By Richard Wall
Residents of New Orleans' flooded neighborhoods got the green light to rebuild on March 20, 2006, when Mayor Ray Nagin, who is up for re-election in a contentious race, rejected proposals from his Bring Back New Orleans Committee that would have forbidden people from reconstructing in areas still prone to flooding. However, that decision doesn't end New Orleanians' long, confusing wait since Hurricane Katrina for a final solution.
A decision on the largest element of that solution has yet to trickle down from Washington, through Baton Rouge, and to New Orleans homeowners in the form of hard cash through Nagin's proposed Failed Levee Recovery Program. As envisioned, the program would allow homeowners in designated areas to sell out to the government for up to $150,000 per home, a mighty tempting offer given the sorry state of many flooded neighborhoods.
Should you rebuild a waterlogged, damaged house in a shattered neighborhood with no guarantee of city services, insurance, a mortgage, or that it won't flood again with the next 'cane? Or should you take $150,000, relocate, and let the government deal with the mess? That is the question property owners face. And until the buyout money is actually on the table—or definitely out of the question—New Orleans will remain a frustrated city.
Tale of Two Cities
Blue tarps, downed awnings, trees through roofs, and smashed windows still attest to Katrina's howl through New Orleans last year. But that's west of the 17th Street Canal. Drive over that liquid fault line and you instantly cross from recovering New Orleans to ghost town New Orleans.
On the unlucky side of the failed levees are miles of abandoned neighborhoods, homes rocked off their foundations, buildings seemingly imploded or knocked cock-eyed, once-proud homes instantly run down and washed up. And all around, the locally dubbed "bathtub ring" from dirty floodwaters marks the disastrous history of each house.
While builders and contractors are up to their eyeballs in work rebuilding those parts of New Orleans that suffered wind damage, activity in the flooded zones is sporadic and limited to those homeowners who can't stand doing nothing any longer. Though the media has focused on the Lower Ninth Ward, local builders say more middle-class housing was probably inundated than was low-income housing.
"Folks living in flooded Lakeview [a middle class subdivision] have the means and resources to rebuild, and they're getting themselves set back up," says Jon Luther, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans (HBAGNO). "But start going south and east of there, into Gentilly and the Lower Ninth, and the people don't have the means to get themselves rehabilitated. So you see a lot of devastation with little recovery activity."
Further out of the central city, the whole of New Orleans East is still vacant of people—lots of houses, just no people. "We're noticing some up tick of activity there," says Jon. "You see pockets of activity where industrious people are trying to pick themselves up. But you also see Wal-Marts and whole mini-malls down. What's the incentive to reopen until there are people around?"
The flood from the failed levees took the bad with the good. "A lot of the inundated houses—around 8,000 from Chalmette, the Ninth Ward, Gentilly, and other areas—should have been torn down long ago and taken from the slum owners," says Toni Wendel, owner of Olde World Builders & Remodelers and president of the HBAGNO. "The downside is that a lot of other people who lived there are not going to be able to afford to rebuild. That's the tragedy."
The Deflating of New Orleans
Some New Orleans contractors, but not many, are working in the flooded areas of the city. The floodwaters were at different depths in different areas, so those places that took 2-3 feet of water are seeing more rebuilding activity than those that took 12 feet of water.
Toni says most contractors and builders are working in the many un-flooded areas of the city, as well as outside the city proper. Before Katrina, the city of New Orleans was seeing negative population growth. Meanwhile, the outer "river" parishes were growing by 15-20% a year, much as St. Tammany Parish to the north had grown up in years past.
"What we're seeing since the storm is a pretty large out-migration to the river parishes—St. Johns, St. Charles, St. James—which are still part of New Orleans proper but farther out," says Jon. "There's no flood damage there. A lot of our members are out there putting up new subdivisions."
Maps of New Orleans from its earlier years show that people only settled in areas where the ancient meanderings of the Mississippi River had left ridges of higher ground. Satellite images after Katrina show that these were the same areas that did not flood when the levees broke.
Whether New Orleans reverts back to this common-sense solution before inadequate levees and other fallible schemes encouraged building in the basin remains to be seen. Many builders and government officials think FEMA will not offer flood insurance for the lowest-lying areas. That still would not keep some New Orleanians from rebuilding on the same spot where they recently lost everything.
There could be a big bonanza for big builders after the once-flooded homes are razed—particularly the large number of concrete slab homes in sections of Lakeview that were built in the past few decades, ignoring the wise New Orleans tradition of elevating buildings.
"There are some folks exploring the opportunities," says Jon, who adds that KB Homes has recently joined the association and bought a large tract west of the city. Previously, obtaining enough land for large-scale development in New Orleans was not possible, due to the uniqueness of the area's complicated chain of title considerations.
Katrina and the buyout program she spawned could wipe that slate clean. And big builders are busy making contacts in city and state governments to be in position to move ahead. "New Orleans was never out front with the big money in development," says Toni. "But it could be different times here now."
Richard Wall is a freelance writer who lives in St. Augustine, Florida, which has withstood hurricanes since 1565.
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