Lets face it, the poor will NEVER be able to return to NO.

[classics]

They are truely refugees.

All the flooded housing will certainly be torn down.

Poor people cant afford to live in new housing, they can only survive by living in run down old housing and very old lower cost rentals.

New Orleans, if its ever rebuilt, will be an enclave of the rich.

[Lindsay]

1. Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing.

McMansion City on the Mississippi.

[MadHound]

2. Not true friend, and here's why

Any city need the poor. They do the low wage scut jobs that nobody else wants to, maids, valets, food service, etc. etc. You're not going to see companies paying decent wages for more affluent to work them, so it will be left to the poor.

Low cost housing will be built, accomidations will be made. The city needs the poor just as much as the poor need the city.

[expatriate]

3. You are correct.

New Orleans would not function as the tourist destination it has been without the oyster shuckers, beignet fryers, waitpersons, dishwashers, hotel room cleaners, cab drivers and all the other people who are making minimum wage and less. The working poor of New Orleans make that city go - I know, I've been one of them.

I can't see the city being rebuilt and then paying rich folks a living wage to do those jobs. Oyster shucking is the worst. Gave myself a nice dose of hepatitis A doing that. Three weeks in Charity Hospital.

Imagine hotel costs or how much a plate of oysters on the half shell would cost if the scutwork was being done by people earning more than minimum wage.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. They'll be replaced with "guest workers" n/t

[NYC]

5. They could be forced to commute.

Low wage workers in NYC can no longer afford to live in Manhattan. There are still some apartments, but not many. There is nothing that a low wage worker could move into now.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Are those "poor people" Cajuns?

I can't imagine relocating Cajuns anywhere besides Lousiana. Did you know that Louisiana is different than any other state in the nation because of its French roots? Even their court system is patterned after the French system.

Nope. The reason why people flocked to New Orleans was because it was authentically different than any other city in the U.S. It was like visiting another world without traveling overseas. You rebuild NOLA and make it all high real estate, and all it will ever be is an expensive Disney World.