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Large Text Size Large Text Size Change text size Baton Rouge a Booming Haven for the Displaced By Thomas S Mulligan and Richard Fausset, Times Staff Writers BATON ROUGE, La. After decades of living in New Orleans' shadow as Loui siana's second city, Baton Rouge is uneasily trying on a new identity: b oomtown. Amid an inflow of hurricane evacuees that has doubled the capital city's population overnight, hotels are full, apartments are hard to come by an d houses that had languished on the market for months are getting all-ca sh offers at the asking price, or higher.
George Neely, a management professor at Xavier University in New Orleans who was forced to flee to Baton Rouge, said his wife was appalled two da ys ago when a real estate agent showed her a 700-square-foot home with b roken windows that was renting for $1,000 a month a high price even fo r roomier properties here. "If I could reach that guy now, I'd sign the contract in a minute," Neely said Tuesday, after another frustrating day of house hunting. The effects of the migration are hard to escape in this town of around 22 8,000, a little more than 75 miles northwest of New Orleans. Traffic has slowed to a crawl as the flood of cars overwhelms the local road system . Demand for consumer products is surging, with shortages of items such as fast food and gasoline, street maps and ice. In many cases, people have arrived with no jobs in the offing, causing what Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce Preside nt Stephen Moret described as "an absorption problem." Although Moret doesn't doubt that the city will see permanent growth in j obs and businesses, the influx is straining Baton Rouge's law enforcemen t, transportation and educational resources. A local Catholic high school, for example, has added a 4-to-9:30 pm nig ht shift to accommodate displaced students from a Catholic high school i n New Orleans. City officials have a hard time assessing how many hurricane evacuees the y have absorbed because so many from New Orleans are staying with friend s or family. But they are guessing that the population of East Baton Rou ge Parish, which includes the city, has doubled from 425,000 to about 85 0,000 in the last week, said Dennis McCain, a spokesman for the city and parish. He said it was too early to tell how many of the newcomers would stay per manently, but city officials estimated that about half of them would mak e Baton Rouge their home. Some residents worry that the jarring changes in store for Baton Rouge wi ll alter the character of a place that historically has ceded the spotli ght to New Orleans. Although discovered by French explorers in 1699, Baton Rouge was probably settled by them in 1718 and only as a fort to protect New Orleans tra velers heading to points north. Relations between New Orleans and the re st of Louisiana have long been tense Crescent City politicians have ty pically fared poorly in statewide races, for instance while Baton Roug e was routinely eclipsed by New Orleans in economic growth, tourism and cultural novelty. "People in New Orleans are like fast, fast, fast, and this city is like s low, slow, slow," said Dale Sonnier, 48, a driver for Domino's Pizza in Baton Rouge. As he and the manager closed the pizza shop Monday night, they realized they had taken in nearly $2, 400 for the day, more than double their take on the same day last year. Since the hurricane, evacuees have radically changed Baton Rouge's real e state market. Judy Burkett, president of the Greater Baton Rouge Assn. o f Realtors, said that before the storm, the area had 3,626 homes listed. Today it has about 2,500 officially for sale, but Burkett estimated tha t 75% of those homes have been sold already. The sales have not been rec orded because of poor phone communications in the wake of the hurricane, which grazed Baton Rouge on its way up the Mississippi Valley. People staying in hotels with no idea when they can return home or if t hey have a home to return to aren't especially picky. "The families go out to them and they'll just snap them up they'll just snap up anything they can," Burkett said. In a phenomenon familiar to Southern California's housing market, prices are rising not so much because sellers are gouging, but because buyers a re bidding up the prices. Burkett gave a typical example: a four-bedroom house she recently listed for $137,000.
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