Rebuilding Affordable Housing in New Orleans

From the series "After Katrina: Rebuilding Opportunity and Equity in the New New Orleans"

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Long before the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina or the chaos of evacuation, New Orleans' social infrastructure was failing. News coverage of the overcrowded Superdome and the city's flooded streets exposed the poverty and vulnerability of many residents, especially African Americans. As New Orleans begins to rebuild, can the city avoid the mistakes of the past, instead creating more effective social support for low-income and minority residents? Innovation and experience from other U.S. cities offer promising strategies for reducing the risks of poverty and opening up opportunities for economic security and success. This essay is from an Urban Institute collection that addresses employment, affordable housing, public schools, young children's needs, health care, arts and culture, and vulnerable populations. All these essays assess the challenges facing New Orleans today and for years to come and recommend tested models for making the city's social infrastructure stronger and more equitable than it was before Katrina.

The challenge of rebuilding New Orleans and providing housing for its residents is immense, with tens of thousands of families displaced, their former homes destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Across the metropolitan area, nearly 228,000 homes and apartments were flooded, including 39 percent of all owner-occupied units and 56 percent of all rental units (Brookings 2005). Residents have returned to some relatively unscathed areas, such as the French Quarter and Algiers, but the devastation in more hard-hit areas is overwhelming and it is not yet clear whether or how these areas will be rebuilt.

The situation is especially difficult for families whose low-lying neighborhoods were completely destroyed by the floods. These poor, mostly African American communities bore the brunt of the flood damage—the population of the flooded neighborhoods in New Orleans was 75 percent black and the storm wiped out most of the high-poverty census tracts (Brookings 2005). The storm's impact on these vulnerable families was painfully evident in Katrina's aftermath; many lacking the wherewithal to evacuate were stranded in flooded homes and appallingly inadequate shelters. These residents are now dispersed in shelters and temporary housing across the region and lack the insurance and assets needed to return and begin rebuilding. Not surprisingly, many fear that they may be excluded from the "new" New Orleans, and are suspicious of emerging redevelopment plans.

Rebuilding the devastated housing stock of New Orleans is essential for the city's recovery. Without places to live, people cannot return to work, pay taxes, frequent local businesses, or send their children to school. But the challenge going forward is even greater if New Orleans is to avoid old patterns of concentrating assisted housing and poor families in a few isolated communities. If assisted housing—whether temporary or permanent—is systematically excluded from the city's better-off neighborhoods, New Orleans will simply reproduce the severe neighborhood distress and hardship that prevailed before the storm.

Adding to the challenges ahead, some low-lying areas that were home to large numbers of the city's poorest residents may never be rebuilt. First, it may not be safe to rebuild in these areas if levees are not rebuilt to higher standards than before. In addition, areas such as those downriver from the Industrial Canal—like the Lower Ninth Ward—might best be left as a spillover path for the lake, reversing the Army Corps of Engineers' decision some years ago to create Gulf access to Lake Pontchartrain. Providing fair compensation to residents of these neighborhoods and affordable relocation options in communities throughout the New Orleans metropolitan area are critical to an equitable rebuilding strategy.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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