When you go to the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans your brain can’t comprehend the situation there. You react like you do when you visit Roman or Aztec ruins – yeah, you hear that a large number of people once lived there and you take that number in but you just can’t sense it, you just can’t process the changes. All you see are stone blocks strewn around grassy fields and sadly you can’t picture the homes and community of the 6,000 families who used to live in this poor neighborhood.
Maybe the original inhabitants can’t either.
Records have shown that three years after Hurricane Katrina only 11% of families had resettled. When we went there and took these photos recently we couldn’t see any deliberate attempt to rebuild this community. There were no film stars helping to building houses, no TV personalities moving buses to show what reconstructed wonders lay behind.
In other parts of this American city, there is an amazing spirit of rebuilding and moving on. Here, like a set of ruins out of tourist season, the Lower Ninth Ward was dead and empty.
There’s a description of the history of the Lower Ninth Ward written before the hurricane here. An excerpt:
Originally a cypress swamp, the area was the lower portion of plantations that stretched from the river to the lake. Poor African Americans and immigrant laborers from Ireland, Germany and Italy desperate for homes but unable to afford housing in other areas of the city risked flooding and disease to move here.
…Due to the Ninth Ward’s geographic separation and working-class inhabitants, residents have developed a history of activism encouraged by seeming neglect by city officials. Civic groups established in the neighborhood fought diligently to obtain funds and services for the Lower Ninth Ward.
As a result of the activism of residents (particularly from the Lower Ninth Ward) that emerged with the fight for civil rights, and the expertise of the NAACP legal team, the school desegregation movement marked New Orleans as the first deep-South school district to open its all-white doors to black children.
…[Today in 2002] the neighborhood is rich with small businesses, barber and beauty shops, corner stores, eateries, gasoline stations, day care centers, as well as public schools and some say, far too many churches.
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As sad as those pictures are, I think it’d be sadder in the end if we spent millions to rebuild that area, bring people home and make it nice again, only to watch it be destroyed by another flood. That city will get hit again, unfortunately. When you build a city in a spot like that, its bound to happen and its only a matter of time.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Nice comment, Kyle. And that’s a good argument.
But where did the people go? Why can’t they come home, one day?
February 24th, 2009 at 9:20 am
I think a lot of them were relocated to places like Houston, San Antonio, etc. and they’ve never returned. Not sure what other explanation there could be for it.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:23 am
The thing is the ninth and eight wards were always somewhat desolate and dreary. Every other home was abandoned. Sure, things are worse post-Katrina but these communities were in need of major restoration years before the storm.
There is no rebuilding these neighborhoods to their former glory because, well, there wasn’t much to begin with. The sad thing is folks believe the storm destroyed these communities and, in some ways, it did. But, the reality is these photos are indistinguishable from what the eight and ninth wards were before the storm.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I happened to be down there in October just before the Prospect1 Art Biennial. My buddy Jonno took me on the tour and showed me the installation locations some of which are the same as pictured. here is a flickr stream featuring the art installalations.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnodotcom/sets/72157608692347499/
and the P1 website
http://prospectneworleans.org/
February 24th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Kyle, wouldn’t it be sad if the next time California had a fire we spent millions to rebuild it only to see it burn again? Ever heard of the Netherlands? They seem to have solved the flooding problem pretty well. A lot better than the fire problem in California, or for that matter, the earthquake problem in San Francisco.
March 4th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Rebuilding what they had would certainly lead to repeated disaster. Building homes at ground level in a city that is below sea level and prone to hurricanes is just dumb. There are methods and materials available and affordable to rebuild homes that can be there after the storms if they are built correctly – for no more money than they’re spending to set them up for yet another failure. I know. I sell the stuff. Getting somebody to listen to you is another story. It’s almost like they want them gone.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
The destruction of Katrina shows a lack of care from the government. A disaster can happen anywhere-even where you live. Imagine what it would be like if your home was damaged, your community ruined, and you were forced to leave with nothing. Most of the residents in the Lower 9th could not even afford cars or cell phones, how can anyone expect them to just pick up their life again in a new town? And to say that we shouldn’t bother rebuilding the area is disrespectful and shows a complete lack of understanding of the unique culture and history that this area has. How would you feel if people argued that we shouldn’t rebuild your home town after a disaster because another disaster is “bound to happen”. If the Lower 9th had levees like the ones that were built to protect downtown areas, then residents wouldn’t even have to worry about their homes being destroyed again. Downtown there is an entire levee system protecting businesses. The lower 9th levee consists of a simple wall that was built shorter that was originally planned. There is no way that could have stood up to a 20 foot surge. During Hurricane Betsy, the lower 9th levee was blown up by the government on purpose to protect the commercial downtown. It isn’t hard to believe that the government did that again. The area can be well protect, but only if the government and city wants it to. This disaster and failure of government response should make everyone wonder what would happen if disaster hit your community. Many New Orleanians were not saved-would you be?
March 12th, 2009 at 12:55 am
Even if the lower 9th ward is rebuilt, nicer, more expensive houses will be made. Therefore, richer people will move in. Sadly, either way the poor have been driven out.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I Agree Sarah,I have seen way too many reports of low income housing that was livable but still destroyed after the rebuilding “if you can all it that” restarted. these people are the victims of Mega gentrification.
April 26th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
You want to know what I find completely “disrespectful”? Your sense of entitlement to a bottomless government investment in an attempt to make an unsafe neighborhood safe. If you want to rebuild it because you value the culture and history so much, you can go ahead and try. Please pay for it yourselves. You clearly are too close to this issues to objectively look at the history of the neighborhood and the physics of why it will never be safe to live there.
The reality is the neighborhood has always had an unacceptably high risk of flooding. No matter how many billions are spent, it is going to flood again. If people live there, people will die again.
It was a bad idea to build a laborers’ slum there in the late 1800s. It is impossible to argue against the fact that it was a social injustice to force people to live in such danger just because they were poor. That is the real history of this neighborhood’s origin. Newly freed slaves, and Irish, German, and Italian immigrants. The people that society didn’t care about clustered in the cheapest real estate available. Cheap because it was unsafe.
Just because you believe a cultural mecca developed there, it doesn’t change those facts. It’s still a bad idea. It’s still an injustice to warehouse poor people in a dangerous neighborhood, even if they want to go back there.
If we are going to spend billions to help the people of the 9th Ward, let’s spend it creating jobs and a life for them somewhere else.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:54 am
Maybe, but if the area is ‘gentrified’ to a better housing standard, and is developed as a ‘middle/upper class’ suburb would the local & federal government reaction time to a disaster/flood be as slow or as incompetent?
May 10th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
The fact that majority of the residents of this community were less fortunate or as previous writers put it “poor” is irrelevant. Never should we be saying, “rebuilding would just be dumb” or “rebuilding would just lead to another disaster”. That’s like saying we shouldn’t have any beachfront property in florida because of hurricanes, or any homes through kansas because of tornado’s. If the U.S. Corps. did there job the correct way and were honest about the levees they were responsible for, the homes in New Orleans would have never been destroyed. But these homes that volunteers are building one home at a time are being built stronger and more efficient to handle future storms. We should all be helping or at least encouraging those that are volunteering and trying to make a difference. There intentions are to make New Orleans a better place than what it is and has been post katrina and they shouldn’t be put down or made to feel that there hard work is for nothing. I’m saddened that I live in a world with people who only focus on the negative.
May 29th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Nicole, the major difference is that people will always be willing to put their own money at risk to build at the beach. In this case, we are talking about using public money to rebuild. “poor” is not irrelevant, because “poor” wants to rebuild using other people’s money, not their own.
I’m saddened because we live in a world where people believe they are entitled to live in risky area no matter how much it costs other people to protect them and repeatedly put their lives back together. My grandparents came to this country with nothing. Less than nothing, because they didn’t speak one work of the language. The fact that in two generations we are doctors and engineers without any government help seems to be lost to this culture of entitlement.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:49 pm