A Public Policy Assessment of the Aftermath of Katrina

Crisis, The, Sep/Oct 2006 by Wellington, Darryl Lorenzo

A Public Policy Assessment of the Aftermath of Katrina There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina Edited by Chester Hartman and Gregory D. Squires (Taylor & Francis, $22.95 paper)

How many people were severely impacted when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the Gulf Coast in the late summer of 2005? That's a tricky statistic to pin down. Apart from the death toll, nearly 1,700, how do we define severely impacted? The loss of a job? Permanent or temporary displacement? The loss of a home? The loss of community and sense of belonging?

The answer to this question varies, even within the pages of There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster, a collection of essays on public policy and the future of the Gulf Coast. I've read estimations of the "severely impacted" that ranged from 400,000 to 2 million. In the essay "Where Is Home?" Sheila Crowley notes that "FEMA reports receiving over 2.6 million applications for individual disaster assistance from residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas as of March 14,2006. Twothirds are seeking disaster aid due to Hurricane Katrina and...the remaining one-third are for Hurricane Rita relief."

This helps, but it doesn't tell the whole story. On one hand, how many people in that figure were needy but not displaced? On the other hand, how many of the displaced failed to apply or got lost in the maze of paperwork required to receive FEMA assistance?

It's easier to glean precise statistics if we restrict our purview to New Orleans - where historically well-to-do New Orleanians have lived on the high ground (think the French Quarter), while the middle and lower classes occupied the low-lying land. On Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina razed whole communities in the low ground.

We don't even need statistics to verify what we all saw on television. The coauthors of "Towards a Transformative View of Race" write: "In New Orleans, the geography of race led directly to a disproportionate storm impact. People of color were more likely to be living in areas of lower elevation, and therefore were at greater risk of being affected by flooding. Indeed, areas with less opportunity and high concentrations of poor people of color, such as the Ninth Ward, experienced the most damage."

The big picture, then? In New Orleans alone, if no one were to return to the devastated areas, the city would lose 80 percent of its pre-Katrina Black population. Along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, an absolute minimum of 700,000 people lost their homes due to Katrina and Rita. The majority lived in Louisiana and were low-income. Of those in acutely impacted populations, 12 percent were 65 or older; 25 percent were 18 or younger; 44 percent were Black. Many majority White communities were razed as well, especially in Mississippi.

The 14 essays in There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster, written by lawyers, urban planners, scholars, historians, activists and social scientists some of them living in New Orleans largely ask, what happens now? Of several hundred thousand poor and displaced, some may have chanced upon better circumstances. Many still live in poverty, worsened by having to maneuver in unfamiliar terrain. Many live in FEMA trailers; many rely on charity; many are doubtless homeless. And many - especially those with a strong sense of community and identity as New Orleanians - would like to return home.

The 14 essayists disagree occasionally on points of emphasis and policy, but they all agree on this: If in the wake of Katrina even President Bush claimed he was struck by the depths of poverty in America, then post-Katrina America, having lost its innocence, can't simply scatter the poor across the country and hide them again.

New Orleans will be rebuilt by a combination of federal dollars and corporate investments. It's happening even now. Rebuilding the Gulf Coast can mean many things. It can mean rebuilding with an eye toward high real estate values and ways of once again segregating the poor in congested, unsafe communities with high crime rates. It could mean rebuilding with the intent of relieving poverty by investing in better support services and a massive work program for the dispossessed; supporting small businesses and local entrepreneurship. It could mean building plentiful affordable housing in areas that have been decided upon with community participation. Yes, it's true, it could mean the latter - and if President Bush's word was bond, it would.

There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster is actually more stimulating when the essayists disagree. Several writers support federal funds specifically directed at the needs of the poor. However, in "From Poverty to Prosperity" John Taylor and Josh Silver emphasize the private sector, arguing for the vigorous enforcement of fairness in lending laws. They write: "Federal and state governments have neither the capacity nor the will to effectively finance the rebuilding on their own. Private-sector financial institutions have the resources to finance the recovery and rebuild in a manner that overcomes the vestiges of redlining and discrimination in lending." Expecting federal funds to redress economic disparity is, they write, "an outdated paradigm that is not feasible politically or economically."