Someone Was Down Here Saying How Great Everything Was
Friday, August 22nd, 2008That's the good news, according to a recent study by The Brookings Institution. The bad news, according to another new study by the PolicyLink institute, is that 80 percent of residents who are rebuilding their ruined homes did not get enough state and federal relief funds to cover the cost of their repairs, with homeowners coming up an average of $35,000 short.
Renters — who outnumbered homeowners in New Orleans before Katrina — are even worse off: Rents across the city are 46 percent higher than before the hurricane. That's largely because of scarcity. Fewer than 1 in 3 rental units have been repaired or replaced in the last three years.
Nearly 28,000 families driven from the New Orleans region by Katrina are still relying on disaster rental assistance that's due to expire in March.
And although the French Quarter and other tourist areas that never flooded have completely bounced back, the rest of New Orleans is still pockmarked with some 65,000 blighted houses and vacant lots.