Robyn Braggs, another resident of New Orleans East, said, "I don't think four or five months is close to enough time given all we would need to do."
Because former residents are scattered around the country, she said, many, especially those with school-age children, "won't be able to even return to do the work necessary until this summer."
Marc Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans and current president of the National Urban League, described the commission's proposal as a "massive red-lining plan wrapped around a giant land grab."
Many homeowners will not be able to settle with their insurance companies if they do not know the future of their neighborhoods, he said.
"It's cruel to bar people from rebuilding," Morial said. "Telling people they can't rebuild for four months is tantamount to saying they can't ever come back. It's telling people who have lost almost everything that we're going to take the last vestige of what they own."
Not everyone opposed the plan. One resident of Eastover, a wealthy, largely black community in the eastern part of the city devastated by the storm, said he accepted the commissioners' challenge.
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