Working class exodus feared in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS -- The affluent areas of this city are humming with activity as reconstruction efforts pick up tempo, but many of the black working-class and poor neighborhoods remain deluged in noxious flood water or coated in its putrid residue and populated mostly by dragonflies and National Guardsmen.
Even as the nation unites to rebuild this stricken region, New Orleans's longstanding race and class divides appear to persist. The haves are beginning to pick up the pieces of their former lives, while many have-nots may be forced to simply pick up and leave.
Recovery is well underway in the French Quarter and in the tony Garden District and Uptown, which largely were spared when the levees broke because they sit on
But their lower-lying and often poorer counterparts may remain unsafe and may be uninhabitable for a year or longer, with entire neighborhoods slated for the wrecking ball, said state and federal officials.
And with each passing week, former residents of these communities, evacuated around the country, are more likely to start life anew elsewhere, said federal officials and urban affairs specialists.
Their absence could forever change this iconic city, once a potent cultural stew that gave rise to jazz and jambalaya, indelibly shaping American culture. A massive swath of the city's longshoremen, musicians, cooks, nurses, and myriad other workers are in scattered exile, their economic and cultural energies gone with them.
Some business analysts predict a smaller, less diverse New Orleans may emerge in the coming years, with key industries like tourism and shipping permanently shrunken. Others said many evacuees, poor and unskilled, may be replaced by a better trained workforce imported to Louisiana to do the work of reconstruction, dramatically changing the character of the city in the process.
Sitting last week on his Baton Rouge shelter cot, Ken Willoughby, 56, who grew up in New Orleans's historic Treme neighborhood, the birthplace of jazz, said he will return home no matter what. But he understands that many of his neighbors may decide to stay away.
''There was a lot of unemployment in our neighborhood. If a guy finds a job somewhere else, he's not going to come back," he said. ''Without working-class people, the city's going to change. The music will be gone."
Communities submerged New Orleans's mayor, C. Ray Nagin, has said he wants to reopen neighborhoods in a large southern swath of New Orleans -- accounting for about 182,000 of the city's 485,000 people -- over the next week.
But the city's other half, areas like the 9th Ward with its projects and working-class communities like Gentilly, may not be inhabitable for years. (An exception is Lakeview, a relatively well-off neighborhood that remains flooded.)
Nagin has predicted that nearly half of his city's 160,000 homes, located mostly in areas that are still underwater or that have just been pumped dry, will have to be razed.
In addition, federal environmental officials said toxic residue and mold may be a lingering problem. Tests last week found hazardous petroleum and bacteria levels in sediment left by the receding flood waters. And though initial spot tests of remaining flood waters found lower-than-expected toxicity levels around the city, officials said some still-untested areas may be hiding dangers.
''These flood waters are not homogenous," said Mary Mears, a US Environmental Protection Agency spokesman. ''We will continue to aggressively test water and air around the city."
The levee system that failed during Hurricane Katrina remains severely damaged. A single rainfall could again flood the neighborhoods inundated after Katrina, said federal engineers. It will take nearly a year to reconstruct the levees to their pre-Katrina height and strength, leaving the areas vulnerable should another hurricane strike before the work is finished.
''We hope to have the levees repaired by next hurricane season, next year around June," said Dan Hitchings of the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Permanent exodus With their communities devastated and lives upended, many evacuees from these neighborhoods long for stability -- and may find it outside New Orleans.
Valerie Hartford, 45, owned a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in east New Orleans, where some of the deepest flooding occurred.
''I wouldn't go back if Jesus asked. . . . It'll never be the same," she said, sitting in a sprawling shelter at Baton Rouge's River Center. ''A lot of people have already given up."
Half of a group of more than 600 evacuees surveyed in the Houston area said they would not return to New Orleans, according to a report last week by the Harvard School of Public Health, the
''A large share said they were looking for jobs in the Houston area. A large percentage of the people did not want to stay in the shelter," said Dr. Robert Blendon of the Harvard School of Public Health. ''Clearly a share of people are going to establish their lives somewhere else. What you can't predict is how many people relocating will change their mind. But a lot of these people feel they have to get economically reestablished as soon as possible."
The federal government is seeking to move evacuees from shelters to more permanent housing in trailer homes, renovated warehouses, and converted schools, and to help them obtain jobs and enroll their children in schools. Federal housing officials have found 34,000 vacant public housing units for evacuees to move into. Federal officials acknowledged all this could lead many to abandon New Orleans.
''It's going to take a long time to clean the city. . . . They have to consider the long-term situation," said James McIntyre, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's housing programs. ''It's their choice. They decide where they want to live. They are receiving long-term options in the locations where they are."
And their consumer dollars, a massive local economic engine, will be gone with them: New Orleans's working class spent $2 billion annually at local retail stores, nearly half what the city makes from tourism, according to the Boston-based Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, an urban affairs think tank.
Help wantedThe exodus of working-class New Orleanians could hamper the city's recovery. One of the toughest issues facing local industry is the sudden labor shortage -- the missing workers necessary to staff the restaurants, ports, and other businesses across the city that state officials have encouraged to reopen.
Flood waters washed away entire neighborhoods and also claimed churches, schools, and hundreds of small businesses. The government has tried to address this by putting up mobile homes near refineries, ports, and other businesses. But it is unclear whether those temporary villages will be sufficient to induce workers to return.
''There will be very significant issues related to housing," said Donald M. Pierson, assistant secretary in the Louisiana Economic Development office. ''It is a critical component that the workforce that services these facilities sustain their quality of life, with homes and churches and hospitals."
Local officials view the French Quarter, the heart of New Orleans's vital tourism industry, as key to the city's comeback. But it remains unclear where the cooks, dishwashers, maids, and other low-wage workers necessary to operate it will come from. Many were evacuated to other states, while their homes and apartments remain in the flood zone.
Downtown hotels have pledged to set aside about a quarter of their rooms to house their own staff during the rebuilding efforts, said J. Stephen Perry, chief executive of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. Tourism officials hope that, by establishing a corps of downtown residents, along with the frequent back-and-forth traffic from insurance executives, contractors, and others assisting in the rebuilding efforts, that they will be able to energize the French Quarter and, from there, revitalize the rest of the city.
''The economic core of New Orleans is completely intact," Perry said. ''Commerce will be able to flow again very quickly."
He said he expects tourists to return to the French Quarter in January and conventions to start back up again in April. Business leaders also are planning a scaled-down Mardi Gras celebration for next year intended as a ''reaffirmation of the city's culture," Perry said. ''We're going to use this as an opportunity to remake the tourism industry and remake the city better than it was before."
Uncertainty all over Another key local employer, the Port of New Orleans, the fifth largest in the United States before the hurricane, also faces considerable uncertainty, as some cargo is redirected to other ports while it repairs the damage and rebuilds its workforce.
The port, a central waterway for shipments down the Mississippi River, may never attract as much traffic as before the storm. Barge shipments of corn and other goods from the Midwest probably will return in force because the farmers lack other options, agricultural and port specialists said. But rail traffic, the more expensive but faster option that makes up a large portion of the port's business, could go elsewhere.
The port in Kobe, Japan, was the second-busiest in the world in container traffic until the city was decimated by an earthquake in 1995. The Japanese government rebuilt the port's infrastructure, but Kobe never reclaimed its former status, ranking just 29th in 2002, noted Yossi Sheffi, a professor of engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The implications for New Orleans, he said, are clear: Even rebuilding infrastructure may not be enough to restore the city.
''It takes time to do all this, and economic activity shifts," he said. ''Companies may decide to build those facilities in the Port of Houston. Some of this traffic may never come back."
But other agricultural specialists said the New Orleans port will bounce back from Hurricane Katrina. Dennis Conley, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said it would cost companies more money to build the necessary infrastructure at other ports than it would to rebuild New Orleans.
And though the rebuilding of New Orleans will create thousands of construction and other jobs, they may not go to many of the city's displaced residents from the poorest sections. A large chunk of that population dropped out of the labor force well before the storm or lack the skills for many specialized construction jobs, said economist Paul Harrington of Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies. Instead, those jobs are likely to go to immigrants and workers from other parts of the country, he said.
''It could well have an effect on the demographic structure of New Orleans," said Harrington.
Willoughby, a former construction worker, could be one of those so replaced. Wincing at the blaring loudspeaker at the Baton Rouge shelter, he waxed nostalgic about his old Treme neighborhood as if it were already gone.
''There was the Funky Butt, Sweet Lorraine's," he said, listing his favorite jazz clubs. ''I wonder what will happen to them." The future of his beloved city appeared as uncertain as how long he will languish in the shelter.
''Yes, the neighborhood's going to change . . . but this time it's going to be for the worst," he said. Gesturing at the hundreds of people, overwhelmingly black, crowded into the vast shelter, he said, ''This is New Orleans." 