No Katrina Recovery for Lower Class

The government has poured $143 billion into Hurricane Katrina recovery, but most of that money has gone to the city’s predominantly white middle and upper classes, the Washington Post reports. A federal judge this month declared that Louisiana’s system for distributing funds to property owners to rebuild discriminated against black homeowners—which might explain why black people are more than twice as likely as whites to say they haven’t recovered from the storm.

“The recovery is really the tale of two recoveries,” says an executive from one advocacy group. “For people who were well off before the storm, they are more likely to be back in their homes. For those who were poor or struggling, the opposite is true.” Though 78% of the city’s population has returned since the storm, only 24% has returned to the Lower 9th Ward. The oil spill hasn’t helped either; for one area’s struggle with the twin catastrophes, click here. (More New Orleans stories.)