[StBernard] Staying close on the north shore

[Westley Annis]

Staying close on the north shore
St. Bernard families buy lots side by side 
Sunday, November 05, 2006
By Paul Rioux
St. Tammany bureau 

When her extended family moved into a Slidell condominium after Hurricane
Katrina destroyed their four homes in Chalmette, it was a trip back in time
for Pam Cangelosi. 

"It was like we were kids again, all living under one roof," said Cangelosi,
40. "We had to learn to share all over again and stand in line to use the
bathroom." 

So as they searched for permanent housing, everyone agreed it would be good
to spread out a little -- but not too far. 

"We lost everything we owned in the storm," said Cangelosi. "All we had left
was each other, and we didn't want to be so far apart that we might start to
lose touch." 

There will be no chance of that. This past week, Cangelosi, her mother and
her sister moved into new homes on three adjacent lots in the Tallow Creek
subdivision west of Covington. Her brother is staying in the condominium. 

"We wanted to be able to keep looking out for each other like we did when we
all lived within a mile of one another in Chalmette," said Cangelosi, whose
husband died of cancer in 2004, leaving her to raise their 4-year-old
daughter. 

Her mother, Leah Schmitt, 76, wanted her own house but also wanted her
daughters to be nearby. 

"The storm has made it even more important for us to stick together,"
Cangelosi said. 


Ties that bind 


Sticking together has long been a hallmark in St. Bernard, where many
families have lived for generations. Before Katrina, it was common for
residents to have their "mama an' 'em," or their entire extended families,
living in the same neighborhood, sometimes on the same block. 

Now, as they make the difficult decision to leave the flood-ravaged parish,
some former St. Bernard residents are maintaining their close ties to family
and friends by buying homes on neighboring lots in new subdivisions on the
north shore. 

The trend is most prevalent in Tallow Creek and Penn Mill Lakes north of
Covington. St. Bernard expatriates have bought about 100 homes in the
365-lot Tallow Creek development and 90 homes in Penn Mill Lakes, which has
460 lots, according to sales agents for the subdivisions. Each of the
subdivisions is about two-thirds complete. 

Dawn Melerine, a Tallow Creek agent, said more than 90 percent of the 250
people who put their names on a post-Katrina waiting list for lots were from
St. Bernard. 

The torrent of prospective home buyers from St. Bernard started just two
days after the hurricane when a Chalmette woman who had bought a house in
Tallow Creek before the storm called Melerine, who had evacuated to
Tennessee with her family. 

"She said, 'I'm going to need three more houses: one for my mother, one for
my aunt and one for my best friend,' " Melerine said. "After that, I started
getting people from St. Bernard who wanted as many as five or six lots
together." 


Selling trend 'unbelievable' 


While some of the larger groups had to split up and buy lots that aren't
contiguous, Melerine said she has been selling adjacent lots to former St.
Bernard residents at least twice a month. 

"It's been unbelievable," she said. "Before the storm, we once had two
sisters who wanted side-by-side lots, but it was nothing like this." 

In Penn Mill Lakes, more than half the residents on some blocks are from St.
Bernard, said Erin Berrigan, a sales manager. 

"It seems like everyone who comes in is bringing their mama, their aunt and
their uncle," she said. "They're trying to rebuild the close-knit community
that they lost in the storm." 

In Tallow Creek, some St. Bernard transplants have joked about renaming the
newer section of the subdivision St. Bernard North. 

Melerine, who grew up in St. Bernard, said the influx of St. Bernard
residents is evident in the occasional pair of shrimp boots sitting out on
someone's porch. She also has noticed an increase in Saints flags, because
many of the subdivision's pre-Katrina residents were from out of state. 

Others have observed less subtle changes. 

Steve Sheppard, who moved to Tallow Creek from Mandeville before the
hurricane, said one of his new neighbors from St. Bernard bought two
truckloads of fireworks to celebrate last New Year's Eve. 

"He was so excited because fireworks are banned in St. Bernard, but they're
legal here," Sheppard said. "He put on one heck of a show. There was so much
smoke in the street that you couldn't see. You felt like you were at Zephyr
Field." 

Clint Ory, president of the Tallow Creek Homeowner's Association, said he
welcomes the newcomers from St. Bernard. 

"They're just the nicest people you could ever meet," he said. "We're sorry
that they all lost their homes, but we truly feel fortunate that they were
drawn to our subdivision." 


'We're here together' 


Although Tallow Creek and Penn Mill Lakes are both about 60 miles from St.
Bernard, they are among a handful of St. Tammany subdivisions with numerous
adjacent lots available, a key drawing point for former St. Bernard
residents. 

It also helps that both subdivisions are north of Interstate 12, which
minimizes the flood risk, said Angelle Chaisson. 

Chaisson and her husband bought a house in Tallow Creek next door to their
former Arabi neighbors, Mavis Dalier and John Russell, who serve as
surrogate grandparents for the couple's two children, ages 5 and 7. 

"It only feels like home because we're here together," she said. "It's been
a tough year, and it would still be a rough situation if I had strangers as
neighbors." 

Chaisson said she left St. Bernard because she didn't want to live on an
island in a sea of devastation. 

"I wanted my kids to have a normal environment, where they could ride their
bikes without having to worry about storm debris," she said. "Our old
neighborhood still looks like a bomb went off." 

And so her family was willing to trade living in a war zone for a
construction zone. With 50 homes under construction in Tallow Creek, a
steady parade of trucks kicks up dust and cuts ruts in some corner lots,
knocking over the occasional mailbox. 


High price of normalcy 


But the St. Bernard transplants say they can tolerate the inconvenience
because the subdivision is expected to be finished in about 18 months, while
the rebuilding of St. Bernard might be measured in decades. 

Getting on the fast track to normalcy has its price, though, as many St.
Bernard residents moving to St. Tammany Parish have experienced a case of
sticker shock. 

Homes in Tallow Creek cost two to three times the average pre-Katrina price
for a house in St. Bernard, which was the most affordable housing market in
the New Orleans area. 

Tallow Creek's base prices range from $233,000 for a three-bedroom,
1,700-square-foot home to $310,000 for a two-story, four-bedroom home with
2,580 square feet of living area. Homes in Penn Mills Lake range from
$164,900 to $262,900. 

In contrast, the median sales price of a single-family home in St. Bernard
Parish was $103,500 before the hurricane. 

As a single parent, Cangelosi said, she has felt the pinch. 

"I'm paying $100,000 more for a house that's just 100 square feet larger
than my old one," she said. "But you can't really put a price tag on living
in a safe environment, especially when you have a kid." 

While many former St. Bernard residents say they chose Tallow Creek because
of its family-friendly atmosphere, some have bristled at the subdivision's
covenant, which spells out aesthetic mandates such as requiring fencing
around boats and trailers stored outside homes. Many of the former St.
Bernard residents lived in older neighborhoods with few, if any,
restrictions. 

"You pay $300,000 for a house and someone is going to tell you what you can
and can't do in your own back yard?" a former Chalmette resident said at a
recent homeowner's association meeting. "What about my rights as a property
owner?" 

A woman sitting on the other side of the room muttered under her breath,
"You're not in St. Bernard anymore." 


Starting to feel at home 


Cangelosi had her own brush with the covenant board when she sought approval
to put a satellite TV dish on her house. The covenant bans satellite dishes
on the front of homes, and the woods behind her house would interfere with
the reception if she placed it on the back. 

"I got so frustrated that I told them I wanted to move back to Chalmette,"
said Cangelosi, who agreed to try putting the dish behind a dormer on the
front of the house. "People in my old neighborhood kept their yards neat,
but they were more relaxed about these kinds of things." 

Even so, she said Tallow Creek is starting to feel more like home each day.
She said it took her more than an hour to cover two blocks while taking her
daughter trick-or-treating Tuesday night because they kept running into
acquaintances from St. Bernard. 

"People have been very friendly, but it will probably never be like
Chalmette," she said. "You didn't even knock when you went over to your
neighbor's house. You just opened the door and hollered, 'Anybody home?' " 

She said that after her husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, neighbors
started mowing her grass. And after he died, the 79-year-old man who lived
across the street told her to call him if she ever heard a noise inside the
house at night. 

"He said, 'I'm old, but I've got a gun and a Rottweiler,' " she said, adding
that the man died in the hurricane. "It was people like him that made it so
hard to leave." 

Cangelosi hasn't ruled out returning to St. Bernard some day, but either
way, she said, Katrina hasn't diminished the truth in the local saying that
you can take the person out of St. Bernard, but you can't take St. Bernard
out of the person. 

"I tell people that I live in Covington, but I'm from St. Bernard," she
said. "I'll probably keep saying that for the rest of my life, because St.
Bernard is such a big part of who I am." 

. . . . . . . 

Paul Rioux can be reached at prioux at timespicayune.com or (985) 645-2852.