Katrina’s Victims Pull Together to Rebuild a Neighborhood

By Nicole Wallace

When Patricia A. Jones looks at the neighborhood group she helped to create a little more than two years ago, she can’t believe how far it has come.

The Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association, or NENA, is leading

the fight to help residents come back to the area of New Orleans hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. In its short history, NENA has helped 1,200 people apply for disaster assistance, started a design studio to help residents manage the rebuilding process, and engaged several thousand volunteers.

“We first started with just my laptop, one table, and a chair,” says Ms. Jones. “That’s all we had.”

At the same time that NENA is working to bring back the Lower Ninth Ward, Ms. Jones, a lifelong neighborhood resident, and most of her employees are still trying to put their own lives back together.

But Ms. Jones believes that the shared sense of loss and frustration allows employees to connect with the people they serve. Now, she says, is not the time to turn inward and only concentrate on your own problems.

“What’s that going to do for the community, when everything else is rotting around you?” asks Ms. Jones. “You have to take personal responsibility and see what you can do with your skill set that you already have to help the recovery.”

10% Return Home

The challenges associated with rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward are staggering.

Multiple levee breaches after the hurricane caused devastating flooding. In some parts of the neighborhood, the force of the water swept houses off their foundations, and many more had to be torn down because they were no longer structurally sound. So far, only about 1,200 residents have returned, less than 10 percent of the 14,000 people who lived there before the storm.

Even before Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward was not an affluent area. Nearly 60 percent of residents owned their homes, but most of the people in this largely African-American neighborhood lived on low and moderate incomes.

The primary thrust of NENA’s effort to revive the neighborhood is to help homeowners who want to come back and rebuild their houses.

Case managers at the organization work closely with residents to figure out how much money they have for rebuilding, from insurance, the state’s homeowner assistance program, or other sources, and to help them apply for any additional aid programs for which they qualify. If there is a gap between the cost of rebuilding and the money the resident has been able to put together — and there almost always is, according to Ms. Jones — NENA works to fill the gap, in the form of grants as well as donated products and services.

“You can’t recover unless you know where you’re at and what you need,” says Ms. Jones.

NENA doesn’t do construction work itself, but it has started a design studio with two architects on staff to help residents manage the rebuilding process. The organization provides drawings and a list of vetted contractors, helps residents write contracts and apply for permits, teaches them how to work with contractors, and conducts periodic site visits to make sure the projects are progressing smoothly.

NENA has chosen to put its stake in the ground with this “very labor intensive work” helping residents manage the construction process, says Carey Shea, senior program director of the Community Revitalization Program at the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

Across the city, she says, most higher-income homeowners who decided to return have been able to slog through the rebuilding process, but a significant number of residents will need more help.

The Greater New Orleans Foundation, representatives of city and state government, NeighborWorks, a national housing organization, and other charities are trying to figure out just how many residents fall into that category.

“We’re really trying to get a fix on, OK, if it turns out there are 30,000 people who need intensive, one-on-one assistance like the kind that NENA provides, how many more NENA’s are needed?” says Ms. Shea.

For NENA, learning how to raise money took time, so volunteers were critical in helping the organization gain its footing — and they continue to be an important source of labor.

In the months after Hurricane Katrina, the volunteers who came to New Orleans had a hard time plugging into relief and recovery work, says Ms. Jones.

“Volunteers were looking for direction and leadership,” she says. “People needed someone to stand still long enough and say, ‘You go left. You go right. Somebody go straight down the middle.’”

The volunteers who worked with NENA often bought materials for the group — a mop, paint, tools, or even a lawn mower. Others made cash contributions to the group or bought T-shirts that NENA had printed.

“That’s how we started building our capacity,” says Ms. Jones.

In time, the group received money from the Blue Moon Fund, a foundation in Charlottesville, Va., and Mercy Corps, an international relief organization in Portland, Ore., two charities whose grant making since Katrina has focused on grass-roots efforts.

But raising money from other sources continued to be difficult. Ms. Jones says she sometimes felt like she was on the outside, looking in through a glass door. She could see other recovery groups winning grants, but she couldn’t figure out how they did it.

Things began to turn around when Ms. Jones started participating in planning meetings all over the city and volunteering on committees.

“I didn’t go in demanding money,” says Ms. Jones. “I went in building relationships. That was my intent, to go in and start seeing and learning what was going on, advocating for the needs, and while we were doing that, demonstrating that we can do this, too.”

The real breakthrough came last year when the organization received an 18-month, $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, in New York.

“That allowed me to catch a wind,” says Ms. Jones, “and say, OK, now I can do some strategic planning and start ramping up some more staff.”

‘This Is a Calling’

Ms. Jones is passionate about the work that she does, but she acknowledges that it can be draining.

Managing the organization’s growth has become a bigger and bigger part of Ms. Jones’s job. The staff has grown to 14 employees, a number that the group expected after five years but not after two.

“There are times that ideas come up, and I’ve got to go and sit in my car to have a quiet moment, because all of these people who are working need direction,” says Ms. Jones.

At home, she and her husband and their two children have faced many of the same challenges that NENA’s clients face.

The family was finally able to move back into their house at the beginning of March, but more work still needs to be finished. And they struggled to keep up with their mortgage while also paying rent for the apartment they lived in while repairing the house.

“We’ve all taken a lot of risks bringing the community back,” says Ms. Jones.

She says it would have been easier — and more lucrative — to go back to the bookkeeping and tax-preparation service she ran before the storm or to help her husband run his electrical business.

“But I believe this is a calling,” says Ms. Jones. “This is what I’m supposed to do.”