to put those numbers in little bit of context though, right off the bat you can see how losing a large chunk of your population in just quantity of people and as taxpayers would lead to fewer buses, fewer hospital rooms, and an increase in rents (property values skyrocketed even if there was a barely inhabitable building on the land). The increase in charter schools is generally seen as a good thing because there was such a disparity between private schools and catholic tuition-based schools and the piss-poor public schools. the homeless number is probably more accurate now than it used to be because, as we all should know, counting the homeless is a hard task, so i would wager that "double the homeless" might not be true. also it's widely suspected that a large number of those homeless were actually attracted to new orleans after Katrina from many other southern cities because of the thought that the government was going to indefinitely hand out food, money, assistance, etc. many of the people "under the bridge" (which was a really kind of fucked up thing to see no matter how you look at it....a giant army camp of street people living under the Claiborne bridge a couple blocks from the french quarter) are also not displaced citizens but more of your usual social security check-cashing drug and alcohol abusers who all have sad stories no doubt, but it's not like 6,000 families lost their home and just walked over to the bridge and set up a tent.
the public housing issue is also a tough one, but most middle-class citizens see it as necessary. the Housing Developments were drug-infested, welfare-baby producing shitholes that were housing more people than they were even designed for. They were planning on tearing them down before the storm anyway and replacing them with mixed-income apartments. one of those developments was finished before the storm and is about 2 miles away from me. it looks nice, houses actual poor to lower middle class families, and businesses are being attracted back to the area. i hate to sound callous, but if you've got a huge state/federal/city funded complex that does nothing but pile on more costs with crime, unemployment, and children that either have to grow up on a welfare check and don't go to school or get taken into social services and then a storm damages that complex, the government is going to jump on that like hungry dogs on a ribeye. it's better for the city and for the honest people who are in the public housing program. the ones who are displaced? maybe it's not their fault that it's the only life they knew how to live, but, honestly, they're someone else's problem now. plus the stat about "0 apartments rehabbed to replace public housing units" is misleading. they tore everything down and they're going to build new buildings, not rehab old shit. that dream died once everyone realized how much money they could make with the alternative.
the national guard issue is a touchy one too. the neighborhoods where the guard actually patrol (they don't patrol the entire city) want them there, but because the police force isn't up to snuff yet. kind of just like parts of iraq. but the money's not coming down the same pipeline. you can't take the cash you're spending on the increased national guard duty and put it into the police force, so...for the time being they're going to stay.
and i've said it before and i'll say it again, 11 percent of people have moved back to the ninth ward...and that's 11 percent too many. the area is just too vulnerable. a lot of people there owned their houses or had had them in their families for a few generations because they were so old, but at the same time couldn't (or wouldn't) afford homeowner's insurance. so with a paltry grant people can't rebuild and even if they did, the insurance premiums have skyrocketed, so the next time a big flood comes (doesn't even have to be a hurricane), the same thing is going to happen again. the ninth ward is not a slum or a critically ignored area. it's a piece of land that is just in the wrong place, and cheap land attracts poorer people, and poor people attract sympathy.
but as far as the other stuff goes, it's mostly accurate, shocking, and disappointing. but like i said, when was the last time your government inspired any kind of confidence? why expect it now? all the good things going on in the city are being done by the people themselves, and maybe that's how it should be.
