March 23, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
New Orleans
New Orleans’ neighborhoods are at a critical point in their recovery, LaToya Cantrell, president of the Broadmoor Improvement Association, told foundation officials and nonprofit leaders gathered here to discuss the lessons grant makers have learned since Hurricane Katrina. Now is not the time for foundations to stop making grants in the still struggling city, she said.
“Without an influx of capital, we are at risk of not acheiving neighborhood sustainability, even with large increases in community-development efforts,” she told the audience.
The city’s neighborhoods are making great progress, she said. In Broadmoor, for example, a new public school building opened in the fall, which houses the charter school that the neighborhood association started after storm, but there is still much work to be done.
Without additional disaster-recovery contributions, two things could happen, Ms. Cantrell said.
“At best, neighborhoods could be limited in achieving their true potential in transition from recovery to real sustainability,” she said. “At worst, the probability of neighborhood sustainability could deteriorate over time.”
The tipping point for Broadmoor’s resurgence as a viable neighborhood came when it reached the point when the number of occupied households reached 50 percent of pre-Katrina levels, Ms. Cantrell told the audience. From there, she said, the neighborhood really began to pick up momentum.
But she worries that there can also be “reverse tipping points.” One looming problem, she says, is the more than 60,000 blighted properties in the city.
“If we don’t come up with a real strategy to bring those properties back, it could have a reverse effect,” said Ms. Cantrell. “Blight could then turn into flight.”
To learn more about the Broadmoor Improvement Association, read The Chronicle’s profile of the neighborhood group’s efforts.
