Katrina wreckage

Editor’s note: First of two parts

More than anything, it’s the hope that sticks with you.

I returned to Coeur d’Alene in early December, following a three-month stint as an intern with the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana’s Office of Disaster Response in New Orleans. A number of things strike you in post-storm New Orleans: The people are tired, government assistance remains sluggish, boats are still in front yards and tens of thousands of homes still need to be gutted. The storm continues to touch every aspect of every resident’s life, but more than anything, you notice that despite the despair, residents remain hopeful.

Progress has been made but at a far slower pace than one would expect. The city will take at least a decade to fully recover. Nevertheless, there is still good news, which brings hope. With continued help from the rest of the country, the residents of New Orleans will get back on their feet.

I spent most of my time helping run a distribution center in the Lower Ninth Ward, the hardest-hit section of New Orleans, where no stores have yet reopened. Each day, Deacon Quinn Bates and I would take several volunteers, a supply truck and an RV to an abandoned Walgreens parking lot, a block away from Fats Domino’s house. We gave away snacks, water, bleach, laundry detergent, masks, T-shirts and Bibles. I also gave short-term volunteers tours of the Lower Ninth Ward. I drove them around the neighborhood, pointing out where the levees broke, describing the area’s history, and explaining the pace of recovery and prospects for the future.

Above all, Deacon Quinn would stress, the mobile unit offered a listening ministry – free hugs go a lot further than free crackers, and sometimes all a person really needs to get through the day is for someone to listen.

One resident who told us his story. Ronald had been helping rebuild a business. His client owed him $15,000 but fired him shortly before the job was finished and paid him nothing. Ronald talked for about 20 minutes, and when he was done, the deacon he spoke with told him, “I wish I could help you with your troubles, but all I’ve got is a little food.”

“That’s OK,” said Ronald. “All I really need is for someone to listen to me and remind me I matter. You gave that to me.”

Another man asked me to sit with him for awhile, and confessed crimes to me, wondered aloud where he’d gone wrong and what he could do to turn things around. A third person wanted to yell about the “baby rats playing leapfrog in the street!” He said dogs and cats live better than he does.

These stories are typical. The average Gulf Coast resident has a house that needs to be gutted and rebuilt, bills they can’t pay, government forms that don’t make sense, questions they can’t get answered, problems at work, and health issues. It’s the little things that get them through each day and help them sustain hope. Ronald just needed someone to listen to him. Another man, James, loved the tea bags we gave out, donated to us by the Anglican Church in Sri Lanka. James spent each day rebuilding his house and would sit in the middle of the job site with a mug of tea before work, during his afternoon break and before bed. He said it was the best tea he’d ever had.

The bad news piles up, and at times, can seem overwhelming. The Lower Ninth Ward did not get its water turned back on until October, 14 months after the storm. Even now, many residents say the water is undrinkable unless boiled. There are no recycling centers, many neighborhoods remain eerily quiet and only two of 10 hospitals have reopened. A quarter of a million residents have no health insurance, many employers can’t find enough workers, and most restaurants and businesses have yet to reopen. Race remains an issue, as well: White residents are three times more likely to get everything they need from their insurance companies than black residents.

Renters have it even tougher than homeowners The Louisiana Recovery Authority has set aside $7.5 billion for direct aid to homeowners and $859 million for landlords, but nothing exists for the renters who made up roughly half the city’s pre-storm population. Since the storm, rent has gone up 70 percent.

The worst news of all is the governmental incompetence. Local, state and federal authorities are not performing any better now than they were in the weeks immediately following the storm (more about this in a second article next week).

Residents and volunteers keep hope alive by focusing on the good news. A central recovery office for the city was finally established in September – until now, everything was run through the mayor’s office.

The most visible sign of recovery is the cleanup of the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood next to the Industrial Canal levee breaches. When I visited in March, all that remained of the neighborhood was endless debris, empty foundations and piles of ruined cars. Veterans of both Iraq and Bosnia say the Lower Ninth Ward was the most devastated place they’d ever seen. At some point during the summer the area was cleaned up and is now an empty field. That’s little consolation to someone who now has front porch steps instead of their house. But to an objective observer, the cleanup is a remarkable and visible step.

Recent weeks have seen productive court rulings. On Nov. 28, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled in favor of thousands of homeowners who had been denied payment by their insurance companies. The next day, a second judge ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to resume housing payments to storm victims who had not been told in advance about FEMA procedures.

Perhaps the biggest shot in the arm for the city was the return of their professional football team, the Saints, to the Superdome in September. Ten blocks surrounding the stadium were closed but the party still spilled over into downtown traffic. The game opened with a performance by rock bands U2 and Green Day. More reporters covered the game than did last year’s Super Bowl, and I am told the noise from the crowd was deafening. Even the ESPN announcers were caught up in the emotion surrounding the game, a blowout win for the Saints. The next day in the Lower Ninth Ward, no one wanted to discuss their troubles – everyone wanted to talk about the game. “My grandma was getting sleepy around 8 p.m. and I told her to go to bed,” said one man. ” ‘No way,’ she said! She wanted to watch her Saints win – and she did! My 80-year old grandma made it to 10 o’clock!”

For all the fatigue, there is still hope. When I first went to New Orleans for two weeks in March, the city looked as if Katrina had hit the previous week. Now, it looks as if the storm hit the previous month – but at least it is progress.

In next week’s article, I will cover the importance of helping the region, the work of nonprofit groups, continued government incompetence and prospects for the city’s future. For more information, visit my New Orleans blog at www.waywardepiscopalian.blogspot.com.