The Gulf Coast One Year after Hurricane Katrina: Residents Still Putting Lives Back Together
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 8/22/2006
Life for many Gulf Coast residents a year after Hurricane Katrina ripped through their neighborhoods has been a series of ups and downs. And in the last year, residents, uprooted and distraught, have continued to pick up their lives even as their plight fell off the radar of the media and many political leaders.President Bush, for example, didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina and the poverty it exposed in his much-publicized speech at the NAACP convention in July.
But restarting their lives is very much on the radar of many Gulf area residents.
Todd Spriggins, a fourth generation New Orleans resident and ex-Marine, built his custom cabinet business one machine at a time.
Katrina destroyed his machines, equipment, and lumber. "The first time I walked in here, this was really devastating," said Spriggins, 37. "This was my meal ticket."
Spriggins said that the Small Business Administration (SBA) had "no consideration for the disaster" when handling his application for a loan to rebuild, so he tapped into savings and borrowed from family to rebuild.
Today, Crescent City Custom Cabinets is up and running. Spriggins said he couldn't wait for federal assistance because "the business is here, it's starting now."
In Dawn Peterson's case, she hasn't even found a job. Former 2005 Miss Wheelchair Louisiana, Peterson has been in a wheelchair for 15 years - the result of a carjacking - and has two degrees.
Peterson contacted several employment agencies and saw her rent skyrocket from $800 a month to about $1,200 a month. "You can imagine how difficult it is for able-bodied people and then think how much more difficult it is for someone who is disabled," said Peterson. "They used to make accommodations for the disabled, but with rents what they are, a lot of people aren't putting in wheelchair ramps or providing that kind of access."
Local advocates say that housing and economic disparity remain the biggest struggles for folks returning to the Gulf Coast region. "Blatant housing discrimination is on the rise," said James Perry, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. "Already we're seeing renters - and New Orleans was overwhelmingly a city of renters - being forced out of the market."
These stories are not unique. More than 81,000 businesses were impacted by the storm, which has cost the region nearly 450,000 jobs, according to a new brief by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF).
In addition, the brief states that the SBA has denied 11,500 loan applications and only 4,200 of the 11,400 that were approved have received any money.
Wade Henderson, executive director of LCCREF's legislative arm, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights said that more aid is needed from the government in order to fully restore the region. "In the aftermath of the storm, there was an outpouring of help from ordinary Americans. But government, having made so many promises, has been slow to deliver and, in some cases, hasn't delivered at all," said Henderson.
