Study: New Orleans is 90 Percent Back to Pre-Katrina Status
But, many Black neighborhoods still lag in recovery
By Christopher Tidmore
Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, annual music and cultural festivals are back to peak audiences in New Orleans,
but Black neighborhoods still suffer neglect.
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Louisiana Weekly
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Orleans Parish may not yet enjoy the 465,000 population it had prior to the evacuations of August 26, 2005, but a new study by the New Orleans Data Center may be on track to return to that number.
As researchers Allison Plyer and Vicki Mack explained, “Ten years after Katrina, more than half [or] 40 of New Orleans’ 72 neighborhoods have recovered over 90 percent of the population they had before the levees failed. There are 16 neighborhoods that now have a larger number of active addresses than they did prior to the levee breaches.”
They did caution that 15 of these neighborhoods largely did not flood because they are in the “sliver by the river” or on the West Bank. Nor is there evidence that the city’s Black population has rebounded to the degree of the Caucasian populace.
Past Data Center studies have suggested a fall of more than five percentage points in the total African-American population, and this July 13, 2015 report seems to confirm those previous findings. It noted, “[F]our neighborhoods have less than half the population they had prior to Katrina, including three public housing sites that have been demolished to make way for new mixed–income housing.
They include B.W. Cooper, Florida Development, Iberville, and the Lower Ninth Ward, which was the most heavily damaged neighborhood of all when the levees failed. The Lower Ninth Ward, the one of the four that is not a public housing site, is bordered by canals to the west and north.”
It also goes without saying that all of the above neighborhoods were overwhelming African-American.
Nevertheless, hopefully, the report stated, “Overall, New Orleans continues to grow 10 years after Hurricane Katrina. The most recent population data from the U.S. Census Bureau are estimates for 2014. According to these estimates, between 2010 and 2014, the New Orleans population grew 12 percent, and New Orleans was ranked 28th on population growth out of 714 U.S. cities with populations of 50,000 or more.”
Plyer added that more current data from Valassis Inc. on households receiving mail suggests the population grew another one percent from 2014 to 2015.
“All told,” she explained, “New Orleans households receiving mail have increased by 19,651 since June 2010, with fully 65 of 72 neighborhoods experiencing gains.”
Most importantly, neighborhoods most heavily flooded by the levee failures grew the fastest. These tended to be Black-majority areas prior to Katrina (though not all). As she observed, “Most of these heavily damaged areas experienced double-digit percentage increases between 2010 and 2015, including growth rates of more than 30 percent in Filmore, Holy Cross, Lakeview, Lower Ninth Ward, Pines Village, Pontchartrain Park, and West Lake Forest.”
Uptown and Downtown have done the best post-Katrina. Almost all of the “sliver by the river” neighborhoods added households between 2010 and 2015. “The biggest gainers in this section of the city (and the number of households each gained) were the Central Business District (CBD) (1,355), Tremé/Lafitte (545), Lower Garden District, which encompasses some of the Warehouse District (321), and the Bywater (297).”
Seven neighborhoods lost households from June 2010 to June 2015. Of those neighborhoods, five were on the West Bank, including Behrman, McDonogh, Old Aurora, New Aurora/English Turn, and U.S. Naval Support Area.
Looking at changes from 2014 to 2015, eight neighborhoods gained more than 100 new households: CBD, Central City, St. Roch, Little Woods, Lower Ninth Ward, B.W. Cooper, Seventh Ward and Tremé/Lafitte.