By Lance Laver

“You’re going to New Orleans to rebuild houses?” questioned a friend of Katie Queen, a member of St. Vincent de Paul Church and the Interfaith Community Building Group.  “Why?  Aren’t you a little late?”  Katie, a college student who has been part of five other ICBG trips with her parents and others from St. Vincent’s and Mishkan Shalom, was surprised.  It had not occurred to her that anyone would think the work to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 was finished.  Indeed, as we discovered in our January 2007 trip, though there are some hopeful signs, the city still is in dire need of assistance—from government relief agencies, housing authorities and public school administrators—and volunteers.  And in many cases, that help is mired in administrative entanglements or bizarre public policies. 

The ICBG had helped rebuild part of St. Gabriel the Archangel Church in the Gentilly section of New Orleans in July 2006, as well as cleaning our four parishioners’ houses that had remained damaged since the flooding.  This time, the group of 26 volunteers, did taping and spackling, drywall work, painting and finishing—and some demolition—in five different St. Gabriel’s parishioners’ houses and the church.

While we saw more signs of life in Gentilly this time—postal vehicles making deliveries, a school bus passing through the neighborhood, a youth baseball team practicing on the school field next to the church (though the public school itself remains closed and still in clean-up mode) and contractors trucks in greater numbers working on some houses in the area—many houses remain untouched since last July.  It appears that one in 20 houses there are currently inhabited, while one in 10 are being rebuilt. 

Other areas are in worse shape.  In the Lower Ninth Ward, for example, no rebuilding has started, though more houses have been cleaned out—and residents still want to move back.  But Louisiana’s housing relief administrator, IFC International, which is implementing The Road Home program for the state, has (through 1/16/07) provided funds for only 177 homeowners out of close to 99,000 applicants (with total paid benefits of $9.8 million—of $7.5 billion available), while ringing up $19 million to date in administrative travel expenses only (of a total administrative contract of $756 million).  All this while another 25,000 potential homeowners have not yet even applied for funding (perhaps because some are not fully aware of the program’s benefits). 

Public housing in New Orleans also is in crisis.  According to justiceforneworleans.org, “New Orleans is in the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War.”  Instead of reconstructing the well-built, garden-style apartments partly damaged in the flood, HUD is planning to demolish over 4,500 of these units in four different New Orleans complexes and replace some of them with more expensive (but less well-constructed) apartments.  We met a resident of the St. Bernard Development, one of the four complexes slated for demolition, outside the chain link fence bordering that development—and she told us that she cannot understand why she and her children can’t move back in—when the second floor units—undamaged in the flooding—are currently habitable.  She had lived there for 45 years before Katrina (and her mother for 65 years before perishing in the Katrina aftermath).

So while our group provided some relief to five different families in Gentilly—who are currently living in FEMA trailers or with relatives or others and were extremely grateful for the assistance, the work is far from complete. 

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