Rebuilding New Orleans: The Struggle Continues

We focus on New Orleans and the ongoing struggles around rebuilding the city after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. On a visit to the devastated city for the first time in three months, President Bush said Thursday "I will tell you the contrast between when I was last here and today is pretty dramatic.

Earlier this week, Bring Back New Orleans, the city's rebuilding commission, unveiled the first of seven reports that are part of a sweeping re-development plan for the city. The committee's proposal was presented at a meeting on Wednesday with hundreds of residents in attendance. Most of the residents responded to the proposal with anger and frustration when they heard that it would give neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city four months to a year to prove that they should not be bulldozed. Under the proposal, residents in the hardest-hit neighborhoods would not be permitted to move back for at least four months. During that time, leaders of each neighborhood would have to submit a recovery plan that would have to be approved before residents would be allowed to come back. Neighborhoods that are not able to come up with a plan or that do not attract enough development within a year, would be bull-dozed. The proposal was put together by the commission's urban planning committee, which is headed by the multi-millionaire real estate developer Joseph Canizaro.

Also this week, a deal was reached to stall many evictions of evacuees staying in hotels throughout the city. In the last few weeks, a number of New Orleans Hotels had notified evacuees that they would soon be evicted to make way for tourists who had booked rooms during the Mardi Gras celebration at the end of February. About 15,000 of the displaced are staying in hotel rooms in Louisiana - most of them are located in New Orleans.

* Marc Morial, President of the National Urban League. He was also Mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002.
* Tracie Washington, attorney focusing on civil rights law, education and labor/employment law. She is currently representing a number of evacuees in New Orleans who are staying in hotels and are facing eviction.

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