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Katrina-era regulations dash hopes of reclaiming Pascagoula homes

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1 year ago

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PASCAGOULA — Massive tree branches stretch overhead, shading the small brick house decades past its prime. 

Rundown with a rotting carport, it shows every bit of the some 100 years it’s spent on its patch of Midway Avenue. An aged board blocks off the front door. Shutters are missing; windows busted. The inside is an 897-square-foot shell.

The walls are solid brick; the house sits on a concrete slab. Through the overgrown weeds and algae-seeped walls of the screened-in porch, Rony Hernandez saw his family’s dream home. He grew up doing construction with his father. He was confident he could handle the renovation.

But those dreams came to a halt during Hernandez’s first trip to the city for building permits. The Ingalls Shipbuilding employee wanted to live where he worked — but fixing up the old home is going to take more than sweat equity.

It might take a miracle.

FEMA’s 50% rule does not allow homeowners to spend more than 50% of the structure’s value to improve their homes unless they elevate their property. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Not because of the home itself, but because of the Hurricane Katrina-era regulations that residents say hang over Pascagoula like a dark cloud. In order for a municipality to take part in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), it has to agree to adopt certain building codes for flood zones recommended by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That’s where the “50% rule” comes into play.

Hernandez’s fixer-upper is valued at just $36,000 and sits about 2 feet below the Pascagoula’s base flood level. Under the current building code, the city can only permit Hernandez half the home’s value in repairs over a 10-year period.

That leaves just $18,000 for a complete makeover, labor costs included. More than 90% of the city is in a flood zone, beholden to the same set of rules. Before the flood maps were redone in 2009, only about 15% of the city was in designated flood zones.

“We are in a situation with the city that we cannot issue permits for those people needing and wanting to do improvements over 50%,” said Pascagoula Mayor Jay Willis. “So, in many cases, we are condemning these properties, and they are in the process of being demolished when, if this rule didn’t exist, they could very well be brought back into code.”

Nearby cities on the Gulf Coast have had an explosive housing market with skyrocketing property values and a surge in new builds. Even as investments in Pascagoula’s downtown mean new apartments, and a $6.8 million hotel, much of the city’s residential neighborhoods are lagging well behind the surrounding cities.

FEMA officials explained that the NFIP rules about making improvements, which Congress enacted decades ago, are meant to deter over-investing in properties that are vulnerable to flooding.

“We, as public servants – FEMA, the state and local officials, owe it to the residents and businesses to work together to take actions that will help keep us safer,” FEMA spokesperson Crystal Paulk-Buchanan said in a written response to Mississippi Today. “When communities adopt and enforce floodplain management regulations that include strong building codes, disaster impacts are less severe, and recovery is faster.”

But to those in Pascagoula, it feels like they got slammed twice. First from Katrina, and then with building permit regulations that have crippled the city from making a meaningful comeback over the last decade.

“We’ve got more going on in construction and development in this town than we’ve had in 30 years,” said Josh Church, the city’s planning and building director. “But it has been a battle from day one.”

The only way Pascagoula’s homeowners in the city’s flood zones can spend more than 50% of a home’s value on renovations is if they elevate the structure above the base flood level. But many older homes are attached to concrete slabs, making them much more expensive to raise.

Raising an existing house is costly, as is building a new house higher up.
As a result, Pascagoula neighborhoods sit as a stark divide between the have and have-nots: New luxury homes high on stilts and old homes falling deeper and deeper into disrepair until the city has no choice but to declare them condemned.

And more and more, the working class — people like Hernandez — say they’re being squeezed out of affording a safe place to live that can help build wealth for their families. Hernandez saved up to redo an old home, but he doesn’t have the income to build a new one from scratch.

The abandoned homes and overgrown lots that litter Pascagoula are a constant reminder of how much Katrina changed the trajectory of a city known for its major economic contributions to the state. It is home to Chevron, an oil refinery, and Ingalls Shipbuilding, which employs more than 11,000 people.

Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Every weekday the city’s population of 20,000 doubles to 40,000 when workers commute in, but shrinks back down once they clock out, according to estimates from the mayor’s office.

Hernandez, 32, wants to live in Pascagoula, but he and most of his coworkers are spread out across nearby cities such as Moss Point and Ocean Springs or out of state in Alabama — their paychecks, made in Pascagoula, rarely circulate much in the city’s economy. They can’t find homes available in Pascagoula: they’re typically run down or elevated seaside mansions.

“I feel like part of the community already and, as part of the community, I see what’s going on, I see how these types of regulations hurt the community,” Hernandez said in front of the old house on Midway. “Because, look, we got a vacant house over here. Hopefully, hopefully, I will be able to fix it. But a lot of people they’re not even trying. They buy properties, they can’t fix them. And then they become trash.”

On the first Tuesday of every month, Church, the building director, gives a short presentation before Pascagoula’s city council, pinpointing nuisance properties.

He and his team of code enforcement agents have a list of about 150 properties they’ve flagged as derelict or dangerous. Property by property, they work through the list by calling the owners, sending warning letters and posting notices. Going before the city or to court is the last-ditch effort to clean up the city.

Property owners have a chance to speak at a public hearing before the board votes on whether the property should be torn down.

Most don’t show. The ones who do are regularly facing an unfortunate reality: Their properties are too far gone to fix, especially with the 50% rule looming overhead.

The problem properties range from overgrown vacant lots where houses were long ago torn down to abandoned retail spots to dozens of dilapidated houses that have been empty for years, many since 2005, when Katrina flooded the city.

“If they don’t live here 75 to 80% of them don’t care,” Church said. “You can send them letters all you want. It’s just like talking to that wall. They don’t see it, they don’t care about it.”

The nuisance property problem isn’t a coast-wide problem. It’s a Pascagoula problem that most agree traces back to Katrina’s damages, the regulations that followed, and increasing flood insurance costs that make it more and more difficult to justify investing in existing structures.

Some of the properties were passed down to relatives after a death. Many wind up in the hands of out-of-state owners who wanted to turn a quick buck after winning a tax lien certificate in an auction with the city but don’t bother investing in the parcel or old home’s upkeep.

Once the nuisance properties are gone, city leaders hope it will attract more new builds.

Pascagoula Mayor Dr. Jay Willis stands next to a home that has been affected by by FEMA’s 50 percent rule in Pascagoula, Miss., Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

“We have people coming in that are recognizing the great things that are happening in Pascagoula and wanting to be part of it,” said Willis, the Pascagoula mayor. “The next step of that is to get into the residential housing area, and have some of these investors building houses here, and hopefully that’s where we’re going.”

In the interim, there is some risk: Once a house — even a derelict house — is gone, the property taxes may go from $1,000 a year down to $30. It’s an immediate impact on the city’s tax base.

Meanwhile, builders and investors are struggling to turn the profits needed to justify Pascagoula builds in residential neighborhoods.

Brandi and Brandon Busby scurried around a brand-new three bedroom home they built from the ground up in Pascagoula, checking items off their “to do’s” before handing the keys over to the house’s new owner. 

The Busbys just built Pascagoula’s first new housing development since 2001. Six homes total.

“We had planned to build 11,” Brandi said, leaning over the kitchen’s glossy marble counters. “But we had to stop. The problem with construction in Pascagoula versus, say, Ocean Springs, is we are paying $26,000 more here to raise the house up, and it eats our profit margin.”

The Busbys bought a parcel of land on Mantou Street that once held three dilapidated homes the couple described as shacks. The land was slightly higher than in much of the rest of the city, so while the homes needed to be raised some to meet the regulations of new construction, they’re not towering over the neighborhood.

The homes are elevated on brick foundation, with stairs leading to a porch. They have sleek siding in neutral colors. The ceilings are high and the kitchen and living areas are bright and open.

With the cost of building materials, the Busbys said it’s impossible to build a new home for under $200,000 and turn a profit. Add in the extra costs of elevating in Pascagoula and high homeowners’ and flood insurance rates, it’s easy to quickly be priced out.

“There’s no in between anymore,” Brandi said, referring to Pascagoula’s makeup. “It’s either 800-square-foot little Navy houses (built during World War II) or a mansion on Washington Avenue.”

The Busbys have a history of turning down Pascagoula remodel requests. In the city’s flood zones, new construction needs to be elevated — even if it’s a room addition on a lower-lying home.

They wanted to improve Pascagoula but had to stop short of their goal. The costs just didn’t make sense. Pascagoula houses already sit on the market longer than in competing coast cities. Not only are they more expensive to build, but also the flood zones in the county’s lowest lying areas make them less valuable to sell. One misstep could mean losing money on a build.

“At the end of the day, we’re a business,” Brandi said, “and we have to keep food on our own table.”

Brandon, Brandi’s husband, worries about Pascaogula’s long-term future — beyond just the 50% rule that keeps him from even attempting to flip the city’s older homes.

A home undergoes construction in a neighborhood in Pascagoula, Miss., Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Homeowner insurance is skyrocketing along the state’s coastal cities, with one insurance agent seeing increases of 15-70%. Inflation and the overall risk of natural disasters are all contributing to the growing costs. Flood insurance prices are getting steeper on much of the coast, too.

In 2021, FEMA began using new metrics to determine the costs of the National Flood Insurance Program by assessing a property’s risk, especially its proximity to water.

At first, the rule change only affected new policies. Existing policies didn’t increase until the following year. While some folks may be grandfathered in to lower rates, they will increase each year — usually at 18%.

“The $1,800 you’re paying now won’t stay $1,800,” Brandon said. “People don’t seem to understand the magnitude of that. In three to four years, Pascagoula is going to be a ghost town for that reason.”

Realtor Lazaro Rovira primarily sells homes to Hispanic families who work at Ingalls and Chevron. 

“They want to live in Pascagoula,” he said. “It’s convenient because you already have the Hispanic population here, the Hispanic supermarkets and the restaurants.”

But he sees how many of them are opting out of the headache of homeownership in Pascagoula because there’s a shortage of reasonable homes. He also sees potential homeowners running the numbers and opting for properties they think may be a better, long-term investment.

He recalls one recent Pascagoula home he sold for $135,000.

“When you add the flood insurance and everything, her payments were $1,400 a month, which is a lot of money,” he said. “If you’re going to pay that much, you might as well go to newer construction in Ocean Springs. It just makes more sense for a lot of people.”

Rovira applauds the mayor’s office for attacking the nuisance property problem and for standing up against the 50% rule. But he’s worried about what could actually be done.

“We’ve been complaining about this for a long time,” he said of those in real estate. “And this is literally the first administration to actually notice and take action to do something about it … Even for them just to try, really speaks volumes.”

If the 50% rule were to be lifted, or changed, Rovira said “it’s going to open up the floodgates to Pascagoula” renovations.

Like Rovira, resident Bernie O’Sullivan has a soft spot for Pascagoula’s historic properties at risk of being torn down.

She and her husband bought a large Victorian built in the late 1800s for $85,000 in 2017 with plans to flip it. But it wound up costing $50,000 just to raise it 3-and-a-half feet to make the home no longer subject to the 50% rule.

“If we would have done the renovations under the 50% rule, in the next 10 years we couldn’t do anything to fix the house if anything happened,” she said. “A little kitchen fire, anything … (the city) would have shut us down when we asked for more permits.”

She said friends and city workers were skeptical if she could pull off the project. Once the home was finished, she couldn’t let it go. She and her husband moved in.

She knows what she did is the exception. Most people don’t have the means to save an old house the way she did.

“And that’s why so many people in Pascagoula just walk away from their properties,” she said.

Asked about criticism of the 50% rule from Coast locals, FEMA called the policy a compromise: the rule allows investment in flood zones while taking into account the risk of repeated damages.

Officials told to Mississippi Today that they’re working with local and state officials to address concerns.

But Clayton French, the deputy director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said he understood where Pascagoula homeowners were coming from, saying that those looking to make improvements are “trapped.”

“I think the real answer is Congress needs to relook this again,” French said, explaining what it would take to change the policy. “They probably made some choices, just guessing, years ago, and now they’re seeing the fruits of some of those choices.

Pascagoula is low lying. The Gulf waters near Pascagoula are shallow. That means there’s not a lot of room for it to absorb storm surge. Unlike New Orleans, there isn’t a levy built to control it.

Most Pascagoula locals view Katrina as a 100-year storm. They’re not worried about it happening again.

According to NFIP data, the program saw an average of 51 flood insurance claims from Pascagoula between 1977 and 2004, the year before Katrina. Since Katrina, that number’s dropped to 33 per year.

“When you look at the number of flood claims, it’s not the issue,” said Pascagoula resident Jimmy Fondren, a Republican candidate for the Mississippi House. “The issue is the mapping … People shouldn’t be told by the federal government what they can and can’t do with their own homes.”

Pascagoula leadership is figuring out what next steps could help the city. 

It could opt out of FEMA’s flood insurance program altogether to avoid the building requirements it has to impose to be in the program.

Mayor Willis said the city would have to carefully consider making such a move and would only do it if a private insurer was able to step up and back the city in FEMA’s place.

Willis and other local leaders say they’ve spoken to Congress members about altering the FEMA requirements so Pascagoula wouldn’t have to adopt a 50% rule — but maybe a 100% percent rule — that would allow homeowners in the city to at least make improvements up to the full value of what the house is worth.

Republican 4th District U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell said he has “made it a priority to work with other members, especially our neighbors from other Gulf Coast districts, to address these problems and provide much-needed relief to our coastal communities.”

“As a Pascagoula native and a lifelong resident of the Gulf Coast, I’ve witnessed the negative impacts of the 50% rule on Pascagoula, especially on young families who can’t afford to live in my hometown. I’ve also seen how cities and towns across the Gulf Coast struggle because of delays in reimbursements and other FEMA programs.”

If a 100% rule went into effect, Hernandez would have enough room to fix his home and have enough wiggle room should he need to add in other repairs over the next 10 years. Before he knew about the 50% rule, he planned to spend about $20,000 in home improvements.

For now, he’s stuck. He’s struggling to find a contractor willing to come give the estimate he needs to give to the city before the planning office can even consider issuing a building permit.

The longer the house sits, the more likely it could one day end up on the city’s list of homes it has no choice but to condemn and knock down.

Hernandez saw a future in the one-story home. He got it for a low price, but has already spent several thousands of dollars renting dumpsters just to clear our trash from the house’s yard.

He grew up in New Orleans. He understands the risk of living in a low-lying area.

He purchased the house in 2017 with high hopes. It was supposed to become the perfect home for his three kids and his two sisters he’s helping raise.

“We bought it thinking that we were gonna be able to move here,” Hernandez said, looking at the little brick house.

He just wants that to be true.

Mississippi Today Reporter Alex Rozier contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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On this day in 1867

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17 minutes ago

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November 23, 2024

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-11-23 07:00:00

Nov. 23, 1867

Extract from the Reconstructed Constitution of the State of Louisiana, 1868. Credit: Library of Congress

The Louisiana Constitutional Convention, composed of 49 White delegates and 49 Black delegates, met in New Orleans. The new constitution became the first in the state’s history to include a bill of rights. 

The document gave property rights to married women, funded public education without segregated schools, provided full citizenship for Black Americans, and eliminated the Black Codes of 1865 and property qualifications for officeholders. 

The voters ratified the constitution months later. Despite the document, prejudice and corruption continued to reign in Louisiana, and when Reconstruction ended, the constitution was replaced with one that helped restore the rule of white supremacy.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Crystal Springs commercial painter says police damaged his eyesight

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16 hours ago

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November 22, 2024

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mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-11-22 12:21:00

CRYSTAL SPRINGS – Roger Horton has worked decades as a commercial painter, a skill he’s kept up with even with the challenge of having what his wife has called “one good eye.” 

It hasn’t stopped him from being able to complete detailed paint jobs and create straight lines without the help of tape. But last year following a head injury, he and others said people have been pointing out a change in his work. Horton says the sight in his right eye is clouded, like he is looking underwater.

Affected vision, short term memory and periods of irritability – potential symptoms of concussion – followed after he was arrested last September. During an encounter with several police officers, Horton alleges more than one slammed his head into a cruiser and placed handcuffs on so tight that he started to bleed. 

“(The officer) was kind of rough with me and all, and he takes my head and I said, ‘What’d I do?’” he recalled recently. 

Horton ended up being convicted of two misdemeanor charges and has paid off the fines, but a year later he still has questions about the arrest and treatment by the police. 

To date, he has not seen a doctor to evaluate his eye and check for vision or cognitive issues. Horton and his wife Rhonda don’t have a car, and transportation to doctor’s appointments in the Jackson area remains a challenge. 

The Hortons have lived in Crystal Springs all their lives, and they have lived in the home the past five years that belonged to Rhonda’s mother. 

More than a quarter of all people in Crystal Springs live below the poverty line, and that includes the couple. Rhonda Horton said it’s hard to make a living because there aren’t a lot of jobs, but they support themselves as painters. 

That’s how they met Yvonne Florczak-Seeman, who lived in Illinois and purchased her first historical property in Crystal Springs in 2019. She splits her time between the two states. 

“We painted that porch bar and the rest is history,” Rhonda Horton said, adding that they went on to complete detailed work on mantles, kitchen cabinets and a cigar room at Florczak-Seeman’s North Jackson Street residence. 

Over the years, the couple built a relationship with Florczak-Seeman, who is seeking to open a women’s empowerment center called the Butterfly Garden, in the building next to city hall. 

Yvonne Florczak-Seeman poses for a portrait at her business, The Butterfly Garden, in Crystal Springs, Miss., Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Florczak-Seeman has supported the couple numerous times, including helping them pay a late water bill and offering them work. She called them talented painters and hired them again to paint the interior of the future center, located at East Railroad Avenue. 

In pieces, Rhonda Horton told Florczak-Seeman about her husband’s arrest and later the injuries she said he sustained from it. Florczak-Seeman had questions about the encounter and other potential injustices at play, so she offered to help. 

“I just want them to pay for what they’ve done not just to him, but everybody,” Rhonda Horton said. “That’s what I want, justice.” 

The Arrest

On Sept. 24, 2023, Horton was walking home from a friend’s house when officers approached him. One grabbed his arms to handcuff him, and he remembers them cutting his wrist and causing it to bleed.

Then, he said, a second officer slammed his head into the top of the police car, followed by another officer who slammed his head again. During the encounter, a bag of marijuana that Horton said he found fell out of his pocket onto the ground. 

An officer put Horton in the back of the cruiser and took him to the station where Horton asked to speak to the police chief and call his wife. He said the police took his phone and clothes.

Afterward, he was taken to the Copiah County Detention Center in Gallman. 

Police Chief Tony Hemphill disputed Horton’s allegation of mistreatment, saying he did not sustain any injuries that required hospitalization. He said Horton’s wrist was cut while he resisted arrest. 

“He was not brutalized and targeted,” Hemphill said. “If he had just complied, he wouldn’t have had to come up there (to jail) that night.”

Two police reports from the night of the September 2023 arrest detail how officers had responded to a possible assault and were given the description of a white man. While in the area, they encountered Horton — the only person who fit that description. 

Hemphill said a mother called police after her daughter told her she was assaulted. He said officers approached Horton on the street and tried to talk with him to rule him out as a suspect. 

That’s when Horton began “fighting, pulling away, and kicking against (the officer’s) patrol vehicle, trying to run,” according to a police report from the night and Hemphill. Horton denies doing any of that. 

The next day police took Horton from the county jail to the Crystal Springs police station. There, police informed him a teenage girl reported being assaulted. After learning about the assault allegation, Horton remembered feeling shocked and saying it couldn’t be true because he was not on the street where the alleged incident took place. 

Hemphill confirmed the police investigated the assault allegation and found it not credible, meaning Horton wouldn’t face any related charges. He said he communicated this to Horton and his wife early on and since then, which the couple disputes. 

As Horton was being arrested and detained, his wife grew worried because she had just spoken with him on the phone and expected him to arrive home shortly. Rhonda Horton and her adult son started calling Roger’s phone, each not getting an answer. 

Then during one of the calls by her son, someone who did not identify himself answered Roger’s phone and said, ‘Your daddy’s dead’ and then hung up, Rhonda Horton said. 

She was starting to assume the worst had happened. Rhonda Horton wouldn’t have confirmation her husband was alive until he called from the county jail in the early morning. 

The next morning as she talked with the police chief, Rhonda Horton asked the chief about who answered the phone and told her son that Roger was dead. The chief told her the person who answered must have been from the county. 

Hemphill later told Mississippi Today that he did not know about the call and that type of behavior by his staff “is not going to be tolerated.” Similarly, Copiah County Sheriff Byron Swilley said he had not heard about it and could not say whether a member of his department made the comment to Rhonda and Roger Horton’s son. 

A Sept. 25, 2023, citation signed by Hemphill, shared with Mississippi Today, summoned Roger Horton to municipal court for the misdemeanor charges of possession of marijuana and resisting arrest and directed him not to have contact with the alleged victim in the assault case. No contact orders are typically for cases such as domestic violence and sexual assault and they are set by a judge.

LaKiedra Kangar, who works in municipal court services, said the no contact order was put in place because of the assault allegation. She confirmed Horton was not charged with the offense following the police department’s investigation of the allegation. 

Weeks passed. Roger Horton went to court for the misdemeanor charges, to which he pleaded guilty.  Felony assault charges were not part of the hearing. Municipal Court Judge Matthew Kitchens ordered Roger to pay over $900 in fines for the misdemeanors. 

Horton was able to pay for some of the fine through at least 10 hours worth of court-ordered community service, which he said involved painting buildings for the city. 

Months later after learning about Horton’s arrest and how he said the police treated him, Florczak-Seeman said she wanted to know more. Horton didn’t have access to his arrest documents, so she accompanied him and his wife to the police department to ask for them. 

The first visit, Horton asked but did not receive the arrest report. Florczak-Seeman asked if he had a fine for any of the charges, which police said Horton did even after completing some community service hours. Florczak-Seeman paid for the remaining balance and had him work for her for two days to pay that off. 

This year, they went to the police department a second time so Horton could ask for his arrest paperwork. An officer told him he didn’t need it and that the rape allegation had been investigated and found not to be credible, Horton told Mississippi Today. 

Florczak-Seeman asked why Horton couldn’t receive the report. She said Hemphill asked if she was Horton’s attorney, and Florczak-Seeman clarified she was his representative. 

The chief left for a few minutes and returned with two pieces of paper and handed them to Horton. Hemphill told Mississippi Today he did not recall whether he was the one who handed the report to Horton. 

Florczak-Seeman took the document from Horton and began to read it as they stood in the lobby. She said she was horrified to see the name of the alleged, underage victim and her address in the report.

Hemphill said the victim’s personal information should have been restricted and not doing so was an oversight. 

After reading the report, Florczak-Seeman went down the street to the mayor’s office at city hall to explain what happened, and how she believed the mayor had grounds to fire the police chief because he provided that document to Roger with the alleged victim’s information. 

Crystal Springs Mayor Sally Garland Credit: Crystal Springs website

Mayor Sally Garland confirmed she had a conversation with Florczak-Seeman about the police chief’s employment. 

She said she reviews all complaints about city officials, and Garland said she goes to the department head to get a better understanding of the situation. If she determines there are potential grounds for termination, a hearing would be scheduled with the Board of Aldermen, and the group would vote on that decision.   

Garland did not find grounds for termination, and Hemphill remains police chief. 

A Strange Visit

The Hortons and Florczak-Seeman hadn’t given much thought about the 2023 arrest, until weeks ago when a teenaged girl suddenly showed up in Florczak-Seeman’s yard. 

At the end of September at the North Jackson Street home, Florczak-Seeman heard screaming and found the teenage girl who came onto her property. She asked what was wrong, and the teenager said she was chased by a dog, which Florczak-Seeman and Rhonda Horton did not see. 

The teenager asked for a soda, and Rhonda Horton went inside to get one. Florczak-Seeman asked where the teenager lived, and she gave an answer that Florczak-Seeman said conflicted with what two girls who were standing nearby on the public sidewalk said she told them. 

Then Florczak-Seeman asked the teenager’s name and recognized it as the name of the alleged victim on Horton’s arrest record. Immediately, Florczak-Seeman said she turned to Horton and told him to stay back, and she told the teenager to get off her property, which she did. 

At the moment, they were not able to verify whether the teenager was the alleged victim from the report. Neither the Hortons nor Florczak-Seeman had seen her before, and they only knew her name from the arrest report.

“That didn’t make sense at all,” Rhonda Horton told Mississippi Today. 

Florczak-Seeman called 911 to report the situation and ask for police to come, which they did not. Hemphill told Mississippi Today a dispatcher informed him about the call with Florczak-Seeman, including details with the teenage girl and how she wanted to report the girl for trespassing. 

Florczak-Seeman is one of the people who have noticed a difference in Horton’s vision. It’s clear when comparing the detailed and clean paint job Roger completed at her Jackson Street property in 2019 and the center where he painted last year.

During an interview at the center in October, Florczak-Seeman pointed to the ceiling and noted spots that Horton did not paint. She remembers telling him about them and realized that he couldn’t see them. 

“The spots on my ceiling are still not painted, and they’re not painted as a reminder of the injustices that happened in this situation and why I got involved,” Florczak-Seeman said. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Job opening: Jackson Reporter

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17 hours ago

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November 22, 2024

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mississippitoday.org – Mississippi Today – 2024-11-22 15:00:00

Mississippi Today, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom focused on investigative and accountability journalism, is building a dedicated team of reporters to provide in-depth coverage of Jackson, Mississippi.

As the state’s largest and capital city, Jackson matters greatly to us and all Mississippians. Launched in 2016 as the state’s flagship nonprofit newsroom focused on Mississippi government and policy, Mississippi Today is focusing our lens beyond the statehouse and to the city of Jackson, serving our readers with the watchdog reporting they’ve come to expect from Mississippi Today. Our newsroom, with a proven record of providing impactful government accountability, aims to serve the city more directly with this team.

Our Jackson team will focus on sharp investigative reporting, watchdog accountability journalism and meaningful cultural storytelling. We aim to both elevate the voices of those working for positive change in the community while offering a balanced perspective on the city’s obstacles and triumphs. Our goal is to deliver impactful, honest journalism that will inform, inspire and empower Jackson’s citizens.

The team will be led by Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Wolfe, an investigative reporter with a decade of experience covering Jackson.

Roles and Responsibilities:

  • We are purposefully casting a wide net, hoping to connect with journalists of many different backgrounds who may be uniquely qualified to help us launch this team. If you’re a reporter with any of the following experience or attributes, this team may be for you.
  • Investigative reporting focused on uncovering systemic issues within government and politics. The bigger the impact of your reporting on government leaders or systems, the better.
  • Political reporting covering not only high-profile candidates for offices, but experience delving into issues and ideas that affect a community. We hope to delve deeply into a deep distrust in the city’s institutions.
  • Cultural reporting that highlights the often-overlooked success stories of citizens who are making a positive impact on their communities.
  • Strong understanding of Jackson (or similar large urban centers) and the unique challenges facing the city and its residents.
  • Commitment to the mission of balanced, impactful journalism that centers and respects the voice of the community.
  • Collaborative mindset and ability to work within a team-oriented newsroom.

The starting salary for this position is $58,000. Compensation is commensurate with experience level.

Expectations:

  • Work with a small team of journalists who are focused on social inequities and racial equality in our area.
  • Willingness to collaborate closely with a small team of like-minded journalists.
  • Get people to talk, find willing sources and protect them while telling sensitive and timely stories.
  • Build trust: Many people who have been impacted by inequities in Mississippi have been victims of predatory practices and forces. This will require empathy, patience and savvy.
  • Work with our Audience Team and data and visual journalists to create compelling story presentations.

Qualified candidates should have:

  • Experience working as a reporter in a newsroom.
  • Ability to work quickly, with accuracy and good news judgment.
  • Comfortability in digital or multimedia journalism spaces.
  • Ability to independently develop and cultivate sources.
  • Ability to use social media for research and to engage readers.

What you’ll get:

  • The opportunity to work alongside award-winning journalists and make significant contributions to Mississippi’s top nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news and information sources.
  • Highly competitive salary with medical insurance, and options for vision and dental insurance.
  • Use of appropriate technology and equipment. 
  • 29 days paid time off.
  • Up to 12 weeks of parental family leave, with return-to-work flexibility.
  • Simple IRA with 3 percent company matching. Group-term life insurance provided to employees ($15,000 policy).
  • Support for professional training and attending industry conferences.

How to Apply:

We’re committed to building an inclusive newsroom that represents the people and communities we serve. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply for this position, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people and people who are differently abled. Please apply here.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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