Most of New Orleans remains a ghastly ruin six months after the greatest disaster to hit a U.S. city. And if you are an elected official in Louisiana, the Bush administrations rejection of the states preferred plans for rebuilding areas flooded by Hurricane Katrina, including creation by the federal government of the Louisiana Recovery Corp. to buy and redevelop broad areas of the city, is a stinging disappointment. The White House is telling Louisiana that it must make do with $6.2 billion in Community Development Block Grants and the workings of the free market before further funds will be provided. To some Louisianians and experts in housing and development, the healing capability of the free marketsincluding the initiative of contractors both from and recently arrived in New Orleansprovide some of the most promising signs in a sea of destruction.
One example is Derick Labotrie, who in late March was busy supervising a crew of Hispanic workers he had recruited only one day earlier as they renovated a house in Orleans Parish that had been flooded. Labotrie says he owns nine rental units in another part of the the city, all of them destroyed. Now he has to get money to meet the mortgage payments on those properties. I need cash flow, he says, and so he turned to home repair.