Little progress in the Big Easy
NEW ORLEANS – I was passing through the Crescent City last week on my way to visit my parents in Shreveport for the holidays. It was raining, and I stopped when I saw a man just standing in a pool of water outside his home in the Lower Ninth Ward. Turns out his name was Clark Kent.
“It’s leaking like crazy in there,” said Kent, 49, a tattoo of his initials showing through a rain-soaked shirt. He thought the roof was about to collapse and figured that it was better to be wet and alive outside than wet and crushed to death inside.
“You think Katrina is over, but we still have houses falling down around here,” he told me.
Seeing people suffer like this can make you feel grateful for what you have. But it can also make you angry. What happened to the billions of dollars in private donations and government funds that were earmarked for rebuilding this city?
Viewed in aerial photographs, the area looks to be as much a part of the Gulf of Mexico as the state of Louisiana. And the Lower 9, the ever poor and mournful home of the blues, appears little more than the muddy bottom of a cracked and leaky bowl of a town.
And yet, it’s still New Orleans – world-renowned for a culture of blues, jazz and magic that actually derives power and passion from teetering so precariously on the brink of oblivion.
“It’s looking better than it did six months ago,” said Albert Bass, who was distributing food, clothes and tools to residents in the ward. He is a volunteer in a group called Common Ground, and he grew up in the area. “My family used to live right there,” Bass said, pointing to a vacant lot near a levee. “Our house was one of the first to go.”
Some of the remaining homes had been spruced up with holiday lights and cutouts of Santa Claus. But there really wasn’t much to celebrate. “It’s mostly frustrating and very tiring,” said Matthew Sabin, coordinator for Common Ground. “After 16 months, people were hoping for more.”
Much of the money that was supposed to be used to rebuild the city has been caught up in red tape. This is what USA Today reported last week:
“One $7.5 billion Louisiana program to help people rebuild or relocate has put money in the hands of just 87 of the 89,403 homeowners who applied. In the Lower 9th Ward, a mostly poor section of the city, floodwaters severely damaged more than 1,300 buildings, more than in almost any other part of New Orleans, according to city records. Yet by early December, the city had issued only four permits for new homes to be built there, a USA Today analysis of permit records shows.”
The article quoted U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.: “The bottom line is that the taxpayers of this country are going to spend literally tens of billions of dollars and be surprised and disappointed at how little they are going to be able to show for it.”
Kent knew all about that.
“I applied for a trailer,” Kent said. “But as you can see, I don’t have one.” What he did have was a feeling of deja vu as the rain brought back a flood of bad memories. “I was trapped on the roof, water pouring in through the windows,” he recalled, occasionally taking a step back as water rose around his feet. “People in the two-story house next door said, ‘Come over here.’ So I waded over, but the water kept rising, and we ended up being trapped on the roof over there.” He sounded exasperated, his face drenched in despair. “Three days and three nights before a boat came and got us.”
Now the water was rising again.
Kent had gathered up several plastic bags filled with clothes and was headed to a car, where he planned to sleep that night. Before driving away, headed for my parents’ warm, dry and comfortable home, I wished him a happy New Year.
“Like hell,” he replied.