It has now been a month since the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl and life continues to revive in New Orleans.  I have spoken with some colleagues in the city and they said that the victory gave the city a shot in the arm as did the Mardi Gras celebration a few weeks later.  Still, they told me of the challenges that the city continues to face:  the slow pace of rebuilding, the high cost of housing, the rise of the homeless population, etc.  They are frustrated that after almost five year the progress that they expected has been so slow.  They are tired and worn.  When I last spoke with the retired Episcopal bishop, Charles Jenkins in 2008, he told me of the mental and psychological toll that Katrina and its aftermath had had upon him.  Others who I worked with in the city told me of the miasma of heaviness of one’s being which lingers far after the hurricane . 

The emergence of mental health issues has been steady throughout the recovery and rebuilding phase.  In addition to the feeling of frustration mentioned earlier there have been feelings of abandonment and hopelessness.   Many New Orleaneans feel abandoned because they believe that the city and its plight have been forgotten by the rest of the country.  Even with the promises of the Obama administration and the visit by the President to the city in October 2009, many people are unimpressed with the slow pace of the rebuilding.  Residents are worn down by the daily struggle of life in the city; many former residents wishing to return find that they cannot do so due to the lack of affordable housing. 

While everyone waits for the rebuilding to be completed, the mental health needs of the community need to be addressed.  With the rise of the homeless population, mental health needs are on the rise.  With the lack of medical facilities, minor and major mental health issues are often ignored.  With limited beds for psychiatric care, the jails and prisons have become the de facto mental health facilities.   

Despite these problems, some help is on the way now that the federal government has begun to provide aid for a new hospital to be built to replace CharityHospital which had functioned as one of the main hospitals in the city that had traditionally served many of the most vulnerable residents of the city.  Still, this will take time.  It may be good news thatNew Orleans has become an incubator for new ideas about education but it is surely not good that the same cannot be said about the medical infrastructure and its treatment of mental health issues.

This was certainly an eventful weekend for New Orleans.  Mitch Landrieu was elected Mayor on Saturday, and, on Sunday, the New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl XLIV.  Each event is being hailed as symbolic of a new future for a city just a few months shy of the 5^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Much has been made of the metaphor of the New Orleans Saints as a healing salve for the Big Easy. Founded as an expansion franchise in the NFL in 1967, the Saints were a perennially moribund franchise, failing to win a single post-season game for their first 23 years of existence. One of only a few NFL teams never to play in the Super Bowl, the Saints made an inspiring run in 2006, coming within one win of the Super Bowl.  For many in the city, Katrina helped to forge a unique bond between the city and its team, with the team’s triumph lifting the collective spirits of all New Orleanians and launching Mardi Gras festivities a week early.  It is a wonderful story, and, without question, the Saints have played an important role in restoring the the morale and swagger of the city – and just about everyone outside the state of Indiana was rooting for the Saints to win.  However, we must remember that the realities of neighborhood blight and poverty and the uncertainties about redevelopment plans (including gentrification) did not disappear with the hoisting of the Lombardi trophy.  Governor Jindal, President Obama, and the newly elected mayor have a great deal of recovery and reform work still ahead of them. So, before we get too excited, let us consider just a few things that the new mayor will have to grapple with.

As recently as last November, a study from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center found that 41% of all New Orleans renters spend more than half of their pre-tax income on rent and utilities. On the bright side, the proportion of renters to homeowners has declined since Katrina, meaning that more people in the city own their homes. Nevertheless,  these statistics can be misleading because the increase in home ownership is partially attributable to the decision by many of the poorer Katrina survivors that they either cannot or do not want to return to the city.  Statistics show that the median family income for the city has increased, but figuring out exactly how incomes have shifted within the African American community specifically is more tricky. In May of 2009, ridership on New Orleans public transportation had reached only 43% of its pre-Katrina level.  This suggests that, while much progress has been made, there remains a great deal of work to be done – work that is contentious because it requires difficult decisions about how to rebuild in the Lower Ninth Ward. And, then, there is education reform, a hot button political issue in a city that now has more than 60% of all public school students attending charter schools, a development which led Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to remark last week that Katrina was the best thing to ever happen to the NOLA education system.  So, while the Saints have reached the pinnacle of sports, playing all season in a beautifully renovated Super Dome, the challenge for Mayor elect Landrieu is about much more than X’s and O’s.

Mitch Landrieu appears well-positioned to lead the city – he is well connected throughout the state and his family is perhaps the most powerful in Louisiana politics.  His sister, Senator Mary Landrieu, recently made headlines by holding health care reform hostage in exchange for $300 million for Louisiana (though to her credit, she did end up supporting the bill after securing some much needed money for her state).   Equally significant is that Mitch will become the first white mayor of New Orleans since his and Mary’s father, Moon Landrieu, left office in 1979.  Racial politics are among the city’s most dicey issues that Landrieu must navigate as he works towards fulfilling his campaign promises.  Many argue that without the demographic changes caused by Katrina, Landrieu would not have been elected (this was his third campaign for Mayor).   Yet while the racial politics of the city are complicated and enduring, they may also provide a mechanism by which historically disenfranchised New Orleans residents can hold their new mayor accountable.  The Mayor elect worked hard to attract African American voters, and should fully realize that he needs their continued support to govern effectively.  Mitch Landrieu consistently called for voters to support him in “striking a blow for unity,” and so the new Mayor will be judged by his ability to deliver real gains for all city residents, particularly low- and moderate-income families still struggling to regain their footing after the storm.

How does the recession continue to affect New Orleans? On the unemployment front, newspapers have consistently reported lower job loss rates within the city compared to national averages (The Times Picayune reports that New Orleans gained 1500 jobs in November).  However, a number of recent editorials suggest that the city is still in trouble when it comes to affordable housing. Due to the recession, businesses are significantly less interested in taking advantage of the tax credits alloted within recovery effort legislation for low-income  developments.  As a result, many residents find themselves with ever-shrinking options when it comes to housing.This statistic (from The New York Times) is particularly striking:

With rents so high, no one should be surprised that the homeless population of the New Orleans area appears to have doubled since Hurricane Katrina. A startling census of the homeless by a local social services consortium, Unity of Greater New Orleans, estimates that nearly 6,500 people, many of them elderly and suffering from debilitating illnesses, are living in abandoned buildings.

Clearly, these reports show the need for quick legislative action on low-income housing issues (the authors of the above editorials provide a few suggestions). In addition, they suggest the importance of carefully examining the broader picture of the recovery effort. Though positive reports of limited unemployment may be exciting, they can also gloss over other issues that may need immediate attention. Also: Teaching A People’s History, the great new online curricular component to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History to the United States, has recently featured Teaching the Levees on its website.  Take a look!

What’s been happening recently in regards to Katrina and the recovery effort?  It’s been a little while since my last post, so I thought I’d provide a few updates:

In November, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval made headlines  after finding the Army Corps of Engineers ultimately responsible for much of the devastating flooding in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. According to Duval, the Corps failed to properly oversee the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a major channel that had undergone heavy environmental changes in the years before the storm.

While the symbolic value of this ruling cannot be underestimated, as well as the way in which it exposes the Corps to a variety of future claims, it is unclear what the broader effect will be on the Gulf region’s ongoing recovery effort. The New York Times suggests there may be room for appeal in some areas of the ruling, despite Duval’s meticulous handiwork. Others, however, are hopeful. Sandy Rosenthal, founder of levees.org writes in the Huffington Post that the ruling provides an opportunity for the government to revisit existing flood protection legislation, pointing out that a majority of Americans live in areas protected by levees.

Whatever the nature of the ruling’s ultimate effect, it has already drawn some much-needed attention back to the recovery effort and will hopefully continue to spur support.

The text of the ruling is online here.

Also, for those interested in an explanation of how a levee functions, here’s a detailed description from HowStuffWorks.

Coming soon: Housing in New Orleans–the recession begins to take it’s toll.

While watching coverage of President Obama’s brief visit to New Orleans yesterday (the first of his presidency), I was disappointed to find little real substance in his remarks.  In fact, having paid close attention to Obama’s mentions of Katrina during his tours as a candidate, the opening to his Town Hall meeting sounded more to me like a campaign speech than a serious contribution to the recovery effort.  Quickly, the rhetoric wandered from a brief overview of the disaster to a few vague mentions of the Administration’s commitment to recovery, before devolving into broad discussion of the national agenda and a closing rallying cry.

Sure, the positivity and presence of the President is undoubtedly appreciated.  But New Orleans at this moment isn’t in need of a “listening tour.” As Obama said, he’s already spent time as a candidate listening and learning in the city.  This visit was, if anything, a squandered opportunity to announce a real concrete initiative, such as a Gulf Coast “czar,” a plan to reopen hospitals, more comprehensive disaster preparedness efforts, or even simply a more detailed description of future plans.Yes, there has been inspiring progress already.

Yes, the recovery money has helped shield New Orleans from some of the pain of unemployment and economic distress felt so acutely in the rest of the country.  However, this is far from enough.  Without a higher position on the Obama Administration’s admittedly bursting agenda, true systemic change and revitalization in the Gulf Coast may prove tragically unattainable.

With the fourth anniversary now past, I thought I would highlight a few recent works which provide some interesting angles on Hurricane Katrina:

The first, of course, is Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun, which has received a lot of press over the past few weeks.  A fictionalized account of a Syrian-American man working to help his fellow New Orleanians in the days after the hurricane, Eggers’ work is more than just an exposé on the horrors of disaster.  Rather, it highlights the Bush-era political climate and the intersections between local and federal, personal and state.  Fictionalizing national trauma is always tricky, but Eggers pulls it off with depth and substance, allowing the reader to gain new insight into the disaster four years later.

The second, Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, I admit I have yet to read.  However, I was intrigued by the review in last week’s NY Times.  While not exclusively about Hurricane Katrina, Solnit explores the “utopia”-like qualities that develop in communities touched by extreme trauma and disaster (for example, tendencies toward altruism).  She debunks certain theories about human reaction to emergencies (such as instant panic), and examines myths about government organized response.  Given its recent nature, Katrina is a major focus, along with 9/11 as well as more historical tragedies.  The revelations seem quite intriguing.

As usual, the media coverage concerning the 4th anniversary of Katrina is decidedly varied.  While some news outlets chose simply to revisit the disaster in extraordinary detail (see The New York Times Magazine’s lengthy investigation of medical ethics during Katrina), others used the occasion as a platform for political statements urging the Obama Administration to follow through on effective disaster preparations and other reform efforts.  Still more commented on the relative “success” or “failure” of the recovery efforts thus far, though results differed significantly between articles.

The diversity in media point of view, in my opinion, echoes the questions faced by educators wishing to incorporate Hurricane Katrina into their curriculum. Are the lessons learned from the disaster evident simply in the retelling of its facts? When and how can we measure the success of recovery? How do we continue to discuss Katrina in a way that’s immediately relevant? What’s changed and what needs to be amended? What has happened over the past year that affects the way we absorb, study, and perceive this tragedy?

In terms of recent developments, I wonder whether there is an important connection between the way we respond to Katrina and the way we respond to our current Great Recession and its many corresponding crises (be they financial, housing, health care etc).  While the two are clearly disasters of a different nature, both illuminate socioeconomic divides and raise questions of government responsibility.  Is there a valuable way of connecting these issues so that students consider the implications of Katrina (and relate to its extremes) while also reflecting on the nuanced and difficult problems that may directly affect their immediate futures?

A selection of links to media coverage focusing on the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina:

New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Many Still in Exile Know What it Really Means to Miss New Orleans,” “There are Many Ways to Remember Katrina” “N.O. Area on Firmer Footing as Nation Falters in Past Year,” “We’re Counting on You, Mr. President,” “Katrina’s Dead Guide Planning for Future”

NY Times: “In New Orleans, Recovery is Not Enough,” “Obama Vows to Speed Hurricane Katrina Recovery Effort,” “The State of New Orleans: An Update” (Op-ed)

NY Times Magazine: “Strained by Katrina, A Hospital Faced Deadly Choices”

NY Daily News: “Four Years After Katrina, New Orleans Still Needs Us”

NPR: “New Orleans: A Day’s Work Doesn’t Mean A Day’s Pay,   “The Gulf Coast’s Recovery: Uneven and Uneasy,” “Derelict Buildings House Thousands in New Orleans”

Philadelphia Inquirer: “Vital Protection in a Storm,” “Lower Ninth Ward Struggles 4 Years Later”

Time Magazine: “Four Years Later, New Orleans’ Green Makeover”

Washington Post: “On Katrina Anniversary, Obama Pledges to End “Turf Wars” That Slow Recovery”

ABC News: “Scars of Katrina Run Deep in New Orleans”

Wall Street Journal: “Grass Roots Put New Orleans Back on Its Feet”

Huffington Post (John McQuaid): “Still Fiddling While New Orleans Drowns”

Huffington Post (Marian Wright Edelman): “Katrina’s Children–Still Struggling”

Christian Science Monitor: “Four Years After Katrina, Who Will Lead New Orleans?”

As a quick follow-up to my recent post on Open Sound New Orleans, I just came across another interesting project which maps the city based on media coverage. The site is called citymurmur.org and uses RSS feeds of blogs and news sources to “feed” a geographical representation of the city, linking individual streets and regions with tags based on topic, type of source, and source scale (e.g. local, regional, national). You can also view keywords based on the content of news articles. It’s an interesting way to get a sense of both the city and its representation in the media.  As an aside, I find that the coverage of New Orleans’ recovery post-Katrina, while somewhat limited, has still allowed me to get a better sense of the overall anatomy of an American city. The focus on individual elements of the city as they are rebuilt (or should be rebuilt) puts a spotlight on issues within city government or development that are often glossed over or deemed unimportant. But perhaps this is just me and my interest in urban studies. Do others find that post-Katrina coverage has enriched their understanding of the function/dysfunction in cities in general?