Years of efforts to protect New Orleans from floods

The city of New Orleans is rebuilding and repairing a home that was damaged by a 2005 fallout from Hurricane Katrina.

The storm has killed hundreds of thousands of homes in New Orleans, killed more than 1,800 people and expelled millions. This remains the most expensive tropical cyclone in US history, with an estimated $200.3 billion related damages adjusted for inflation.

After the storm, about a quarter of the city’s housing stock was abandoned.

“When people came back and started redeveloping, the property value was shot like crazy,” said Calvin Alexander, a long-term resident of Lower 9th Ward, one of the city’s most intense neighborhoods. said.

Just a third of residents in Lower District 9 have returned to their neighborhoods, according to Census Bureau records analyzed by the data center. The city’s overall population has not recovered completely, which has led to an increasing number of financial problems for the city government.

Meanwhile, home prices have skyrocketed in highlands, including the sacred section of the Lower 9th District, where Alexander lives. He told CNBC that the valued value of his home has increased by around 266% since 2005. In the same time frame, home prices across the Metro region have increased by nearly 71%, while home prices across the country have exceeded 84%.

The federal and state governments have spent more than $9 billion to compensate homeowners who have chosen to rebuild or abandon their property. The so-called “road home program” has been criticized for its complexity and the impact it has had on low-income residents.

Instead of setting up based on damage to property and estimated costs of reconstruction, they discarded all that data and instead used the pre-storm property value.” Repairing local homes.

Paul said that using pre-storage assessments left low-income residents with fewer resources to rebuild. The city reports higher household income and poverty rates than observed at the national level.

Many parts of the city are at risk that current premiums do not fully explain. In January, the Treasury warned that premiums were rising sharply in disaster-prone areas such as California, Florida and Louisiana.

In conjunction with Louisiana, the federal government spent about $15 billion on rebuilding a series of drains, water pump stations and levees seeking to protect local households from the storm. Ironically, some aspects of these engineering systems can contribute to local issues regarding land subsidence.

Still, the nation sees positive economic impacts from spending on storm protection. In particular, cities with important cultural and commercial institutions, such as the Caesar Superdome and the Port of New Orleans.

“We’re making a $7 benefit for every dollar we spend on these hurricane protection systems,” said Glenledette, executive director of the Department of Coastal Protection and Repair.

The state is expected to spend $50 billion over the next 50 years to keep its hurricane and storm risk reduction systems in good condition for repairs. Officials have also set a goal of increasing around 4,000 homes across the state over the next few years.

Watch the video above to learn more about how New Orleans is rebuilding in the face of future flood risks.