All Those Federal Funds: Why the New Orleans Recovery is Slow
For commenters to my posts on New Orleans who keep asking a variant of "why, with all the federal billions sent down there, is the city's recovery so slow?", an authoritative answer is now available, thanks to this report in today's Times-Picayune.
Some highlights:
Researchers concluded that "enormous obstacles" blocked the recovery for homeowners, most of whom faced shortfalls to rebuild, and renters, who cannot find moderately priced places to rent.
In New Orleans, 81 percent of Road Home recipients received awards that did not cover the needed repairs to their homes. The average shortfall was $54,586
"Road Home" grants were based on pre-Katrina property values, so houses in poorer areas of town, like the lower 9th Ward, had greater disparities between Road Home grants and the cost of replacement. That's a nice touch. But there's more...
The program to help rebuild rental housing -- essential to the return of working-class families to the city -- is stuck in the preliminary stage, after almost three years. One key reason:
Because of federal requirements, it is a reimbursement program, so most landlords have to get private financing and then recoup their investment, a substantial hardship for those who are paying mortgages on their property without any rental income
Doesn't look like corruption, or Democratic state officials, or any of the other bogeymen usually cited by outsiders have much role in this slow-motion disaster. Looks like President Bush, who claimed victory yesterday at Jackson Barracks then skedaddled out of town, really didn't mean his promise three years ago at Jackson Square to do whatever was needed to help the city return, revive, and rebuild. Imagine that.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Recognizing that New Orleans is a very special and unique city, I think that I now see that the NOLA housing market works a little bit differently than the rest of the country. Something like this:
1). Eat gumbo and po' boys (with Jax beer) and go to parades and fests until big federal check arrives.
2). Hire workers from out of state (or better, out of the country) to build housing.
3). Move in or rent. to others. DO NOT BUY INSURANCE!
4). Eat gumbo and po' boys (with Jax beer) and go to parades and fests.
See Harry Shearer's Profile
Welcome back. You clearly have been reading nothing of substance on the subject. The level of flood insurance in New Orleans pre-K was the highest in any city in the continental US. The out-of-state workers brought in, mainly from out-of-country, lived, some of them, in unspeakably squalid conditions. Jax beer hasn't been brewed in decades.
I get virtually all of my information about NOLA from you and the links that you provide. More than once I have read here that mortgage lenders told borrowers that they didn't need to get flood insurance. In the rest of the country lenders REQUIRE owners of homes and apartment buildings to have insurance. In this blog you seem to feel that it would be unusual for owners of apartment buildings to have received insurance payments. In the rest of the country the doubling or tripling of rents (that I have read about here) would be more than sufficient to inspire the construction of new rental units or repair of existing units but in NOLA (I read here) it seems that landlords will need some federal checks to inspire them. If you have ever witten that the delay in rebuilding NOLA is something other than delayed or insufficient federal checks, then I missed it. If you have ever written about a lack of honest and competent contractors or problems with permitting or anything at all local, again, I missed it.
The Jax beer error was not based on anything that you have written.
I find this post as insulting as I do amusing, and it is an example of the ignorant condescension and geo- and ethnocentrism displayed by many Americans.
Perry, if you, for a single moment, believe that the governmental corruption, bumbling ineptitude and painful racial disparities that were laid bare in the wake of Katrina do not exist in your own backyard, you are woefully mistaken at best, and blissfully delusional at worst. These public, private and civic failings exist in every corner of the country, and it usually takes a major disaster so to speak.
I challenge you to poll your local contractors and see how many of them hire out of state workers or illegal aliens, or see exactly how many of the low-income residents in your area have renters', homeowners, or flood insurance. I am more than willing to bet the results will be "almost all" and "almost none", respectively. The situation is New Orleans is not unique. It has simply been whitewashed. Forgotten.
What you are so quick to forget is that we, the American public, have all trusted our collective well-being to the federal government, and our caretakers have proven that they have no idea what they are doing. At some point, we all will suffer at the hands of their dangerous incompetence. It's just a matter of when.
And, by the way, they do not brew Jax beer anymore. Dixie, yes. Jax, no. The least you can do is get your insults straight.
PerryWhite,
There are two possible explainations for your post.
1.) You are trying to make the people of New Orleans somehow different from yourself in a psychological ploy to protect yourself from the very real fact that you too could be deserted by your own country.
OR
2.) You really are that pathetic.
All of this comes down to poor planning and execution ~ that's the hallmark of the Bush administration!
As a merchant mariner, I was in port in New Orleans numerous times, and I love the city (as a libertrian and libertine (in my younger days) I always thrived on the excesses). I used Galveston as a home port during my sea faring days, and was in port there for Alicia (a small hurricane), but it got me interested in the 1900 storm that decimated Galveston. Galveston recovered fairly rapidly. Compare and contrast the recovery in these two ports. Spelling counts.
That is probably not a valid comparison.
New Orleans was probably 100 times bigger than the Galveston of the day. With much more infrastructure to be maintained.
A better comparison would probably be San Fransisco whose earthquake occurred about the same time as Galveston's hurricane.
But again ( I don't actually know) the size of a modern city would be much larger in population and buildings than a turn of the 19 century city. Just think water supply and sewage.
The U.S. will be rebuilding neighborhoods in Iraq before New Orleans.
That is a symbol of the current administration.
Correction: They won't be rebuilding ANYTHING, ANYWHERE. They will simply siphon off hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, pass the money around to their country club buddies, and leave the work undone. This is what happens when the people hire an administration which doesn't believe in government to run the government. That's like hiring an atheist to be your pastor. Jees.
For those of you who don't care about New Orleans rebuilding, just wait until you have to count on the federal gov't after your own town falls victim to a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, terrorist attack, etc. Those New Orleanians who were able to rebuild their homes b/c of sufficient private insurance (and were neither waiting for nor expecting government handouts) are still suffering considerable hardship as the federal government has failed to
1) guarantee the proper rebuilding of the levees so that insurance companies willl consent to insuring their newly rebuilt homes
2) provide sufficient support to an understaffed local police force amidst a surge in crime since the National Guard departed
3) give adequate assistance to hospitals and clinics as they struggle to rebuild and meet the health care needs of the current residents.
The federal government has done much to aid New Orleans' public school system, but it needs to do far more to provide the other public services that are essential preconditions to any further significant repopulation.
One of the things I consider about this tragedy of natural disaster exacerbated by governmental ineptitude is that there is an unspoken plan to use the disaster as a way to change the demographic makeup of the city. I have no facts to support this though. Do you have any thoughts or insights?
I was in New Orleans a little before Katrina hit and my experience was very unpleasant due to the social circumstances I witnessed there. I love the city but I encountered a great deal of backwardness while there. I met some very neat people, and some that I hope to never meet again. New Orleans should be rebuilt -- and correctly. The people should receive all the help required to achieve that goal -- not tomorrow, but today.
You are correct New Orleans should be rebuilt correctly and funded substantially to do so. However, New Orleans' destruction was not natural, it was an engineering catastrophe.
BTW in L.A., Chicago, NYC, Atlanta, Sedona, Denver, Flagstaff, St. Louis, Peoria, Canton, Washington, Birmingham, Miami I've met some wonderful people, and some unpleasant people. Not sure about their social circumstances though. They seem to just pop up everywhere.
I believe a Louisiana Congressman (not sure if he was state or federal) referred exactly to what you call an "unspoken plan."
It was their chance to "clean up" public housing.
Ethnic cleansing is more like it.
John McFudd said "never again". I believe him. You should too. He was a POW.
If we left Iraq, and diverted the funds being spent there and really focused on the issue of ending suffering versus paying lip service to it, then New Orleans would rise faster than you could say the surge is working.
May justice be done for New Orleans and the Upper Gulf Coast, somehow, and someday soon.
I am very saddened by what happened to New Orleans and about the negligence afterwards.
I agree that justice should be done.
Don't forget that Rep. Baker (R La) proposed a much more comprehensive system of compensation with bipartisan support that Bush spiked.
Don't forget that most of the $126 billion sent to the coast was swalled in FEMA contracts with the same players doing such a fabulous and cost effective job of rebuilding Iraq.
Where FEMA fell down on spreading the money around, people like Haley Barbour, the GOP governor of Mississippi was busy handing out debris removal contracts (from FEMA money) to people with whom he had an ongoing consulting (read: kickback) relationship, at rates that shocked emergency preparedness people in Florida asked about them.
When they say they spent $126 billion on the Gulf Coast, imagine they're saying with spent X billions of dollars reconstructing Iraq, and remember how well that went.
since, so far as i can tell, the man has never let a factual statement cross his lips, why should he have started there in jackson square?
Right Harry, and there's more.
"All those billions" was divided between three hurricanes (Wilma, Katrina, and Rita) and divided between four states.
AND, $20 billion of "all those billions" was insurance payouts on citizens premiums that they themselves had paid!
Thanks for the info. Despicable.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
