NEW ORLEANS — Tim Williamson was asked this month to assess the state of his native New Orleans after the disaster.
“After the disaster?” the nonprofit chief executive quipped, with a seen-it-all mordancy as common here as a pot-holed side street. “Which one?”
The last months have provided a roller-coaster run-up to Hurricane Katrina’s fifth anniversary, to be observed here today with solemn prayers, a reunion of Superdome survivors and a jazz funeral for the more than 1,800 dead.
In early 2010, there was a feeling that the funeral band, come Aug. 29, would have more reasons than ever to make its traditional shift from a dirge to a joyful noise. New Orleans’ unemployment rate was the lowest of any large metro area in the nation. A new mayor, Mitch Landrieu, had been elected with the support of blacks and whites. And the Saints had won the Super Bowl.
Then came April and the BP gusher.
“The oil spill was such a reality check,” said Eli Ackerman, a New Orleans activist and blogger who recently moved to New York. “It was a reminder that this was a region that never got over the storm. That in some sense, it’s always going to be between storms.”
Optimism and despair
Today, this 292-year-old city finds itself defined, in many ways, by a state of between-ness — with its people living daily between states of celebration and mourning, optimism and despair, progress and stagnancy.
Defying pessimistic projections of 2005, many displaced residents showed their faith in the city by returning home. With nearly 1.2 million people, the New Orleans metro region has recovered 91 percent of its pre-storm population, while the city is at 78 percent, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.
Average wages have increased 14 percent from 2004 to 2008. And thanks in part to radical school reforms, more than half of the city’s public school students attend a school that meets state standards, compared with 28 percent in 2003-04.
But even the most ardent civic boosters acknowledge that the city also remains saddled with both the problems Katrina wrought and the equally enduring scourges that pre-dated the deluge.
Rebuilding only begun
More than 64,000 buildings in the city are still blighted. The nonprofit homeless advocacy group UNITY released a report this month claiming homelessness had doubled since Katrina and that up to 6,000 people were living in abandoned buildings.
The scandal-ridden police department will likely soon be monitored by the Justice Department. The per-capita murder rate is the highest in the U.S.
“The crime is still terrible. There’s streets down in the Seventh Ward that’s killing zones. So when they say we’re back, and everything’s up and running, well, I just have to wonder,” said Melvin Navarre, a retired armored-transport branch manager who rebuilt his house in New Orleans East.
Kirk Joseph, a noted sousaphone player and former member of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, said that life in post-storm New Orleans remains a hassle and that some “nonsense stuff” still needs to be fixed.
“But there’s hope, man,” he added.
