By the Numbers

Twenty-five percent of the housing stock in New Orleans is still classified as "blighted" today. Blight - "Something that impairs growth, withers hopes and ambitions, or impedes progress and prosperity" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/blight).

These houses represent far more than rotten timbers to be carted away. They are affecting the entire city, preventing people from moving in, taking up space that could be otherwise utilized, adding to the weight of Katrina's still-evident aftermath on the Big Easy's residents. Five and a half years later, life in much of New Orleans STILL isn't easy. That blighted stock doesn't even account for the houses that just aren't there anymore - the blocks that were washed away by the waves and today more resemble savannahs than urban neighborhoods.

We spent our day off on Friday recovering from Bourbon Street-variety St. Patrick's Day hijinks. Our first stop was Waffle House for brunch - a trip planned by those of us who dearly miss the 24-hour staple that is nowhere to be found up here in the Bostonian tundra. As luck would have it, we had mentioned our plans to our crew chief, Annie, who had directed us to the Waffle House straddling St. Bernard Parish and the Ninth Ward - neighborhoods that struggled prior to Katrina and were quite literally washed off the map. We jumped at the chance to infuse the local economy with dollars spent on All-Star Specials, followed by a drive through the portion of the Lower 9th Ward being rebuilt on the backs of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

The All-Star Specials, especially those incomparable hash browns, hit the spot, and the staff of the St. Bernard Parish Waffle House was possibly the nicest WH staff I've ever met. Then it was on to the neighborhood. Having driven through before in May of 2008 and been utterly shocked by the lack of - well - anything, I was very curious as to the state of the 9th Ward these days. Three years since my last visit and five and a half years since Katrina, the only real progress being made is on those "Brad Pitt houses," as they're affectionately called. For more info, here's a great article: http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/travel/29cultured.html. Say what you will about Brad Pitt and the houses - "they're a publicity stunt", "they don't respect the style of New Orleans houses", "they're ugly" - but this one man is doing more for New Orleans than our nation's president did in the aftermath. He's providing what looks to me like the one shot for the Ninth Ward to ever return as a neighborhood. (And personally, I think the houses look pretty cool...)

The blocks surrounding Tennessee St. are beginning to look like a neighborhood again, but drive just a few more seconds in any direction, and you hit grassland. Emerging at varied intervals from the ground are the scars of old foundations and front porch steps. Yes, they're still there, weeds slowly overtaking them in some eerie symbolic erasure of what happened here. Some folks have been stubborn enough or brave enough - or a lot of both - to hack through the weeds and rebuild. The homeowners sit on their lone front porches, overlooking the pockmarked roads that still attempt to snake through the grass and mark this as a neighborhood. These 9th Ward rebuilders display a remarkable type of courage. To rebuild in the face of such uncertainty, in the middle of desolation, around the graves of friends and neighbors and family members. There are no convenience stores here. No gas stations. No schools. No fast food joints. Perhaps one functional church. People argue to this day that rebuilding the Ninth Ward is an exercise in futility. Maybe it sits on a flood plain (and so does every multi-million dollar beach front home), but I guarantee you that no one would question rebuilding San Francisco if the San Andreas ever blows again (and that's one stupid place to put a city, if you ask me).

Driving across the North Claiborne Avenue Bridge, and looking back over the Ninth Ward, one is even more struck by the emptiness that still pervades the place. There's a pocket of hope at the water's edge, thanks to a couple of Hollywood's...and the world's...finest citizens. I just hope it's enough. I hope I won't recognize this place when I come back in three more years.

The drive into the city from this side of town winds through some of New Orleans' less affluent areas. This is where that 25% really strikes you. That number may not seem too huge, but I hesitate to imagine what Boston would be like if every 4th building were condemned. You can't really tell anything is wrong when wandering up and down Bourbon St. or St. Charles Ave. But drive a few blocks out of the city center, and you begin to see those haunting National Guard X's on the fronts of homes, pieces of roof surgically removed to save residents trapped in attics. These were the traces of Katrina that sent chills up my spine during my first visit to the city. The National Guard would place an "X" on each house after searching it - the day's date would go in the top space, the number of animals dead inside would go on the left, the number of dead people on the right. The front door of our rebuild house was still branded with its X. Thankfully, the number in the right quadrant was "0". That's unfortunately not the case for many of the X's you see.

My point with all of this is to explain that it's still crucial to help New Orleans. Katrina was the costliest natural disaster this country has ever seen, and our immediate federal response was utterly abominable. Much of the flooding that resulted from Katrina was the result of manufactured feats of ineptitude - the inadequately-built levee walls that crumbled in the face of storm surge; the failed pumping system that allowed stagnant water to sit for weeks; the "Mississippi River - Gulf Outlet", or "Mr. Go" as New Orleanians call it, a man-made canal that essentially provided a route for the Gulf of Mexico to inundate the city. New Orleans is 60 miles from the coast. There should never be a wall of water here. From several accounts, including that of the Episcopal Community Services volunteer coordinator, Pete, who spoke with us about Katrina, the city has been rebuilt on the backs of unskilled volunteers. College kids down for a week to help out. Or fake Harvard pre-med students (i.e. us). There just aren't the resources to do it any other way. When asked, Pete said he imagined it would probably take another 3 years for New Orleans to be relatively back to normal. But that won't happen if people stop spending a week at a time, nailing shingle by shingle, laying brick by brick. Our group was by no means special. We aren't those determined people eeking out every day in the vast vacancy of the 9th Ward. We aren't the residents of Lakeview, who have all but rebuilt their neighborhood. We aren't able to build an entire neighborhood like Mr. Pitt. We each gave 32 hours of our time, less than a full paid workweek - to a city that will, in the end, need at least 8 years to physically recover (and many more to heal not-so-obvious and not-so-treatable wounds). But I feel like it's the least we can all do for a place so unique in our country - a national treasure of food, music, architecture, and people. Where jazz sails sweetly from the corners of Frenchman St., a signal that the strength of this place will always be its enduring spirit.