New Orleans could lose 80 percent of its African-American population in the wake of Hurricane Katrina unless there is a special effort to help poor people return to the city, says a report on the storm's impact.
The study, based on satellite maps of New Orleans and the nearby coast and census data, confirms what many residents suspected: Katrina inflicted disproportionate damage on poor neighborhoods with high unemployment and a high number of renters. These people were unlikely to have home insurance or the necessary resources to return and rebuild.
In the city of New Orleans, three-quarters of the 354,000 people who lived in the areas worst damaged by the storm were African-American, and 29.2 percent were poor, the study found. Nearly 53 percent were renting and did not own their own home. More than 10 percent were unemployed.
"The danger in the current thinking about rebuilding is that it specifically excludes important elements of the population whose neighborhoods were destroyed, and who won't find a place in the future city. Disproportionately that means people who were African-American and below the average income of the city," said John Logan, a sociologist at Brown University, Rhode Island, and author of the study.
People living in public housing are said to have even less chance to return to their city. The local authorities have closed all public housing in the affected areas.
"If the future city were limited to the population previously living in zones undamaged by Katrina it would risk losing about 50 percent of its white residents, but more than 80 percent of its black population. This is why the continuing question about the hurricane is this: whose city will be rebuilt?" the study says.
African-Americans have already voiced fears that the new city to emerge from the wreckage of Katrina will bear little resemblance to the New Orleans of old -- specifically that it will no longer have a black majority.
Mayor Ray Nagin recognized those fears earlier this month when he pledged that he would rebuild New Orleans as a "chocolate city."
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