NEW ORLEANS—This used to be a place where people came to have the best of times, until it was hit by the worst of disasters.
August 29 will mark two years since the day that New Orleans was struck with disastrous flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina. In a city once known for being a hub of American culture and amusement for adults—everything from gambling to music to gourmet food—there still remain grave obstacles to recovery.
Half of the city's approximately 470,000 residents were evacuated after the city flooded and most have still not returned. Some have settled down in other areas where they were relocated or have family members. Some cannot afford to return because they were poor before tragedy struck the city and were only given one-way evacuation tickets. Some are still waiting on insurance money for their destroyed homes. Some were underinsured or not insured at all, and are lacking federal assistance. Many people have given up living in a city that, at its lowest, is six feet below sea level and is prone to storms and flooding.
History of Hardship
New Orleans has suffered major flooding before and will probably flood again, with many of the same areas being repeatedly hit. In 1929 a major storm struck the city. In 1965, scores of New Orleans residents rode out Hurricane Betsy, which flooded many of the same poorer neighborhoods as in 1929, and that were hit again in 2005. The difference with the aftermath of Katrina is the large number of city residents that have been displaced—even two years later.
Many locals feel that there are intangible losses to such a major shift in the size and makeup of New Orleans residents. "We have half the city of New Orleans gone, and people need to understand that the city is not back in its entirety," says Tanya Harrison, a community organizer for the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) in New Orleans.
"The neighborhoods of the real New Orleanians [are not] in the downtown and the French Quarter. The real New Orleans is our neighborhoods," says Harrison, who is a fourth generation resident herself. "The families who carry the traditions of our city, of our culture [live in these poor neighborhoods]," she says.
During the warnings in the days and hours before Katrina hit in 2005, it was many of the residents in these poorer neighborhoods that hedged their bets on survival based on long experience with storms and flooding. Many of them could not afford to evacuate, which can be costly and time-consuming. Many had no access to transportation to evacuate and waited in the Superdome, which is typically made available by the city to special needs citizens during major storms.
Harrison says that the mass mandatory evacuation that happened after the levees broke has disjointed the community, making recovery all that much more difficult. "I think that those people [evacuees] are still in limbo, some of them can't get back," said Harrison.
"These are the people who carry the traditions, these are the people who make New Orleans New Orleans," Harrison added. "That's the real New Orleans and that isn't really back, and for most of us that's a big tragedy."
Same Tragedy, Different Paths to Recovery
When the levee system designed to hold back floodwaters did not hold in 2005, but instead broke in several locations, torrents of water gushed into neighborhood streets.
The damage, which can still be seen almost two years later, did not differentiate between wealthy and poor. One wealthier neighborhood to the northeast of downtown New Orleans called Lakeview was also devastated.
The difference can be seen, however, in the recovery made in the neighborhoods since 2005. In Lakeview, every block has houses being rebuilt, and though not every house has been recovered, the area is well on its way to some semblance of normalcy. "We are making a recovery," said one neighborhood resident who did not wish to be identified. "We're coming back pretty well."
Today, if you visit the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the poorest sections of the city hit hardest by flooding, you will see a pristine-looking new levee wall—facing a neighborhood that is still almost completely deserted. In the humid climate of the Gulf Coast region, vegetation thrives and has already begun to take over the roadsides of what was once a lively neighborhood. Flooded houses sit, decimated and uninhabitable, block after block.
Scattered among naked cement foundations of former houses are oddly haunting reminders of the trickle of money that has made its way here for rebuilding post-Katrina, and the determined residents trying to come back. One household of such residents in the Upper Ninth Ward is living half in their gutted house with no walls and half in their too-small FEMA trailer in the backyard. The owner of the house, Debra James, says that she has filed all the necessary paperwork to get federal assistance, since she only had homeowner's insurance. "I'm just waiting for a phone call," said James.
There are other success stories in the poorer neighborhoods, although they are few and far between, and are mostly the result of grassroots efforts from groups like ACORN and individual acts of kindness.
ACORN rebuilt the first house in the Lower Ninth Ward earlier this year and is working on getting others back home, while protecting vulnerable property from opportunistic real estate developers. The name Trump is frequently mentioned among wary residents here.
A project known as Musician's Village sprang up when one of New Orleans' famed and beloved jazz musicians wanted to relocate. Afraid of losing valuable pieces of its cultural heritage, community leaders and the non-profit organization Habitat for Humanity came together to start building houses for area musicians. The village is slowly growing into rows of pretty little single-family homes painted in vibrant colors that line a couple of blocks in the Lower Ninth Ward. But the vast expanse of this and other neighborhoods in the vicinity has not been rebuilt or even cleaned up.
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