Rebuilding New Orleans

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New Orleans Index Second Anniversary Edition
Brookings Institution New Orleans Recovery
Greater New Orleans Community Data Center
Giving in the Aftermath Foundation Center

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New Orleans Index: Tracking Recovery in the Region
A Review of Key Indicators of Recovery Two Years After Katrina
Second Anniversary Special Edition
August 2007; Brookings Institution, Greater New Orleans Community Data Center
By Amy Liu & Allison Plyer

Two years after Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent levee failures, the New Orleans region has recovered most of its population and economic base. Yet, in the past year, progress has slowed, especially in the city, as critical public infrastructure—schools, law enforcement, and health care—remains weak. As recovery continues, a strong federal, state, and local partnership is necessary to ensure a safe and economically robust region for all.

Current and future recovery efforts should be informed by a clear set of quantifiable benchmarks for the future of the New Orleans region to guide—and evaluate—rebuilding efforts. One major area of policy progress since the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is the development of specific plans for the recovery of New Orleans. The plans include the Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP), a comprehensive summary of the results and future scenarios from the city’s citizen participation process; and the city’s official “Citywide Strategic Recovery and Redevelopment Plan,” which attempts to make the UNOP plan actionable and includes the 17 neighborhoods targeted for various levels of infrastructure repair and redevelopment. These plans are absolutely crucial to have in place. Now an effort must begin to measure progress of these plans based on a set of benchmarks that reflect the future vision for the city and region. While New Orleans had a number of distinct assets prior to the storm, the city and region faced a number of challenges—high concentrations of poverty, a stagnant economy, a workforce unprepared for the demands of the new economy, and a neglected coastal protection system.

As the region enters year three of its recovery effort, the public and decisionmakers should be judging and evaluating recovery on whether these many investments and new initiatives are helping to reverse—or not replicate—those former challenges.

As a first step, UNOP articulates the city’s vision as the following:
That every citizen, regardless of current residence, has the right to return to New Orleans

All citizens, businesses, and investors in our great city have a right to a safer, smarter, stronger city that enables a substantially higher quality of life, greater economic opportunity, and greater security against hurricanes than New Orleans had prior to the storm

Now, we need to go further.

Giving in the Aftermath of the Gulf Coast Hurricanes
Foundation Center
August 2007

U.S. foundations and corporations have committed more than $1 billion in cash and in-kind giving for relief, recovery, and rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to the Foundation Center's new report, Giving in the Aftermath of the Gulf Coast Hurricanes.

...the challenge of determining which organizations to support and which sources to rely upon for information and insights was especially acute for grantmakers that had not been active in the region before. As one funder noted, “It was really hard to figure out who were the right people to talk to. Because of the politics and the history of fractionalized groups in the region, it wasn’t enough to have one trusted source on each subject. You really needed two or three on each subject to make sure you were getting the full story.” Dr. John Lumpkin of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation expressed a similar sentiment, stating, “The political situation in Louisiana challenges us in implementing programs that won’t get caught up in political infighting.”

Erlin Ibreck of the Open Society Institute concurred on the challenge of having limited connections to an area in determining how to engage: “When there’s such devastation concentrated in a particular region of the country, not being on the ground can be a disadvantage to a funder.” The Rockefeller Foundation addressed this challenge by locating a program officer in New Orleans. According to Carey Shea, “Because we are now physically in New Orleans, we just have a much better window on what’s going on.”

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