Home, Sweet New Orleans?

Hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians can't, or won't, go home again. Why?

I drove through the streets of New Orleans East about three months ago. In one neighborhood, I slammed on my breaks at a remarkable sight -- one young boy of maybe 10, absentmindedly dribbling a basketball in the street. Why so remarkable? Because I hadn't seen another living soul for some time. Block after block, street after street, neighborhood after neighborhood, all there was to see was house after abandoned house. As I drove past the boy, I spied a National Guard Humvee chug slowly down a cross street. I spent hours exploring that quiet, almost echoing section of the city; A boy and a Humvee; that's all that was left to life in that part of New Orleans East.

Now, I used the word "abandoned" to describe houses in the last paragraph, but that's not quite right. The residents of New Orleans East were forced out of their houses, either by the flood waters after the levees broke or by the mandatory evacuation of the city in the days after the storm. They didn't leave because they suddenly felt like there was someplace they'd rather be. And yet here I was, 20 months after the storm, a long stretch of time after the storm waters receded and the city had reopened, and they hadn't, in large measure, come back. So why not?

In some cases, there is no place to come back to. At least, no place livable. To be a lucky homeowner in neighborhoods like New Orleans East or Lakeview or Chalmette is to have had your house gutted down to its studs, either by professional contractors or the roving bands of volunteer college students, church groups, and aid workers armed with crow bars and ventilator masks.

You might be lucky, in a case like that, but you still have nothing but a shell of a house to live in. So what's unlucky then? It means that your house stands the day it did when the waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain decided to go back whence they came. That means your living quarters are caked with mud and debris and general grime whose origins you probably don't want to begin to contemplate.

But say you do manage to get your house gutted. You're in good shape now, or at least better than many of your neighbors. The next step is deciding whether or not to move your life back into its walls. Like so much of what drives the ongoing situation in New Orleans, what slows the flow of New Orleanians back into the city is money -- who has it, who needs it, who controls who gets it.

Indeed, fights over money in New Orleans have been seemingly endless since the storm. Money is what Governor Kathleen Blanco and the federal government have fought over, money that would have gone to fund the governor's Road Home Program. Road Home covers the gap between rebuilding a home and what gets covered by insurance compensation and FEMA grants.

Then there's the money that Mayor Ray Nagin has fought for to fund his 15-year recovery plan. The focus of the recovery plan is to rebuild the business infrastructure in more than a dozen of the city's sections. Without a redevelopment of business -- some of New Orleans' "open" neighborhoods lack a store in which to buy milk, bread, and other basics -- convincing residents to come back home is, if you're being generous, a challenge. If you're being more analytical, it's a fool's mission.

Of course, even with investment intended to spur business development, you're not likely to choose to open up a mini-mart in a part of town where there's no electricity. It makes keeping the bottles of Abita quite difficult. Driving through the neighborhood of Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, just east of the city, I sped through an intersection narrowly missing an oncoming car; I hadn't considered that in this well-developed area, nearly two years after the storm, the power would still be out and the stop lights non-functional.

No electricity, no shopping, and, in some neighborhoods no functional schools as of yet. That last fact is going to keep many families with children from returning home. Any city is an urban ecosystem, and no rational creature -- no matter how strong, or self-sufficient -- is likely to make a go at living in an environment that's so clearly so badly out of whack.

Still, some have done it. The parents or guardians of the little boy in New Orleans East I saw playing basketball must have returned home, either for a short stay or for good. Why would they do it? In a place like that deserted neighborhood, their reasons are most likely deeply personal.

But in a more densely populated section of town like the Lower Ninth Ward, part of the answer is perhaps peer, or neighbor, pressure. A truck standing in a driveway of a Lower 9th home when I last visited had painted on its window this message: "I'm Back. R U?" (photo) That sentiment is on lawn signs and window posters all throughout the Lower 9th, a thickly-settled part of the city in which neighbors, presumably, feel like a bit of gentle arm-twisting and not-so-subtle might work to convince other neighbors to cast their lot once again with the city.

What are the rewards for those pioneers? In part, a new pile of trouble to greet their return home. Insurance premiums registering as high as a 144% increase over what they were before the storm. A crime rate that ranks number one in the United States in murders; this August, there was nearly one killing in the city for each day of the month.

Along with prevalent crime, mental illness is New Orleans' latest albatross. Suicides, stress, street fighting, fighting amongst families in their own homes. I've heard from a handful of New Orleanians that, with all the stresses of life they now face, the feel like they struggle every damn day to stay on this side of crazy.

We who live elsewhere in the United States talk a lot about rebuilding New Orleans, repopulating the Big Easy, fighting the brave fight for the future of the Crescent City. George Bush today said that "New Orleans is coming back," that "this town is better today than it was yesterday and it's going to be better tomorrow than it is today." New Orleans have heard a lot of that sort of uplifting, affirmative talk from their elected officials over the last two years.

But then you stand someplace like the lawn of Holy Cross High School in the Lower Ninth Ward and look out upon the both the Mississippi River and the levees that are supposed to keep this bowl-shaped area dry in future storms. And things don't seem so simple.

Say you're a once and perhaps future New Orleanians, standing on the banks of the river. Do you trust that the levees will hold this time around, that life will really someday be whole again in this city? Is it giving up not to make another go of it? Or is trying again to make this your home just plain crazy?

Comments

[Annoyedwoman]

New Orleans is not a human being. It is a city with a population that was steadily decreasing after 1965 because of the crime and overall degenerative conditions.

That said, we must look forward. New Orleans does not need to be restored, it needs to be reborn. Things must be done differently. Innovation and creativity are key, not clinging to mucky crime and conditions that were making people leave to begin with. New Orleans was great, and it can be greater.

[SouthernDem]

As a N.O. native living elsewhere, I've become accustomed to biting my lip whenever someone from somewhere else says, "N.O. is below sea level. Why should we pay to have it rebuilt when it shouldn't have been settled there in the first place." While watching the 2-year Katrina anniversary coverage today, an analogy came to me. Would anyone ever tell the parents of a child dying from cancer that, maybe, they should just give up? "Why should we incur the added health care premiums just to delay the inevitable?" And what if that child - though brilliant and smart and loving - was the offspring of addicts? Is his life not worth saving because, perhaps, he should have never been born? Well, I'm tired of biting my lip. N.O. is a beautiful, brilliant child, which has offered our entire globe almost 300 years of joy and wonder. Perhaps it shouldn't have been "born" on the river; but it was. And we shouldn't give up on it because it costs too much. For shame.

[Indiana]

Bravo for a perceptive analogy! I'm with you and showme54 in your stand against the (usually) well-meaning yet ignorant folks who are against rebuilding and think New Orleans should move to higher ground. I wish there were some way New Orleanians and others who like myself love New Orleans and Louisiana could educate and enlighten these people.

[Indiana]

To add to my previous remark--what we need do is demand that a "Marshall Plan" be instituted that would not only rebuild New Orleans' homes and shattered infrastructure (including her health care, school, and justice systems) but make her a safer city by upgrading her levees to Category 5 and restoring Louisiana's wetlands which are being washed away. Because if New Orleans is perceived to be a safer city, more evacuees would be encouraged to move back. Why don't people who are complaining about rebuilding New Orleans instead put their energy into calling for governmental action to make her safer?

[yellowdogSC]

Indi,

Instead, bush instituted a "martial" plan, complete with Blackwater gunmen.

(At least, that's what passes as "military" today.)

Thank you for your wonderful comments.

[bean22]

Just plain crazy. What sense does it make to rebuild in a flood plain you know is going to be underwater as soon as a hurricane hits?

Why come back to a neighborhood when you can live elsewhere? Sure it is hard to move. To leave where you grew up or raised a family. But that neighborhood will never be the same anyways. Most of your neighbors aren't coming back. Move to high ground. Move to safer cities. Better cities. Cleaner cities with opportunities for employment, schools for your kids, and hopefully safe from hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

I imagine the money for rebuilding is or will end up in Ray Nagin's pocket. He's the man you re-elected Mayor after his criminal negligence resulted in about 1500 of your neighbors dying in the first hours of Katrina.

As far as I am concerned not one penny should be funneled to New Orleans for rebuilding. Turn those neighborhoods that ended up under water into rice patties. That's all they are good for.

[showme54]

Such compassion bean22. What sense does it make to live in St. Louis, Memphis, or Sacramento, they are in a flood plain and protected by levees? Any city that is near a waterway, river, dam, lake or coastal region can flood from a severe rain event. What about the coast of TX, MS, AL, GA, FL, N.C., S.C. most of their coastal cities are at or slightly above sea level up and down the east and west coast can be destroyed by a hurricane or tidal wave. What about all the cities near the Great Lakes? Should they all move? What about those cities where mudslides, earthquakes, tornados, wildfires, blizzards and other natural or man-made disasters have happened. They received federal funding, I don't recall a national out-cry about those funds. I believe corruption and political scoundrals are not limited to LA now or in the past--just read the headlines.

bean22 just how much time have you spent in NOLA? Ever been there? Funny, most of the most outrageous allegations come from people that have never set foot in Louisiana and do not know one person from there.

[yellowdogSC]

bean,

Every time storm surge hits, MUCH of the coast is beneath sea level. EVERYWHERE.

Would it "please" you if all those people moved, too?

And look at the coming floodplains map:
http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=43.3251,-101.6015&z=13&m=7

Would it be "satisfactory" to you if virtually everyone currently living from five to ten miles of the coast were to move as well?

How else might we ease your troubled mind?

(In exchange, could you please tell us how to make rice grow in salt water?)

Thank you.