Ruin lingers, but roots lure some people back

Only half of New Orleans' residents have returned.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
NEW ORLEANS -- Since moving back to New Orleans' devastated Lower 9th Ward two months ago, Monica and Charles Williams have done all they can to re-create normalcy.
They installed DirecTV and are waiting for an Internet connection. They hooked up a new washer and dryer in the back so they don't have to haul their wash to the coin laundry.
Each weekend, they fire up the barbecue and invite in anyone who happens to pass by. But a peek out their trailer door reveals how much remains undone.
Rotting houses and rusting cars still litter the neighborhood. Flood-borne saltwater, oil, and chemicals killed off much of the vegetation, turning the ground into a gray moonscape. Now, weeds have taken over. At night, their block -- and every block north of them -- is dark and silent.
"Sometimes at night you can hear the rumble of those National Guard humvees and airplanes overhead, but for the most part, it's dead around here," said Mrs. Williams. "I can't believe it's been almost a year and it still looks the same."
Hurricane Katrina created the nation's worst natural disaster since the Okeechobee, Fla., hurricane of 1928 and its costliest ever. It killed 1,577 people, destroyed or seriously damaged 493,000 structures, and subjected some 5.8 million people to hurricane-force winds.
Many disadvantaged
But it hit minorities, like the Williamses, and the disadvantaged, like many of their neighbors in the Lower Ninth Ward, especially hard. Of the 700,000 people most affected by the hurricane, the Congressional Research Service estimates that more than 2 in 5 were black, 1 in 5 was poor, and better than 1 in 10 was elderly.
For many poor and blue-collar evacuees, returning will be difficult. Rents are up in most hurricane-damaged areas. So are real estate prices. Even those who can afford to rebuild to more stringent -- and expensive -- building codes may be shocked at the rise in taxes and insurance.
The affected gulf region will lose a fifth of its pre-Katrina population, estimates John Logan, a Brown University sociologist.
The question is especially critical for New Orleans, which suffered most of the hurricane's fatalities. A year later, only half of its 455,000 residents have come back.
Here in the Lower Ninth Ward, which saw the worst of the flooding, almost no one has returned north of Claiborne Avenue, where the Williamses live.
"In a lot of ways, it's brought a lot of peace to the neighborhood," said Williams, a supervisor at the Avondale Shipyard, his employer for the past 18 years.
Many evacuees say the deciding factor will be this year's hurricane season.
"If New Orleans refloods, you can kiss off large parts of the city," said Loren Scott, president of an economic forecasting firm in Baton Rouge, La. "Some of the people will not come back, and many of the businesses thinking of coming back will not."
More fortunate
Ryan Franklin, who used to live in the Lafitte housing project just north of the French Quarter, considers himself fortunate.
Evacuated to Fort Worth, Texas, he had a job to come back to and a temporary place to stay. It took him four months to find his own apartment, he said, mainly because so many apartments were destroyed, rents skyrocketed, and landlords were reluctant to accept Section 8 rental vouchers that the federal government provides to low-income residents.
The spurt in rents has been matched by a rise in home values in many areas undamaged by the flood. So while Orleans Parish (which includes New Orleans) has seen average home prices barely budge since last August, St. Tammany Parish to the north has seen prices rise from 11 to 25 percent.
The three parishes to the west of Orleans Parish have seen average home prices rise 55 percent.
Building more affordable housing will take time. Federal housing authorities had announced they would tear down four flooded-out housing projects in New Orleans and replace them with mixed-income units, which would have taken up to three years.
But Monday, they reversed that decision in hopes of getting low-income residents back more quickly. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said he was opening the projects immediately, since most of the apartments are undamaged.
Shrinking city
Even before Katrina, New Orleans was one of the fastest-shrinking cities in the U.S., having lost more than a quarter of its population since 1960.
It would take a slightly larger drop -- and bigger than Katrina's expected 20 percent reduction -- to allow growing Tampa, Fla., to take over immediately as the second-largest Gulf Coast city after Houston.
The region does retain two powerful lures to bring its citizens back. First, it is home.
"When you're rooted here, you're rooted here. You can't say why," said Ruby Garrison, who hopes to rebuild someday her crumbling bungalow in the Lower Ninth Ward.
And it has a laissez-faire, gumbo culture that tolerates, even celebrates, the nonconformist.