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After spending her whole life in New Orleans, Tina Coulon is putting her River Ridge home on the market and trading the Big Easy for Music City.
“We went up to Nashville and it was just so clean, had a lot of things really liked about it, when we decided you know what this is really where we need to be,” Coulon said.
A new study commissioned by a Jefferson Parish business group found thousands like her are packing up.
Using change of address forms, researchers found at least 14,000 Jefferson families left Louisiana – a higher percentage than the state average.
“A number of upper and upper middle income people are moving out, those issues are directly related to quality of life because those people have choices,” said researcher Greg Rigamer.
It’s flooded the real estate market this year: 5,000 homes have been put on the market in Jefferson Parish – twice as many as in 2004.
“Since 1989 it hasn’t been this bad, there are so many houses for sale,” said realtor Eileen Traficante.
Researchers say many families aren’t seeing a fast enough turn-around and are growing impatient with old problems.
They said residents are frustrated with public schools to a lack of healthcare to overall cleanliness.
The study has already motivated parish leaders to make improvements, with officers recently cracking down on blight and crime.
“If you don’t see everything fixed yet, but the momentum of where we have been, and from whence we came and where we are today, certainly shows that we’ve created a very solid momentum,” said Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard.
An all night wait in an emergency room is what finally convinced Tina Coulon to go - she’s now looking forward to cheaper insurance and not spending thousands of dollars to put her kids in private schools.
“We’re moving just to have a better quality of life,” Coulon says. “Just kind of have a little bit better future for our kids.”
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