Taking in Evacuees

Last night, I posted a message on Craigslist (New Orleans/Katrina/Missing Persons) looking for the old friend I mentioned below. There were hundreds of postings looking for people.

In the personal ads, there were also hundreds of posts offering to take in and shelter evacuees. Hundreds of offers by people to open up their homes, indefinitely, to complete strangers inviting them to move into their spare bedrooms or sleep on their living room sofas, virtually all around the country.

This seems awfully dangerous, since not only do you not know who you're inviting to live with you (in the case of people opening up their homes), but also - if you're an evacuee - who's doing the inviting!

There were lots of very suspicious posts by men offering to take in, specifically, single women with children. There were so many and they were so blatant that a number of posts pointed this out - and warned evacuees against taking these people up on their offers. Unbelievable.