after the storm

When residential architect set out to cover the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast two years after Hurricane Katrina's devastation, we assumed we'd end up with a story of hope. We did—sort of. Many of the local architects we talked to expressed optimism about the future of the region. They spoke with energy and passion about plans to renew neighborhoods, to remake cities and towns, and to fortify against the next hurricane. But the very same people, sometimes within the same conversation, also revealed serious doubts about the pace and direction of the recovery effort. Like the family of a critical care patient, they scrutinize every little change, veering back and forth between delight and despair. Especially in New Orleans, they anxiously await each new development in the rebuilding process, unsure whether it will help or harm.

In this report, we've endeavored to illuminate the good and the bad, the true signs of hope and the harsh realities of its absence. Over and over, Gulf Coast architects emphasize that people around the country need to know what's really going on in this still-devastated but still-compelling area. They're right. Its redevelopment incorporates the most crucial issues facing architects today: land use, affordable housing, sustainable design, historic preservation, and social responsibility. How this process succeeds or fails will influence architecture and planning for decades to come.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it propelled architect Kurt Hagstette, AIA, into a nomadic existence. He and his wife and children rode out the storm at his sister's house in Covington, La., then took shelter with his in-laws in Missouri. One son's private high school temporarily transferred its students to a similar school in Houston, so the family moved there and rented an apartment. “We didn't know whether they were going to board up New Orleans,” Hagstette says. As an associate at the New Orleans firm Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, which relocated to Baton Rouge, La., for three months after the storm, he spent each workweek in Baton Rouge and drove four hours back to Houston on the weekends.

Just before Katrina, Hagstette and wife Kelli Wright had remodeled a 1930s Cape Cod-style house in the Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans. They couldn't wait to get back to it, even though standing water had caused substantial damage. As soon as schools reopened and residents were permitted to return, they did, staying in another house they still owned in a part of the city spared by the storm. The Broadmoor home's first floor already sat three feet off the ground, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends, so Hagstette didn't go to the expensive, time-consuming trouble of raising it higher. “I figured I can always raise it later,” he says. “It was more important for me to get back into my house.” The family reoccupied their re-remodeled residence in July 2006, almost a year after the storm.

They count as the lucky ones, compared to some of their fellow Gulf Coast residents. As the world witnessed in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina took nearly 2,000 lives in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Hurricane Rita struck Louisiana and Texas 26 days later, hampering recovery efforts. The total cost of the damage from Katrina, estimated by the National Hurricane Center, is $81.2 billion.

According to figures released in mid-June, about 70,000 families along the Gulf Coast still are living in temporary housing units provided by FEMA. Studies by the Sierra Club and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have shown dangerously high formaldehyde levels inside the FEMA trailers—just one of the many reported problems with these emergency shelters. “People are living in inhumane conditions,” says 6-foot-7-inch architect Bruce Tolar, whose family stayed in a non-FEMA trailer for seven months while their house in Ocean Springs, Miss., underwent repairs. “I could hardly stand up in ours, and ours was a little above a FEMA standard. After two months, the cabinet doors started falling off. For those who have never had the ability to get out of the trailers, it's awful.”

Often, the trailers' inhabitants just don't have the money to live anywhere else. Many had no insurance, and their homes represented their only assets. Although Louisiana's troubled reimbursement program, The Road Home, has picked up speed recently, it still had paid only 36,655 out of 158,489 applicants as of July 16. All along the Gulf Coast, property insurance costs two to four times its pre-storm price, further hindering attempts to find or build permanent housing. Construction costs have risen 40 percent, due mostly to a shortage of qualified labor.

A visit to the hardest-hit parts of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward reveals a weed-filled wasteland where streets of shotgun houses used to sit. Storm surges swept most of the buildings there off their concrete slabs. Neighborhoods with less severe flooding still contain some boarded-up or caved-in houses on every block, mixed in with fully repaired residences.

But the damage extended beyond the physical. The displacement of many hotel and restaurant workers, who already were living on the financial edge, sent the city's all-important tourism industry reeling. In sleepy Mississippi beach towns such as Pass Christian and Waveland, which also rely on travelers' dollars for income, the storm destroyed most of the extensive historic housing stock—a key tourist attraction. Residents of Waveland and Bay St. Louis, Miss., now must drive 20 miles to the nearest surviving grocery store.

Bright spots do exist. Some New Orleans neighborhoods—especially those in the “Sliver by the River,” as the high-ground portion of the city is known—weathered the storm with minimal damage. In the Garden District, manicured antebellum mansions, chic boutiques, and fragrant magnolia trees contrast with TV-news images of a devastated city. The floodwaters also spared the wrought-iron balconies and color-drenched Creole cottages of the raucous French Quarter, and the sounds of live music once again stream out of jazz clubs there. This spring, the city's famous Jazz Fest attracted 375,000 people over six days—comparable to 400,000 over seven days in the pre-Katrina spring of 2005. Nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, ACORN Housing Corp., and Architecture for Humanity [see full story] are rebuilding working-class neighborhoods in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, house by house. “In this area, a lot of people with very modest means are finding resources to help them rebuild,” says Allison Anderson, AIA, LEED AP, of Unabridged Architecture in Bay St. Louis.

The June version of The Katrina Index, a report updated monthly by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and The Brookings Institution, holds positive news. “April delivery statistics from the U.S. Postal Service suggest that New Orleans and the metro area continue to repopulate,” the report says. “Active residential deliveries in Orleans Parish [i.e., within city limits] grew to 63.8 percent of pre-Katrina levels in April 2007.” The Mississippi Governor's Office of Recovery and Renewal reported in May that 98 percent of the state's coastal counties population had returned.

Architects from all over the country deserve much credit for the region's progress—starting with the locals who lost their homes, offices, and clients but still managed to assist their communities in the storm's aftermath. “Almost every residential architect here on the coast is involved in some kind of Katrina recovery effort,” says Dennis Cowart, whose Ocean Springs-based firm designed a memorial to the hurricane's victims in Biloxi, Miss. Hagstette ended up leading the rebuilding of Broadmoor's public library [see full story]. Another New Orleanian, Angela O'Byrne, AIA, nearly had to shut down her firm, yet she persevered by helping plan the Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference and co-founding a nonprofit [see full story]. Non-Gulf Coast designers pitched in, too, in a variety of ways. Almost 200 architects, urban planners, and landscape architects traveled to Biloxi on short notice to attend the Mississippi Renewal Forum in October 2005 [see full story]. Hundreds of firms around the world entered post-Katrina design competitions [see full story]. And architecture schools continue to send teams of students and professors to help nonprofits build houses.