New Orleans and Biloxi, a Tale of Two Cities

August 28, 2006— -- Even a year after Hurricane Katrina, people from New Orleans to Biloxi, Miss., still ask, "Where do we begin?" With more than 300,000 homes and structures demolished, the aerial view of the Gulf Coast appears like an enormous blank slate. So it is not surprising that many of the plans the government and others have proposed call for buying up huge tracks of land and constructing hundreds (thousands even) of new housing units from whole cloth.

However, for those of us working on the ground, the view is very different. Far from being a blank slate, the Gulf Coast is a patchwork of structures -- from social structures such as church groups and community organizations to financial structures such as land titles and lingering mortgages. Granted, not all the mortgages are for structures that still stand, but they are there nonetheless.

Over the course of the last year, we've learned there is no such thing as an empty lot. For every missing mailbox, there is a family somewhere who is still trying to get home. Many are still paying mortgages on homes that no longer exist. Help for these families has been slow in coming.

So where to begin? One lot at a time.

With the attention focused on large-scale planning efforts, officials charged with leading the reconstruction have overlooked the obvious: With a little bit of financial support and technical assistance, many families can come back and rebuild on their own. Rather than funding huge projects, start small.

In New Orleans, more than a year later, many damaged properties remain untouched after the storm, while recovery is well under way in Biloxi. Both cities suffered almost unimaginable damage from the storm. The demographics of the hardest hit areas in both cities -- neighborhoods such as the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and East Biloxi in Biloxi -- include a lot of poverty. Many families in both cities did not carry homeowners insurance, often because they inherited their homes or owned them outright and did not have mortgages that required insurance. Finally, in both cities, many of those most in need were elderly residents living on fixed incomes.

Kate Stohr is a co-founder of a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crisis and brings design services to communities in need. If you'd like to learn more about Stohr's organization, please visit: www.architectureforhumanity.org