HOUSINGNEWSREPORT
are filled with potholes, abandoned cars, wrecked houses and vacant lots. Morris also worries that rising insurance rates and home prices will push many renters and homebuyers further out into the suburbs. “Property insurance and landlord insurance is very high,” said Morris. “And there’s not a lot of insurance companies writing policies. We want to make sure everybody is paying less than 30 percent on housing.” New Orleans East and St. Bernard Parish are other outlying areas still struggling to rebound from the devastation of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans, a Renter City In New Orleans, 55 percent of the city’s housing stock is rentals, according to the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center . Since Katrina, renting has become significantly more expensive in ‘The City that Care Forgot.’ In 2000, the average family
spent only 13 percent of their income on rent in the city. Now renters pay 35 percent on rent. New Orleans has 86,300 rental homes. With a median household income of $36,964 in the New Orleans Parish area of 389,600 residents, home prices — and rents — are rising rapidly for most local New Orleanians, according to the Census Bureau . “Since Hurricane Katrina, home values have risen 54 percent and rent is up 50 percent,” according to an editorial in The Times- Picayune . “The annual household income needed to afford rent in New Orleans is $38,000, but 71 percent of workers earn on average $35,000. The average yearly income for service workers is $23,000 and only $10,000 for musicians. New Orleans has only 47 affordable rental units for every 100 low-income residents. Thirty-seven percent of households in the city are paying half of their income for housing, which is much higher than recommended.”
Eleven years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has been altered, and not just by nature. In some ways, the Crescent City is booming like never before. In others, it is returning to pre-Katrina poverty and violence, but with a new sense of optimism for many. Indeed, New Orleans is still a work in progress. A lot has happened in New Orleans since Katrina, to the city, to real estate, and to its people. But ironically, natural disasters are good for rehabbers, flippers, historic preservationists and real estate developers. Natural disasters wash the slate clean, sweeping away the old and ushering in the new.
Still, the “new” New Orleans’ future now looks brighter.
Where Do We Go From Here?
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