Living in Persistent Poverty in New Orleans: 10 Years after Katrina
Written by Maria VictoireATD Fourth World Volunteer, New OrleansNo one in the world would like to rewind the clock to August 29, 2005 when Hurricane Katrina made landfall and devastated the entire city of New Orleans. Everybody remembers the call of the former mayor Ray Nagin, who made evacuation mandatory. Everybody remembers the hundreds of residents who were trapped in the flood and the complete chaos.No one expected New Orleans to be under water for so long before the rescuing started.Many residents, es
pecially people living in poverty, were unable to get transportation out of the city. Katrina left 1833 people dead and hundreds of thousands of residents displaced. Tens of thousands have not yet returned home. It was a nightmare recalled by ATD Fourth World members in the book, Not Meant to Live Like This. Today many only want to forget.But we cannot forget the high cost of the lives, neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, jobs and so much else that residents lost during Katrina and in the 10 years since. We can’t deny the progress in bringing the city back to normal. Some people can celebrate the rebuilding's great success, but lots of the people living in poverty are still waiting for the rebuilding to reach them.Hurricane Katrina was first a natural disaster, but then turned into a prolonged, man-made disaster. Some people have told us that Hurricane Katrina was a disaster and their lives are still a disaster. Ten years later, how has the city's recovery affected the lives of its poorest people?More than 85% of New Orleans residents living there before Katrina have now returned. As Mayor Mitch Landrieu said, "Five years ago, we may not have still been underwater, but our people were scattered across the state, region and country. Today, we are one of the fastest growing cities in America. The bottom line is that we have been through more than most, and, while we still have work left to do, ours is a story of strength and resilience, and it's a story we must share to the world as we approach the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina."
Many public institutions that people living in poverty depended on have been overhauled or done away with in the rebuilding process. Public housing and hospitals were destroyed and not adequately replaced. The public school system was completely transformed into a charter school system with many holes that the kids and families who struggle the most often fall through. The Wall Street Journal reported that Baton Rouge Congressman Richard Baker told lobbyists, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”Jane Washington, who used to live in the B.W. Cooper public housing development, told us in September 2005, “They said I am not allowed to go back to my apartment! They are going to demolish it. Where am I going to live? I can’t pay rent elsewhere. There I was not paying high rent, this is where I was surviving and raising up my children!”
The Housing Authority of New Orleans demolished thousands of public housing units and replaced them only with hundreds of mixed-income units. This contributed greatly to people living in poverty not being able to stay in New Orleans or those who had evacuated to other cities and states not being able to return. Families living there were stunned and felt powerless when they saw their apartments and neighborhood being destroyed without their consent. This was the biggest disaster for many the families living in these developments.
With all of these displacements and the changes in the city overseen by the local government and developers, many inhabitants who were already struggling have lost their neighborhoods, their networks of solidarity, their culture of survival. Many have been forced by high rents and a lack of available housing to move to New Orleans East, where there is little public transportation and few quality school choices.All New Orleanians are so proud of the city's resilience in the recovery process, but so many people living in persistent poverty have been forced out of this city they love so much.
Eula Collins, one of the co-authors of Not Meant to Live Like This, recently commented, “Nothing has changed for me [ten years later], except that it was good to evacuate to Austin, Texas. My two youngest boys got a good education and succeeded in graduating from high school...Since I arrived back in New Orleans I have been staying with people from one house to another like I'm homeless. That’s not fun because there's always fussing and fighting. I am not free. I wish the mayor could give us more houses t so that people would be free to live in peace.” Some families made the choice not to come back to the city because they've found stable jobs, good living conditions, or quality education and safety for their children elsewhere. One young man who also contributed to the book, told us, “If I come back to New Orleans the police will put me back in jail because I am in the system or I will be killed like many of my friends. I guess I will never make it back, but it will still be the place I was born and raised.” He's working on a tobacco farm and likes it. He added, “I guess I am becoming a country boy now. But I stay out of trouble now.”
Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, many families living in persistent poverty at the time find themselves in the same situation in New Orleans or elsewhere. They survive with resilience and patience and many have found neighborhoods and created communities that help them get by. We must continue to consider them and strive to improve their lives even as we celebrate the progress that has happened to rebuild the city and region in the ten years since Hurricane Katrina.