New Orleans is Gone
A view of the flooding in New Orleans, Louisiana from Air Force One August 31, 2005. Authorities struggle to evacuate thousands of people from hurricane-battered New Orleans as food andd water grew scarce and looters create chaos. (David J. Phillip, AP Photo)
I don’t think most people realize that New Orleans is gone. Just gone.
The people who lived there, that part of their life is over.
The ones who are refugees in the city now — like the Superdome residents the past few days — are the poorer class who didn’t have the money or vehicles to make it out of the city. But, most of the middle class and upper class did — in their SUVs and sedans. Most of them packed for a few days — like a camping trip — and they took money out of the ATM and they went to budget motels in northern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas to sit out the storm. They are refugees outside the city, waiting to return “home,” but there’s no home to return to.
City officials are forcibly evacuating the city. They won’t let anyone return for a couple of months, while they find and dispose of the thousands of dead bodies. The entire electrical grid is gone, power lines down, 80% of the city is flooded and has been for days. When a structure is flooded like that, usually you have to gut the building and do extensive renovations, but if it’s a one story home (which a lot of homes are), you just condemn it and move on.
Businesses are gone, homes are gone (even if technically still standing at the moment), jobs are gone, schools are gone. The whole economic infrastructure is gone and won’t return in its current form.
Yet, all these people are sitting in these budget hotels at $30 or $40 per night, having to feed their families fast food from the nearest McDonalds, living on their credit cards. But, it’s Labor Day weekend — the traditional start of school…. Money in the checking account is going to run low and you can only live off the credit cards for so long. All these middle class families are going to have to immediately find jobs SOMEWHERE in some town or city, put the kids in school, start re-building their lives, making car payments — finding some place to live.
They can’t wait for two months to go by — and even then, when they are allowed back in the city — they still can’t live there in condemned housing, plus there’s no jobs left nor schools. So, for the next year or two — even if they own property in New Orleans (or have a mortgage on a house), they will have to go live somewhere else. More than likely, they’ll make new friends, get new jobs — and stay. They will not go “back” to New Orleans, because that would actually mean starting over yet again — with yet another job and another move…
We’ve never seen an American city like this evacuated and abandoned. Sure, New Orleans will be re-built. But, it will be something different. It will have different owners, different residents.
When the waters recede, you are going to have lots of worthless building structures — houses, businesses, etc. They say it may be weeks before power is available. But, a city’s economy is a network that feeds off each other. Dry cleaners need customers who want to look nice, restaurants need patrons, bookstores need people with leisurely time, sporting goods stores need people who play in softball leagues… — and those places will not re-build and re-open until they see a profit potential. Yet, the people they need as customers won’t return to live without income — but all the old jobs are gone.
So, what will happen is speculators will buy up large blocks of suddenly devalued land. Maybe undervalued land? And the current “owners” will sell, because what are they going to do with a 1/4 acre where their house used to sit in a devastated neighborhood? The land will be cleared and re-built. And New Orleans will be rebuilt as a resort/casino/water front vacation destination with “historic” appeal. Casinos and hotels will re-build. Luxury high-rise condos will pop up. High-priced “tennis & golf communities” will be developed. Think a combination of Orlando and Las Vegas.
But it will take time. Three or four years ago they did a major renovation of CNN Center and that took a year! That was just one building — think of the scale to re-build an entire city. There’s just not enough construction crews. And initially, it won’t be rebuilt. The insurance companies will just pay off the owners and the buildings will be condemned — while the former residents go live their lives elsewhere, making a living, raising their kids.
Where New Orleans will be “re-built” is when developers swoop in because of the potential for profit — all of that unused land along a warm clime coastal area! Only then will the middle and upper class people will come to New Orleans to work and live, in the new economy of the “new” New Orleans.
That’s 4 or 5 years down the road at best. In the meantime, New Orleans is gone.
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Chazz Matthews Tags: Uncategorized
