New Orleans is `Back' From Hurricane Katrina's Devastation, Officials Say
While still plagued by high crime and poverty rates, New Orleans is rebounding strongly from Hurricane Katrina’s devastation and moving toward better race relations among its residents, two civic and educational leaders said.
In an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend, the fifth anniversary of the hurricane, Tulane University President Scott Cowen said he was “more optimistic” about the city’s future than he has ever been.
“I think we’re moving from recovery to renewal and quite honestly inventing a new city for the 21st century,” Cowen said.
“We are back, number 1,” said Norman Francis, president of Xavier University and former director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. “Number 2, we are making great progress. And number 3, we’re not yet where we want to be, but we’re going to get there.” Xavier is the nation’s only Catholic historically black college.
Tulane is itself an example of the renewal. Its main campus in the city’s uptown was 70 percent under water after Katrina. This year the school received more than 44,000 applications, more than any other private school in the country.
Among the hopeful signs cited by the two officials is improving relations in a city that has been divided along racial lines.
“I think that race relations down here are stronger and better and in many ways more constructive than what I’ve seen in other places,” said Cowen, who was brought up in the Northeast.
Landrieu’s Election
As evidence, Francis pointed to the election in February of Mitch Landrieu as the city’s first white mayor since his father, Moon, held the position in 1978.
Landrieu replaced Ray Nagin, who couldn’t seek re-election because of term limits. Nagin once declared that New Orleans would be a “chocolate city” again as black residents who left after the hurricane returned to the city, a comment that angered some white residents.
“It wasn’t the white mayor we were electing per se. We were electing someone who the population felt would give leadership,” Francis said. “It did not matter the gender. It did not matter the race or religious background.”
Another good sign was the New Orleans Saints’ victory in the 2010 Super Bowl, he said.
“This was a win that brought New Orleans closer together than I have ever seen it,” Francis said.
The Brookings Institution’s “The New Orleans Index at Five” laid out hopeful signs and challenges that remain.
Population Returning
More than 90 percent of the metropolitan area population and 85 percent of the jobs had returned by June 2010, it said. The city has experienced less job loss than the national average during the recession and median income levels are up.
The poverty rate remains high, at 23 percent, compared with 13 percent nationally, and crime is “well above national rates,” the report said. Many homes remain blighted, and the line between income levels remains high. Black and Hispanic households earn incomes that are 44 percent and 25 percent lower than whites, according to Brookings.
And while the city’s population has largely come back, many residents of the historically black Lower Ninth Ward haven’t.
“It is a disappointment because the people who could least afford to be damaged, if you will, by anything and then with a disaster like Katrina are the ones who have paid a great price,” said Francis, who in 2006 was awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
“When Katrina hit, they lost everything,” he said.
Among the biggest challenges to the city’s progress is its historically underperforming school system. More than 42 percent of the city schools failed to meet state standards, according to Brookings.
‘Right Direction’
Cowen said the city’s schools are “headed in the right direction,” saying that as many as 65 percent failed to meet state standards only a few years earlier.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently gave New Orleans $1.8 billion for school construction and renovation.
Cowen said the federal government still owes the city hundreds of millions more dollars. One source of money, the economic stimulus, will soon dry up.
“It is going to take a generation to get there. It cannot be done overnight,” Cowen said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is nearing completion of a major reconstruction of the city’s levees, whose failure led to the massive flooding, giving additional hope to the two leaders.
“I think we are definitely better prepared,” Cowen said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington at jsnyder24@bloomberg.net.
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