Freret Street Revisited
Throughout New Orleans residents band together to regroup and rebuild
When it comes to their people skills, New Orleanians have for centuries prided themselves on a couple of things: being generous in their acceptance of human frailty, and tolerant of the ghost stories told to them by others. One year since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, killing some 1,700 and uprooting thousands in a diaspora not seen since the Dust Bowl, these are a fraction of the survival skills that come in handy in a town filled with empty homes still scarred with traces of grimy floodlines-and haunted with the memories of loved ones no longer living in them.
Today the city is at under half of its pre-Katrina population of 455,000. Most residents have yet to return, and those who have managed to make their way back are greeted with the specter of levees that still cannot withstand another big storm, insurance payouts that may never come, and a city government whose push-me, pull-you planning initiatives have stalled time and again.
On Freret Street and in the city's 72 other neighborhoods, the absence of a master plan has forced residents to take matters into their own hands, to rebuild in the face of local leadership that the most charitable of Crescent City inhabitants have dubbed "nonchalant." On any weeknight, after their day jobs are done, folks get friends together to gut mold-infested homes in the Ninth Ward, recruit neighborhood kids to paint street names on salvaged two-by-fours in Broadmoor, and sell T-shirts to raise money for the likes of, say, fire stations in Lakeview. "The best things happening in this city are happening without and in spite of the government," says Lauren Anderson, director of the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services on Freret Street, where the office file cabinets are now up on cinderblocks and clients stop by with tales of skyrocketing utility bills and homeowners insurance rates that have doubled since the storm-even for houses that weren't touched by floodwaters.
In the meantime, residents disgusted with the pace of planning have begun to pull up stakes and leave, heartsick at spiraling murder rates and beaten down by the accumulation of daily indignities: monster potholes, weak water pressure, and dwindling access to day-care centers, 80 percent of which have disappeared since the storm. Some are simply getting priced out-rents have risen 40 percent, because so much of the housing stock is uninhabitable. For those who remain, the enormousness of the task can be overwhelming if you dwell on it, says Anderson. It's tough to take in the scope of cleanup necessary for a storm that created, for example, 50 million cubic yards of trash (with 8.2 million collected as of July, according to city estimates)-and that has left a quarter-million wrecked cars on the streets, which the city only recently began towing away, to much fanfare. "Sometimes," says Anderson, "the only way to be here is to live in denial."
Carnage. Sarah Parker faces the stark reality of the storm's aftermath every day at the eastern end of Freret Street, near what have long been a handful of "hot" drug corners. When U.S. News met her in December, she was lonely, missing her sister and niece who once lived next door. Today, she is growing increasingly concerned with violence that is shocking even in a city that has long vied for the dubious distinction of murder capital of the country: A quintuple homicide just a few blocks from where Parker lives forced the city to call in the National Guard earlier this summer. But not much has changed. "Oh, Lord, that crime is bad," she says, sitting on her stoop as she surveys two teens strolling down the sidewalk across the street. Notorious drug dealers, she explains as she waves congenially in their direction. "You can't let them know you're scared." While the homes across the street have recently been repainted in bright yellows and pinks, most remain empty and feel incongruous on this street where so many others remain abandoned. Next door, kids climb in and out of windows at all hours to stash drugs and light up "Lord knows what," says Parker. "They put their little stuff in the house, up under there,"she adds, pointing to the window screens.
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