"In New Orleans, Rebuilding With Faith" by NEELA BANERJEE
NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans’s patchy recovery has largely bypassed places where the working class and the poor lived, like Central City and the Lower Ninth Ward.
About 105,000 dwellings, 71 percent of the housing stock, were damaged or destroyed in Orleans Parish by Hurricane Katrina. About 56 percent of the city’s population has returned, but resettlement has been erratic. In the Lower Ninth Ward, for instance, just 7 percent of residents have come back.
[And that was OVER TWO YEARS AGO!]
The federal government, in the meantime, is exploring what role religious groups can play in rebuilding. The government-sponsored Freddie Mac, for instance, hopes to begin a pilot program in New Orleans to help churches acquire and develop property.
[Any separation of church and state there, or is the Constitution officially ashes!]
Charlette Minor, a Freddie Mac official, walked along a silent Central City block recently with the Rev. Tom Watson and the Rev. Joseph C. Profit in front of Mr. Profit’s church, Stronger Hope Baptist. They passed houses thigh-deep in weeds, and Ms. Minor asked the ministers to survey the neighborhood to see which houses still had owners, whether the owners would return and which were abandoned. She also asked them to find out if people in the neighborhood had the budgeting skills and the income to be homeowners. She assumed there were neighbors to talk to, like in those neighborhoods that were fitfully reviving.
Ms. Minor asked: “Are people coming back? What’s the occupancy rate, 60 percent?”
Mr. Watson: “Oh, no, more like 25 to 30 percent.”
Ms. Minor asked: “What’s it like here at 8 o’clock at night?”
Mr. Profit, 72, leaned on his cane and looked down the broad, empty avenue:
“Dismal.”
[That sums up Bush and his recovery effort right there.
Feeling good about things, Californians?]
