Policy Briefs: After Katrina

Doing away with disaster assistance entirely is impractical and relying on it as the sole response to catastrophes is unfair. Some sort of modestly subsidized government catastrophic insurance would seem be a reasonable compromise between insurance mandates and disaster assistance strategies.

Over the coming years, massive sums of money will be invested in rebuilding New Orleans. Much of this investment must go to physical infrastructure, but without parallel investments in affordable housing, quality public schools, effective job training, health care, and other social infrastructure, New Orleans will not attract back as many families nor can it become a city where all residents enjoy opportunities for security and success. This essay synthesizes a collection of proposals to guide the city's social reconstruction, all of which hold promise for connecting New Orleans' low-income residents to mainstream social and economic opportunities.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the New Orleans health care system. The devastation was especially profound for the low-income uninsured, most of whom depend heavily on a handful of providers. Focusing on the low-income population, this essay examines some of the early responses to the many health care issues that surfaced in Katrina's wake, and discusses emerging issues that both private and public decisionmakers will face. One potential strategy for rebuilding is a health care safety net based on a continuum of care to low-income residents, integrating a network of community clinics with a new but smaller Charity Hospital.

New Orleans has been called the soul of America. Its art and culture are intrinsically valuable as expressions of a people. But they are also part of everyday living and essential elements of the city's social capital and economic development. Many cultural bastions are the poor of New Orleans--mostly African American residents from communities that were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. This essay discusses prospects for rebuilding New Orleans' culture, with an emphasis on root cultural practices, and offers recommendations for resurrecting and strengthening the continuum of opportunities for cultural expression--formal and informal, amateur and professional--that made New Orleans what it was.

Babies, toddlers, and preschoolers were doing badly in New Orleans before Katrina and are vulnerable to emotional and developmental damage afterwards. To heal the damage and narrow the gap in school readiness, these youngsters need high quality early childhood programs that blend health, mental health, and learning, along with support for parents. An ambitious plan to bring back families with young children and give them what they need should be a cornerstone of New Orleans' redevelopment, building on the proven model and national infrastructure offered by Head Start/Early Head Start and drawing in additional local partners and federal funding.

In Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, several hundred thousand former residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast lost their jobs. In this paper we review some of the short- and longer-term challenges and uncertainties involved in tackling labor market issues in rebuilding New Orleans. We also present some policy proposals for addressing them. The needs of those returning to New Orleans, as well as those who choose to remain or go elsewhere, are considered. We argue that, for fairly modest public expenditures, the labor market disadvantages of many current and former residents can be addressed and their long-term employment outcomes improved.

The most vulnerable populations in New Orleans--the elderly, people with physical and mental disabilities, and single mothers out of the labor market--arguably were hit hardest by Katrina. These groups had the highest poverty rates and the fewest assets. Most were African American. Many depended on the social safety net for survival and on others to avoid the storm's catastrophic effects. Rebuilding presents New Orleans with a unique opportunity to strengthen its safety net for vulnerable populations that return and for others who will require help in the future.

Louisiana's nonprofits are poised to play pivotal roles in the state's recovery through job training, health care provision, affordable housing construction and more. This brief presents survey results, detailing the operating status and needs of Louisiana's charitable organizations in hurricane-affected areas. It finds fewer than half of the nonprofit health and human service providers surveyed are fully operational--and in the New Orleans area, fewer than half are providing any services at all. They expect their recoveries to be slow, despite an initial influx of donations, and cite providing housing for staff and volunteer reinforcements as necessary to meet community needs.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed most of New Orleans' public education system. As the region rebuilds, public school availability--and quality--will play important roles in determining whether families return. For the foreseeable future, the system will need to operate amid uncertainty about how many students it needs to educate and how they will be distributed across neighborhoods. The city and state response to the challenge must be aimed at two key objectives: adaptability and quality. This essay draws upon recent experience in other cities to outline a strategy for rebuilding New Orleans' public education system. If such a strategy is implemented, it could pioneer new ways of organizing public education in cities nationwide.

The challenge of rebuilding New Orleans and providing housing for its residents is immense, with tens of thousands of families displaced, their former homes destroyed or damaged beyond repair. The situation is especially difficult for families who lived in the poor, mostly African American neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the flood damage. The challenge going forward is even greater if New Orleans is to avoid old patterns of concentrating assisted housing and poor families in a few isolated communities. In this essay, we draw on evidence from innovative housing programs and development initiatives to outline a strategy that would allow New Orleans to recreate itself as an economically diverse, inclusive city that offers its low-income residents authentic opportunities. With careful planning by and for all, New Orleans can bring back its families and offer them homes in vibrant mixed-income communities.