Wet Bank Guide

What are we to make of all these population numbers? Are people coming home or not? Social scientists are strugging to define the longterm outcome of the Katrina diaspora, to determine how many of the displaced may never return, to puzzle out what communities will gain in the long term what New Orleans may lose. For the consumer, the news reports are contradictory and confusing.

First the Times-Picayune gave us this bleak assessment of the city's population on Aug. 8, estimating as few as 171,000 Orleanians have returned based on Post Office statistics dating to early June. Then on Aug. 23, we get Entergy's rosier assessment promoted from a page 3 footnote in the earlier story to the lead number in the story Entergy data shed light on N.O.'s population.

The truth is probably somewhere in between. "I still think there are a lot of electric meters for people who are not full-time residents," [Shreveport demographer Elliott Stonecipher] said. "We need to be sensitive about what is our daytime versus our permanent population."

My first question is, why did the Picayune rush back to report a story they had already buried on Aug. 8? One expects a certain level of boosterism in a city's newspaper, and the bright spots are hard to find amidst the clouds of diesal exhaust from the rubble trucks.

And what about those trucks? One thing I constantly notice in Mid-City is the continuing apperance of new refrigerators and other appliaces, signs that houses abandoned until now are being gutted. Is this just the city's deadline or is it a sign of continuing progress?

We get conflicting stories and no clear answers. Each of us is forced to look around, and make our own assessment, just as the decision to stay, return or leave is an individual decision influenced by so many unique factors.

The Houma Daily Courier story Katrina accelerated the speed of people leaving Louisiana, N.O. examines the question, and offers some debate on where those who do return may land. Not the New Orleans area is the answer they pull from the crystal ball.

While good data is hard to come by, there is a trend demographers are well aware of: Louisiana was hemorrhaging residents prior to last year’s hurricane season. Based on the most recent census, 75,000 more people moved out of Louisiana than into it from 1995 to 2000. New Orleans alone lost more than 47,000 people during the same period.
[Shreveport-based demographer and political analyst Elliot] Stonecipher said the storms have placed this historical trend into hyper-drive. Additionally, recent reports have used postal records to show the wave of people moving back into New Orleans has slowed, and Stonecipher believes a counter-wave of people moving out is about to occur.
"We don’t want to believe that any of the people that stayed are going to leave, but they are," he said. "They’re going to leave because the schools didn’t work out. They’re going to leave because of Entergy. They’re going to leave because of the mayor’s race and state politics. They are fed up, and they do not want to wait anymore."

The last bleak assessment is based on nothing cited in the story beyond Stonecipher's gut telling him that we are at a tipping point. The story suggests there is data indicating people who stayed or returned are ready to leave, but it offers no evidence, and I have no insight into Stonecipher's motivation. I'm all in betting against him, so I have my own prejudices. My own belief is that some areas of southeast Louisiana are going to gain population from New Orleans. People who can't ( or won't) come home to the city may find enough of the Louisiana lifestyle in Baton Rouge or Houma or Lafayette.

Local urban planner and political commentator Gerg Rigamer had a more upbeat take on WWL-AM drive time radio on Thursday. He suggests the population of Orleans Parish is in fact at 50% or better, and his opinion is a ray of hope of Stonecipher's gloom. He told WWL that there are more people who want to come in than [those] who cant to move out. The constraint is lack of available housing. The people who are home now are those who have a place to live. Until the housing crisis is resolved, more people simply can not come home.

Who is right, Rigamer or Stonecipher? August is an ugly time here, with the anniversary upon us and the continuing parade of bad news--Entergy rates staying skyhigh, and perhaps going higher, the state Recovery District schools in disarray-- weighs heavily on everyone. Are some people giving up on returning, or giving up and leaving? Some certainly are, and no one should be surprised when a year later only a trickle federal money has to come to the actual survivors of the storm and the the flood?

I hear that fatalism in on-line forums such as the NOLA.Com Moving To New Orleans chat room , but I suspect much of that comes from people who gave up long ago, and sit in their comfortable brick boxes on the northshore or in the river parishes and try to tear New Orleans down, to vindicate their own decision to flee the city. I do not hear that buzz on the street. For every anecdotal story of someone giving up, I meet someone on the street who has moved to New Orleans post-Flood. As fast as the debris teams can clear Mid-City, a new house is started and new piles appear.

The story you will miss if you read the Picayune online is the picture of recovery neighborhood by neighborhood that Wednesday's online graphic gives. The population of New Orleans East, measured by Entergy, is off 75 to 85%. Gentilly and Lakeview both remain depopulated by 75%. Every area has lost population, even Algiers is off 6%. There is a steady return of people, and the most devestated areas showed a real increase in meters since March, but the population remains well below 50%.

The sliver is safe, with all areas showing well over 50% population return. Where I live in Mid-City is a bit more dicey at 42%, but there was a vast population of renters, people for whom the return home is made more difficult by no real compensation for their losses, no ready assistance for landlords, and skyrocketing rents. The homeowners here are clearly trying to come back. But in Broadmoor and the Ninth Ward, in the outlying areas of Lakeview, Gentilly and New Oreans East, the return figures approaching the one year mark are bleak, 25% or less.

That's the real question I read in the storyLocal inertia dooming recovery, report says, in which Rockefeller Institute of Government of the State University of New York and the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana criticize the city for its lack of a plan. Even as we jump through every flaming hoop they put it front of us, the question keeps coming back: what is the plan?

The real answer is is again a question the Picayune and other media do not ask, or at least to not publish the answer to: what do they mean by a plan? The answer is hinted at in the stories about demographics, particularly in the graphic in today's Picayune story about population numbers, the answer to the question that's been taboo since the firestorm around the Bring New Orleans Back report. What areas may not make it because not enough people are coming home this year?

The report recognizes the challenges, citing uncertinties about flood elevation rules, the failure of the private insurance system, and the failure of the federal government to get even partial compensation into the hands of the people who need it to rebuld. But it continues to restate the question that's been stashed away since the mayor's commission first asked it.

"Without clear guidelines from community leaders about what areas will be rebuilt and when, many residents put off making a decision about whether to return, and the longer the delay, the more likely they are to stay where they are. That, in turn, has consequences for any community's long-term survival," according to Dr. Richard Nathan, co-director of the Rockefeller Institute.

Are we at a tipping point, a place where the specter of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission's recommendation that neighborhoods prove their viability comes back to haunt us? The flow of recovery money from LRA has been so slow to start that many of the worst neighborhoods have missed the chance to get home before the school year starts, which both demographers agree is an important milestone. Stonecipher says families that put their children in school this fall elsewhere may never return. I suspect that those who want to come home will, even if they have to move their children midyear. Rigamer points to the slowly opening spigot of LRA money, and argues that there will be a continued rise in population through year's end as people finally get some government compensation to help them rebuild.

Even with Rigamer's optimism, with the East, Gentilly and Lakeview still at around one-quarter of their pre-storm population, it may be time to revist the hard question, the one many of us hoped Mayor Nagin would rise to and confront once he was safely re-elected: can those outlying and badly flooded neighborhoods be saved? Is it time to start encouraging people to move into core city neighborhoods such as Broadmoor and Mid-City, where return remains below 50% but are still far ahead of the outlying suburbs? Should the city and Entergy be investing scare resource we really can't afford to restore services in neighborhoods that are a ghost of their former selves?

At the risk of angering good friends of mine who live in these places, its time we started to have this discussion, including how we might fully buy out people who've made the investment to return to places that prove unsustainable. We are now a city of half its former size. Any return to something approaching half a million citizens is in the distant future, and we need to start coming to terms with the reality around us.

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