Five years since Hurricane Katrina: ongoing social dispossession

[Hannah Bell]

The failure to rebuild New Orleans is reflected in its staggering population decline. Five years on, the city’s population remains substantially smaller than its pre-Katrina level of 500,000 residents, with 125,000 fewer residents than before...The high cost of securing housing and rebuilding ruined homes has resulted in a reversal of metropolitan residential patterns. Now the majority of low-income families reside in the suburban areas, about 93,000 in all, while 68,000 poor residents live in the city proper.

At the same time, the share of high-income residents in the city has grown, many of these settling in the trendy French Quarter. This is reflected in the growth of median household incomes in the city, according to a recent Brookings Institution report, in sharp contrast to falling median incomes nationwide resulting from the economic crisis.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimates that Katrina rendered uninhabitable fully three quarters of the city’s housing stock. Since that time, the housing market has remained tight, and median home prices have increased substantially, from $137,400 before the storm to $160,000 as of last year, according to National Association of Realtors data. The increase is, once again, the opposite of national home value trends, which have plummeted over the past three years.

Overall, home insurance rates in New Orleans rose by 48 percent in the year after Katrina, and by 3-5 percent each year since then...Sixty percent of all renters in the city now spend at least 35 percent of their monthly income on housing costs—up from 43 percent who were burdened by unaffordable rent before Katrina...Much of the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish, which were the worst affected in the disaster, remains uninhabited. Billions of dollars in grants and other aid promised to Katrina victims were never distributed... The Road Home program has nearly $800 million more in undistributed funds...the funds “have sat around for so long that they’ve outlived the state agency that initially ran the program,” and there is no longer any staff to process applications.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/katr-a30.shtml

[Skittles]

1. and how much have we spent on those stupid wars?

f***ing DISGUSTING

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Did anyone see the documentary about N.O. boarding up its low income housing units?

They were undamaged, but when the evacuated poor people came back to the city, they found the housing units had all been boarded up, with their possessions still inside.
There is little truth telling about the "disaster capitalism" that took place after the hurricane.
Thousands and thousands of poor, mostly black citizens were bussed out of the city, never to return.
Racially motivated urban renewal.
You can bet damn few people will ever evacuate next time, or trust the government.

[Hannah Bell]

3. that racially motivated urban renewal seems to be happening in most big cities.

i'm wondering what's up.

the poor & brown are being moved to the burbs --

what's it all about alfie?

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. TPTB don't want no more burning cities, next time.

[Hannah Bell]

6. that's a scary thought.

[EFerrari]

5. There's a documentary "Faubourg Treme: the untold story of Black New Orleans"

The filmmakers had to restructure their work, which spanned Katrina, from a general history to something much more specific:

http://www.tremedoc.com/