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.