Gulf Coast Recovery A Public and Private Sector Failure

Sluggish government response and a reliance on market forces have failed to resolve the housing crisis faced by thousands of Gulf coast residents, argues a recent editorial.

1 minute read

November 21, 2006, 11:00 AM PST

By Michael Dudley

"The normal hard decisions of real estate are amplified a thousand times by the possibility that a house in an empty neighborhood in a broken city could be worthless. Imagine every house in your neighborhood is damaged or destroyed. The average government award in Louisiana is $60,200, and it will cost more than that to replace your house, and more than it was worth before the storm, when every house on the block was whole and children played out front. Do you rebuild?

...[F]ederal housing money alone is not going to solve the difficulties faced by Katrina's victims, particularly in New Orleans. The normal market mechanisms on the Gulf Coast have been shattered, and they need to be repaired if Katrina's victims have any hope of putting their lives back together.

...The ruin of a region and the historic city of New Orleans could not be more important, and the tangle of destruction is nowhere near unwound."

FULL STORY: Katrina’s Purgatory

Saturday, November 18, 2006 in The New York Times

Government / Politics Louisiana

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