Focus on the Victims--Not on New Orleans

Without question, there is a role for the federal government in the rebuilding of lives in the devastated Gulf Coast. That's where the emphasis belongs--on people, not on buildings, or even places.

This notion came to me recently as I was discussing the future of New Orleans with a group of evacuees in Houston. Sherby Guillory, a displaced student at Tulane, had this to say about what he saw as the current emphasis on rebuilding the physical charms of his city.

"Seems to me," he explained, "that they all want to rebuild a shining city on the hill--but without the people."

A student of both social work and Louisiana politics, Guillory has a keen sense of Crescent City reality. Parts of New Orleans are simply too valuable not to be rebuilt. Places such as the French Quarter or the Garden District are what he figures to be parts of the renewed "city on a hill." They are also, according to most geologists, the parts of the city least vulnerable to flooding and easiest to protect.

Sadly, you can't say that for the homes in the "other" New Orleans--the poor, working-class and overwhelmingly African-American city. This is the city of low-lying, wood-framed houses that are already moldy, perhaps beyond repair.

Poverty was rife in this New Orleans, and getting worse. Roughly one in four city residents was poor, and of the poor more than 80 percent were black. About 100,000 lived in what demographers define as "high poverty zones," where more than 40 percent of the residents were considered poor.

It's unlikely there's going to be much pressure to rebuild these areas. The cultural elites and those who hope to cash in on a restored tourist economy have no use for these parts of the city. They probably won't even need most of the workers who came from there either, since they can get them readily enough from Mexico.

So instead of focusing on pieces of ground in New Orleans, let's put our efforts into helping restore the lives of the people devastated by this disaster. Where this happens, suggests former Houston Mayor Bob Lanier, is not so critically important. "It's about creating new, cleaner, better places for these people," he said.

One possibility might be helping displaced New Orleans residents into the new neighborhoods that KB Homes hopes to build farther upriver. It can also be in assisting people to integrate into healthier, more diverse economies, such as Houston, Dallas, Phoenix or, for that matter, Atlanta.

The federal government can help this process through housing assistance, job training and other programs. Much of the lead will no doubt be taken by the nonprofit community, particularly the churches that have performed so brilliantly in this crisis across the country.

Ultimately, business interests can and should pay most of the cost for constructing a "city on the hill" that will benefit tourists, developers and architects. The federal government's proper role, as well as our personal efforts, should be directed toward restoring hope among those who lost their homes and need to build anew.