for weeks at a time, most families can’t afford that, on top of not working.”
Comes at a cost
Affordability is a real concern for many evacuees. Susan Eckert and her daughter, Crystal, are Louisiana natives who live in Ocean Springs. They’re on the hunt for accommodations for Crystal’s Kenner-based friend, her husband and three children, along with a few neighbors who don’t have power in their homes, about 10 miles from New Orleans.
“I have been looking on Airbnb, and the prices are astronomical at this point. The least expensive thing I’ve been able to find is like 150 dollars a night. For two weeks, that’s almost $3,000 and two weeks is bare minimum of what they need. And they have no jobs now. Her husband does construction and she’s a stay-at-home mom.”
One of the cheaper options that Crystal was looking at was already booked out for a month.
“We even considered trying to find an RV and park it in our driveway, and some of them can sleep in the RV and some could sleep in the house, but that’s still $125 a night. Everything is going to cost over $100 a day at this point,” Crystal said.
Coast residents lend a hand
Before the hurricane even cleared South Mississippi, Janice Guido, owner of Bay Life Gifts at Century Hall in Bay St. Louis, was contacted by friends in New Orleans looking for a place to stay.
“I’ve had so many calls from so many people,” she said.
“The timing on this is really bad,” she said, with hotels and vacation rentals already booked for Labor Day and a low inventory of houses for lease because of the continuing real estate boom in South Mississippi and most of the country.
She’s hoping those with accommodations will help.
“Our two communities are linked to each other,” she said of New Orleans and Bay St. Louis and the Coast.
The Eckerts said they were displaced by Hurricane Katrina when they lived in New Orleans 16 years ago, and they’re empathetic to their Louisiana neighbors.
“We’ve been through it. We know. How do you begin to pick up the pieces from this?” Susan Eckert said.
“We left the day before Katrina hit, and we didn’t come back until the end of May. I have a sister who lives up in Nebraska, and we stayed up there until my daughter got out of school.”
The women said that Hurricane Ida feels like the closest storm to Katrina that they’ve experienced.
“ And as former Katrina survivors, seeing what’s happening in our home state, it’s devastating all over again. It’s like Katrina 2.0,” Crystal said.
This article is supported by the Journalism and Public Information Fund, a fund of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.
This story was originally published September 2, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
