New Orleans Before Katrina
Daniel Wolff, I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad and the Beautiful producer and author of The Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back, describes Hurricane Katrina as more of an acceleration of the history of New Orleans than a turning point. The storm illuminated systemic problems that had existed in New Orleans for decades, and the city's geographic vulnerabilities, social inequalities and lack of support systems set the stage for a long and difficult recovery.
The population of New Orleans had been on a steady decline for nearly a half-century before Hurricane Katrina. According to the 2010 census, New Orleans had lost more than 140,000 residents from 2000 to 2005, reflecting a 29 percent drop from its peak of 600,000 in 1960. This was largely due to the high crime rate and lack of jobs in the city and ultimately resulted in thousands of abandoned homes and vacant businesses, driving median rent down to approximately $650 a month. Before Katrina, half of the city's residents lived in households with incomes of less than $25,000 a year and nearly a quarter were living at or below the poverty line. New Orleans ranked second among the nation's 50 largest cities in terms of the number of neighborhoods it had in extreme poverty. New Orleans also ranked second in the United States in terms of the gap between rich and poor.
Despite New Orleans' vulnerabilities the city was (and has long been) critical to the nation's economy. The cargo that flows through the Port of New Orleans creates $37 billion in economic output annually and close to 380,000 jobs in the United States depend on goods handled by the Port of New Orleans. In addition, southern Louisiana rivals the Persian Gulf in the number of natural gas and oil refineries and its fishing industry is one of the largest in the United States, responsible for 40 percent of all seafood consumed by Americans each year.
Caption: Industrial canal in the Lower Ninth Ward
Credit: Courtesy of I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
» Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.
» House Committee on Ways and Means. "Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Trade."
» Hylton, Hilary. "The Gangs of New Orleans." Time, May 14, 2006.
» Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "In the Wake of Katrina: The Continuing Saga of Housing and Rebuilding in New Orleans."
» Landphair, Juliette. "'The Forgotten People of New Orleans': Community, Vulnerability, and the Lower Ninth Ward." The Journal of American History, 94, 837-845, December 2007.
» Lewis, Peirce F. New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape. Santa Fe: The Center for American Places, 2010.
» RAND Gulf States Policy Institute. "Tracing the Effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Population of New Orleans."
» University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "State of the Ninth Ward: An Analysis of the Ninth Ward Since Hurricane Katrina."
The Lower Ninth Ward
In New Orleans, poverty was concentrated in low-lying places like the Lower Ninth Ward, and Hurricane Katrina exposed the intertwined problems of racial discrimination, segregation and poverty in the city. Eighty percent of the city's African-American residents lived in these flood-prone areas, compared to 54 percent of the city's white population.
The Lower Ninth Ward was one of the last areas developed in New Orleans and consists of two neighborhoods, the Lower Ninth North (to the north) and the Holy Cross district, where Carolyn Parker lives, to the south. The neighborhood was formally recognized as the Lower Ninth Ward in the 1920s, following the construction of the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, more commonly known as the "Industrial Canal." This canal bisects the Ninth Ward, creating the Lower Ninth Ward to the east of the canal and the Upper Ninth Ward to the west. Holy Cross stands six to eight feet above sea level, between the levees of the Industrial Canal and the Mississippi River. The neighborhood's unique architecture and historical fabric earned it designation as a historical district in 1990.
Before Hurricane Katrina, Holy Cross had about 5,500 residents in 1,900 households. Its population was 90 percent African American, with 30 percent of the population living at or below the poverty level. The Lower Ninth Ward, as a whole, was home to 19,500 people with a poverty level of 36 percent--three times the national average. According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, while nearly 60 percent of heads of household in the Lower Ninth Ward owned their own homes, there was no real opportunity to build individual assets or to enjoy house appreciation. At the time Hurricane Katrina hit, three-quarters of residents in the Lower Ninth Ward had been living in the same houses for five years or longer.
Though the Holy Cross neighborhood now has only half of the people it did before Hurricane Katrina, the community has fought hard to keep its land, navigating often vague, broken recovery programs and bureaucratic red tape to do so. However, the Lower Ninth Ward has always battled inequality and marginalization. Geographic isolation fostered neighborhood unity as early as the 1870s, and the city's attempt to widen the Industrial Canal (effectively removing homes) strengthened that unity further. The high rate of home ownership has also helped contribute to the residents' strong attachment to the Lower Ninth Ward.
Pam Dashiell, director of the Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development describes the community, saying, "The Lower Ninth Ward is a place that folks love. It is a place that is vulnerable, there's no question about that. It was a place that had its issues and problems. It had no economic infrastructure even before Katrina, but it's a place that can serve as an example of how people can bring back, restore and regenerate their own neighborhoods and communities in a way that is beneficial to them and the larger community, to the larger New Orleans community."
Caption: Carolyn Parker at church
Credit: Courtesy of I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
» Community Investments. "Tackling Neighborhood Poverty: Developing Strategic Approaches to Community Development."
» Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.
» Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "In the Wake of Katrina: The Continuing Saga of Housing and Rebuilding in New Orleans."
» Landphair, Juliette. "'The Forgotten People of New Orleans': Community, Vulnerability, and the Lower Ninth Ward." The Journal of American History, 94, 837-845, December 2007.
» New Orleans Institute for Resilience and Innovation. "Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (C.S.E.D.)."
» Lewis, Peirce F. New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape. Santa Fe: The Center for American Places, 2010.
» Rich, Nathaniel. "Jungleland: The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans Gives New Meaning to 'Urban Growth.'" The New York Times Magazine, March 21, 2012.
» University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "State of the Ninth Ward: An Analysis of the Ninth Ward Since Hurricane Katrina."
» Wolff, Daniel. Fight For Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2012.
Hurricane Katrina and the Levees
On August 29, 2005, a 15-foot surge approached the city of New Orleans from Lake Borgne. Water violently inundated the Industrial Canal, breaching its levee system in three places and flooding southeastern areas of New Orleans, including the Lower Ninth Ward. The tsunami-like rush of water was so powerful that homes were ripped from their foundations and scattered inland. A barge docked in the Industrial Canal also breached the floodwall, adding to the massive surge of water.
The surge and waves that Hurricane Katrina generated greatly exceeded the capacity of the levees, exacerbated by the fact that on average levees in the United States are 54 years old. In all, Hurricane Katrina resulted in more than 50 levee failures, the flooding of 75 percent of the city and more than 1,800 lives lost.
The damage did not stop with the storm, as the water in the flooded areas remained stagnant for weeks without anywhere to drain.
Caption: An aerial view of the flooded Lower Ninth Ward after Katrina
Credit: Courtesy of I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
» Kayen, Robert, Brian Collins and Helen Gibbons. "USGS Scientists Investigate New Orleans Levees Broken by Hurricane Katrina.". Sound Waves, December 2005/January 2006.
» Sills, G.L., et al. "Overview of New Orleans Levee Failures: Lessons Learned and Their Impact on National Levee Design and Assessment." Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, May 2008.
» U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "1928 Flood Control Act."
Post-Katrina Federal Aid
In terms of dollars and cents, Hurricane Katrina was the largest weather disaster in U.S. history. Total damages were somewhere between $96 and $135 billion. By comparison, Hurricane Andrew (the second largest U.S. natural disaster) had estimated damages of $22 to $33 billion.
In fewer than 40 hours more than one million people left the city of New Orleans, twice the number that had ever evacuated a U.S. city before. However, close to 50,000 people remained, many of them poor or elderly and with no place to go or means for traveling. Most of these people lived in the most flood-prone areas of New Orleans and were taken to the Superdome sports and convention center as a last resort. For six days, the Superdome housed more than 25,000 people stranded in the city.
Once these people left the Superdome, many of them became dependent on federal grant money and local relief programs for home repair and survival. Due to its location on the canal, the Lower Ninth Ward was one of the most affected neighborhoods with the highest percentage of damaged areas and the highest number of deaths by drowning. Many Lower Ninth Ward residents did not qualify for or carry flood insurance because they were considered outside the flood zone--the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had certified the levee walls to be resistant to flooding.
Caption: Carolyn Parker's house
Credit: Courtesy of I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
» Bureau of Governmental Research. "Mending the Urban Fabric: Part I."
» Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. "Four Years after the Storm: the Road Home Program's Impact on Greater New Orleans."
» Louisiana Land Trust.
» New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.
» Wolff, Daniel. Fight For Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2012.
Road Home Program
The housing challenges that already existed prior to Katrina made rebuilding particularly difficult. With no central place to get information about property acquisition, investment was very low. Blighted, abandoned and tax-adjudicated properties were common, and there was no system in place for handling them effectively. Prior to Katrina, 26,000 blighted properties were either tax-adjudicated or not under the city's control.
Much of the federal aid for recovery went toward the Road Home program, which was administered by a private contractor hired by the state and designed to help Louisiana residents get back into their homes. This program, however, ended up serving as a road block for many. Renters were largely ineligible for aid, and the program gave maximum grants of $150,000 based on the assessed values of homes pre-Katrina, without accounting for the rise in the cost of building materials and contractors following the storm. As a result, the funds residents were able to attain were much lower than the actual cost of rebuilding (a cost which rose to nearly $100 per square foot.) According to the Seattle Journal for Social Justice, the average homeowner in the Road Home program received $54,586 less than he or she actually needed to rebuild. Relief aid was based on property values, so homeowners in more affluent neighborhoods, which were largely populated by white people and generally had incurred less damage, received more aid than homeowners in places like the Lower Ninth Ward.
Though by fall 2006 approximately 34,000 homeowners had completed Road Home applications, the relief program had issued a total of only 13,000 checks. Carolyn Parker was one of the first to apply for Road Home assistance and was told the process would be accelerated since her mortgage had been paid off for 10 years, but she did not receive funds until 2008.
After many state-level investigations into the failure of the Road Home program, a 2008 lawsuit was filed against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) alleging discriminatory practices. In July 2011, HUD agreed to pay $62 million to 1,300 Louisiana homeowners.
Caption: Carolyn Parker cleaning out debris in her home after Katrina
Credit: Courtesy of I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
» Finger, Davida. "Stranded and Squandered: Lost on the Road Home." Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 2008.
» Fletcher, Michael A.. "HUD to pay $62 million to La. Homeowners to settle Road Home lawsuit." The Washington Post. July 6, 2011.
» Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "In the Wake of Katrina: The Continuing Saga of Housing and Rebuilding in New Orleans."
» University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "State of the Ninth Ward: An Analysis of the Ninth Ward Since Hurricane Katrina."
FEMA
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the U.S. government agency responsible for disaster response, and it was heavily criticized for slow and fragmented recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA was downsized and put under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and had lost some of its strongest leaders. In New Orleans, there were reports of FEMA turning down personnel and supplies offered by local businesses, police forces and emergency crews, while residents tried to figure out how to get back into their homes. In addition, FEMA had never dealt with a storm of Katrina's size, and preparations and resources were ultimately insufficient for a natural disaster of such magnitude. A later Congressional report deemed the response in New Orleans "a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare."
FEMA eventually supplied emergency food, water, medical supplies and services to residents, though the supplies were quickly depleted due to the number of residents in need. A lack of rebuilding funds and health problems left residents living in FEMA-supplied trailers--frequently criticized as a Band-Aid solution--for up to six years. Studies found some of those trailers were contaminated with formaldehyde, which contributed to various illnesses. The Times-Picayune, the city's major newspaper, reported that at one point New Orleans had more than 23,000 FEMA-issued trailers and mobile homes. The last trailer was removed from New Orleans in February 2012.
In the film, Carolyn Parker lives in a trailer for more than three years before moving back into her damaged home. The city instituted a "look and leave" policy, which allowed residents to return to their homes only briefly to assess damage, but Parker, fearing the city would take her property, instituted what she called her own "look and stay" policy.
Caption: The FEMA trailer in Carolyn Parker's backyard
Credit: Courtesy of I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
» Kunzelman, Michael. "FEMA Trailers Lawsuit: Settlement Reached Over Hazardous Fumes." The Huffington Post, May 28, 2012.
» "New Orleans is regaining its tree canopy, and other Signs of Recovery." The Times-Picayune, February 18, 2012.
» PBS NewsHour. "FEMA Faces Intense Scrutiny."
» U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "Performance Review of FEMA's Disaster Management Activities in Response to Hurricane Katrina."
» Wolff, Daniel. Fight For Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2012.
Rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward
Carolyn Parker's concern that the city would claim her damaged home was not unfounded. Shortly after Katrina, Dennis Hastert, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives at the time, declared that rebuilding the city didn't make sense, saying "It's a question that certainly we should be asking. It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." Professor of Natural Sciences at St. Louis University Timothy M. Kusky writes that New Orleans has long been sinking and that it very well may be 18 feet below sea level by the end of the century. He notes, "New Orleans is one of America's great historic cities, and our emotional response to the disaster is to rebuild it grander and greater than before. However, this may not be the most rational or scientifically sound response and could lead to even greater human catastrophe and financial loss in the future."
In 2005, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin commissioned a panel that recommended converting the hardest hit areas of the city (including the Lower Ninth Ward) into "green space." As depicted in I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad and the Beautiful, many members of the local community saw this as an attempt to change the makeup of the city by eradicating the poorest neighborhoods with the largest African-American populations. Nagin ultimately rejected the recommendation and allowed residents to return.
Since Mitch Landrieu took office as mayor of New Orleans in 2010, funding for construction projects has surged. The first neighborhood to receive new funds was the Lower Ninth Ward. These funds included $60 million for street repairs, $50 million for rebuilding schools and $14.5 million for a new community center. But as of 2012 there was little sign of new construction.
Much abandoned space remains in the Lower Ninth Ward and clearing or developing these lots is still a priority for the city. In the area, 739 homeowners sold their properties to the state after Katrina. The idea was that the state would resell them, but about 570 of those properties remain unsold, with entire blocks undeveloped. Hundreds of other homeowners retained their properties but have been unable to rebuild. On many streets, there is only a single occupied house.
In total, more than 3,000 flooded lots in the city were bought with federal money in an emergency bailout, and it is costing city and state governments an enormous amount of money to maintain these properties. According to the Louisiana Land Trust--the federal agency managing the properties until federal funding runs out in 2012--$34 million have been spent on maintenance, $4.5 million on security and $9.1 million on overhead costs since the homes were acquired in 2007.
According to a 2012 city-sponsored analysis of U.S. postal service data, it is estimated that 43,000 blighted properties still exist in the city.
Despite these challenges, people continue to return to New Orleans and the city is growing. From 2010 to 2012, nearly every neighborhood experienced gains, with overall city population growth reaching nearly 5 percent from April 2010 to July 2011--more than six times the national average of 0.73 percent. Aggressive tax incentives and low cost of living have been cited as factors in luring new businesses to the city. A Kaiser Family Foundation report found that one in nine current New Orleans residents was not living in the area prior to Hurricane Katrina, a trend that is expected to contribute further to the city's recovery and reform.
According to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, New Orleans is now the fastest growing city in America.
Caption: Carolyn Parker's house after construction completed
Credit: Courtesy of I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
» Burdeau, Cain. "Millions spent on upkeep of empty Katrina lots." Bloomberg Businessweek/AP News, July 16, 2012
» Bureau of Governmental Research. "Mending the Urban Fabric: Part I."
» CNN "Report: Criticism of FEMA's Katrina response deserved."
» Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.
» Kusky, Timothy, M. "Time to move to higher ground." The Boston Globe, September 25, 2005.
» Lopez, Adriana. "A Look into America's Fastest Growing City." Forbes, July 26, 2012.
» Louisiana Land Trust.
» New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.
» PBS NewsHour. "FEMA Faces Intense Scrutiny."
» Yoo, Audrey. "America's Fastest Growing City Is...." Time, July 23, 2012.