Race and New Orleans' recovery: Residents step up to bring city back
US News
Race and New Orleans’ recovery: Residents step up to bring city back
After the levees broke in New Orleans, 80 percent of the city flooded, and at the time, no one was sure if the city could come back. With the help of billions of dollars in federal aid, the city was rebuilt. For the first time since 1960, more people are moving into New Orleans than moving out, and it’s now one of the fastest-growing cities in America, attracting a young, educated, entrepreneurial class. However, there’s concern that this “new” New Orleans has left some behind, and many people are openly questioning whether it’s an issue of class as well as race.
Most of the things you know about New Orleans came from the very community that they wanna get rid of, you know. Jazz funerals, the second line, the cuisine.
Wendell Pierce, actor and New Orleans native
Rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing are pushing the mostly black, working poor out of the city, leading residents to declare that there’s a war on the poor. There are 100,000 fewer African Americans living in New Orleans since the storm, and nowhere is the lack of recovery more visible than in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. However, residents are acting. Burnell Cotlon has invested his life savings to open the Lower Ninth Ward’s first food market in 10 years and is determined to help bring his community back.
I’m gonna continue to fight until I could get my neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward to look like the rest of the city. If I have to build the businesses one business at a time alone, I’m gonna do it.
Burnell Cotlon
