Stories

The Boston Globe

August 28, 2006

By Keith O'Brien

NEW ORLEANS - Twenty years ago, Claude and Alice Joshua, along with Alice's sister, finally cobbled together enough money on their working-class salaries to buy a shotgun-style home in New Orleans. They planned to live in it for the rest of their lives.

But one year after Hurricane Katrina's flood water wrecked their home and swallowed their Mid-City neighborhood, the Joshuas and Alice's sister, Mary Taylor, still are marooned in the suburbs, living with family and financially unable to rebuild.

The Joshuas are among thousands of New Orleanians who have not gutted the moldy walls of their home a decision that will put them in violation of a city ordinance that becomes effective tomorrow.

"I would love to get back in yesterday," Alice Joshua said last week from her daughter's house in the suburbs. "I don't want to stay here with my daughter for the rest of my life. God knows, that might not be very long."

From the moment that Katrina's flood water began to recede last September, city officials knew many people would return quickly to their homes and many would not come back. What is surprising one year later is the third category: homeowners stuck in limbo, lacking the money and, in some cases, the will to rebuild.

The windows of their homes still are broken. Front doors swing in the hot summer breeze, and refrigerators smell of rotting food. An estimated 235,000 people roughly half the city's pre-Katrina population live here now. But many neighborhoods exist in silence, and this silence extends not just into the hard-hit Lower 9th Ward and Lakeview, but far closer to downtown in the Gentilly and Mid-City neighborhoods.

Three of 10 hospitals have reopened in New Orleans. C1

The Joshuas' block, the 300 block of S. Telemachus Street, is fewer than 3 miles from the French Quarter and a case study in a city still struggling to find its way.

Black and white, middle class and working class, this block took on 8 feet of water last September, flooding historic homes and displacing roughly 55 people to at least a dozen states.

Four homeowners and one renter have since returned. Eleven new tenants have moved from other parts of the city into renovated apartments on the block. And at least two other families hope to move back by the end of the year.

An Irish pub, Finn McCool's, reopened in March and does a steady business. And developers have been buying flood-damaged houses. When Carey and Liz Corson decided to sell their home last spring, a local couple scooped it up for $30,000. The renovations are almost complete. The Corsons' old house will be on the market soon flipped in fewer than six months.

But for the majority of the people who once lived here, progress is decidedly slower. Residents of the block live in eight states, and many say they will stay where they are. When asked recently how long he planned on living in Las Vegas, where he landed last fall, Anthony Castanedo answered, "Forever."

And then there are people like the Joshuas, who want to get home but cannot, who say they want to rebuild but have not started. On this block, eight of 31 residences have not been gutted. Homes like Alvin Helton's still smell like Katrina: damp and moldy. This, too, is reflective of the city as a whole. Of the 105,000 housing units that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development declared substantially damaged by the storm, as many as 30,000 of them have yet to be gutted, Tony Faciane, New Orleans housing deputy executive assistant, said last week.

It is a stunning number roughly the equivalent of 3 out of 4 residences in Cambridge and it leaves city officials facing a daunting task. By order of the city council, homes in most parts of New Orleans must be gutted, or on a waiting list to be gutted, by tomorrow, the anniversary of the storm. Failure to do so will put homeowners at risk of having their homes declared blighted, and possibly seized by the city.

But many residents, like the Joshuas, wonder why they should worry about gutting their homes when they cannot afford to fix them.

"It will cost me more money than I have to repair the house," said Gladys Gatto, a 77-year-old resident of Telemachus Street who had no flood insurance and lives in a rented apartment in Florida. "I don't have the money. Do my children have it? Yes. But I don't take money from my children. And I don't know if New Orleans is safe. I just feel like it might be a hopeless thing."

As hopeless as it may feel, there is a plan to help bring back people like Gatto. Last week, Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco came to New Orleans and, flanked by other politicians, officially opened what the state is calling "The Road Home" assistance office.

In the coming months, 90 counselors from that office will meet with an estimated 53,500 New Orleans homeowners eligible to receive as much as $150,000 in federal grant money to rebuild.

It has been frustrating at times, Blanco conceded, to move at what she called "government speed." But she said this money, made possible by $10.2 billion in Community Development Block Grants, was about to improve people's lives.

"We have more people with bigger losses than any community, any state, any region has ever experienced in this nation's lifetime," Blanco said. "And it is massive. It is a massive undertaking. But you have to have a beginning, and this is the beginning."

Others, not in attendance with Blanco, were less confident. Loyola University law professor John Lovett criticized the program as "complex at every stage." He questioned how easy it will be for people to get grant money. Oliver Thomas, New Orleans City Council president, questioned whether some people are aware the money exists.

"Think about it," Thomas said. "If a person has had a problem a year later gutting their own house, how easy do you think it's going to be for that person to deal with the Road Home? That question kind of answers itself."

Back at her daughter's house in the suburbs last week, Alice Joshua, a retired state clerical worker who has Parkinson's disease, and wondered aloud if her husband really wants to move back to Telemachus Street.

Claude Joshua, a retired city bus driver, said he does. "We'll get back," he said, eyeing the telephone number of the recently opened housing assistance office.

Unlike Gatto, his family had flood insurance; Joshua said they received roughly $97,000 in insurance payouts in recent months. But that money, Joshua said, went to pay off the house's $65,000 mortgage a decision that mortgage holders required many residents to make after the storm.

That left the house paid for. But once the Joshuas divided up the remaining insurance money with Alice's sister, little was left over for repairs that probably will cost tens of thousands of dollars.

It is an all-too-common story, said Beth Butler, head organizer at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in Louisiana. Money has kept people from coming home, especially the elderly, disabled, and people on fixed incomes, she said. Consequently, association volunteers and employees have been gutting homes at no cost.

But Darryl Durham, director of the association's home clean-out program, said just gutting the 1,400 homes on its waiting list will take years.

"I could never imagine such a task, such a job," Durham said last week while gutting a home in Gentilly. "I feel it's one of the most important things I've done in my life. To help bring back a major American city, it's a special thing. But it's a challenge. I wake up in the morning and think, `How are we going to get through all these homes?' "

It is a question that people who have returned to Telemachus Street are asking as well. Having poured time, sweat, and money into rebuilding their homes in recent months, they wonder where their neighbors are and if they will be coming back.

Kevin Adams, a nurse who moved back into his renovated home in June, said he understands it is harder for some people. But it is not as though the last year has been easy, even for the lucky ones like him. To get back into his home, Adams said, he had to max out his credit card, borrow $15,000, and then use what insurance money he had left over after paying off his mortgage. And he still doesn't have plumbing.

But as church bells toll tomorrow morning in New Orleans to remember the people who died a year ago, there will be reason for fear and hope on Telemachus Street and elsewhere.

It is the peak of hurricane season. But more neighbors new neighbors may be coming soon, too. Just down the block from Beryl Guidroz on Telemachus Street, renovations are almost complete on the Corsons' old home. Guidroz, who returned to the block in March, cannot wait to see who buys the cute, freshly painted home that is set to go on the market in the coming days. The expected asking price: $225,000.

"Some people think we have been treated so badly," said Guidroz. "And I think, you know, there are big disasters that happen all over the globe and no one thinks it's fair. And you can either keep hacking away at what you have to do or you can spend a lot of time complaining. So I stopped watching the news. That's helped a lot."

Previous parts of this series appeared on Oct. 16, 2005, Feb. 5, and June 11. The series can be found at www.boston.com/news under "special reports."