Houston, what a heartless place...demanding people actually work for their keep:

"Time has long since passed for the able-bodied people from Louisiana to either find a job, return to somewhere in Louisiana or become Houstonians," said [U.S. Rep. John] Culberson, whose district neighbors the city's southwest pocket where many of 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees settled in Houston.

"You have to make an effort not to have a job in Houston," he said.

Labor analysts tend to agree.

But jobless evacuees, keenly aware that Houston is feeling far less compassionate than it was 10 months ago, insist that finding work in the nation's fourth-largest city isn't as simple as Houston's 5 percent unemployment rate might suggest.

Neither the city nor FEMA (website - news) track unemployed evacuees, but a Zogby poll commissioned by the city in March found that 85 percent of the 606 refugees surveyed were out of work. Sixty percent said they were looking for jobs.

Tens of thousands of locals, myself among them, gave our time, our money, even our posessions. The truth is that if the situation should repeat, we will gladly do it all again.

However, what we do not appreciate are those who are willing to take our help, willing to live on federal and state assistance and make no effort to get back on their feet. We help each other here because its the right thing to do. And when you accept help, it is with the understanding that the point is to get you back on your feet, so you no longer require help...even to the point that when someone else passes through that needs help, you can be the one to help them.

The attitude here hasn't changed one iota. We are compassionate toward those in need, and we have little tolerance for parasites who insist on consuming the resources meant for those who truly are in need.