The black population of the city is still struggling three years after Katrina, writes Denis Staunton
AS SHARON FLETCHER looked down Deslonde Street in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans at block after block of empty housing lots, she told me why many of her fellow African- Americans had yet to come back to the city.
"They're afraid of the levee," she said, gesturing to the concrete flood barrier two blocks away.
"They think it's not intact - and they think it's a black thing. They think it will never be up to par because this place round here, it houses blacks. Most of the blacks that can't get themselves together feel it was them that were put in this crunch.
"They made sure the French Quarter and the other places with the affluent were up to par. Even the buses are not up to par down here in the lower levels where the black people live."
A handsome woman in her late 50s with a shock of orange-tinted hair, Fletcher should be looking forward to retirement but when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans three years ago, it also swept away her dreams of the future.
"I was one of the ones who was stubborn and stayed. I lost everything," she says. "I was in the Superdome. It was such a horrendous situation, I don't know if it was two days or three days."
After nine months in Texas, Fletcher came back to New Orleans to find that the jobs she had held for 26 years was gone and she spent most of her retirement savings making her house habitable again.
"The most jobs I see being offered around here are at Burger King or McDonald's," she says.
"That's fine for a young woman but at my age, I can't do that."
Two months ago, Fletcher found work with Common Ground Relief, a non-profit group that helps former residents of the Lower Ninth Ward to return to their homes, offering legal advice and job training and helping with home repairs.
Tom Pepper, the group's operations director, says that although only about one in three residents of this part of the city has returned, it's clear that many more would like to if they could.
"Two-thirds of the population, three years after the hurricane, is still receiving mail in this zip code so I think that's an indication that at least two-thirds of the pre- Katrina population still considers this area to be home," he says.
"Everybody has a right to come home. This was a very nice neighbourhood. Some of these families have been here for 150 years and this is home."
When I first met Juan Santa Maria, just after Katrina, he had been trying to leave New Orleans for a week, waiting for hours every day for buses the authorities had promised evacuees but which never came. After a few months in New Mexico, he returned home to his job in Tower Records but the store closed down a few months later and he now sees no prospect of full-time employment.
"Right now, nothing really," he says. "I do a security job a couple of days a week and special events when they come up, but I don't see any prospect of anything regular right now."
Santa Maria is hoping Barack Obama will win next month's presidential election but he's sceptical about what any new administration can do to bring New Orleans the investment it needs to develop a stable economy.
"Now that we're still in a war that we're trying to get out of, I don't know when we're going to get out of, and we've all these economic troubles that are far worse than we ever imagined, I don't know," he says.
While the Lower Ninth Ward is still struggling to get back to life, other parts of New Orleans are almost back to normal, notably the French Quarter, where drunken tourists still roll down Bourbon Street every night, roaming in and out of the adult shows and pick-up bars.
The city's upper echelons are doing fine too and Galatoire's, one of the French Quarter's finest restaurants for over a century, was teeming last week.
One large well-heeled party was in such good spirits that one of the women stood up from the table to propose a toast to the entire room. "Let's put politics aside for a moment and raise our glasses to say God bless America!" she said.
Then she started singing God Bless America and the whole restaurant joined in.
Although New Orleans votes Democratic, Louisiana is solidly Republican in the presidential race and John McCain enjoys a 15 point lead in the state.
Democratic senator Mary Landrieu, who is seeking re-election this year, has kept her distance from Obama throughout the campaign, stressing instead her record of working with Republicans to bring investment to the state.
Tom Pepper believes that for New Orleans's poorest citizens, Katrina undermined confidence in government to the point where few have much confidence in promises of political change.
"Three years ago, people never thought they'd be in this situation. Nobody ever expected to drown in their back yard and that's what happened here," he says.
"I think people are angry and it's good that they're angry because they know they have to have some control over their destiny and they can't depend on the government for everything. I just think they're wary of politicians in general. They've been promised so much and so much has not been delivered."
Sharon Fletcher admires Obama as intelligent, capable and fair-minded and she has seen many of her friends register to vote for the first time this year. She fears, however, that some African-Americans may have unrealistic expectations of an Obama presidency.
"Well, honey, I don't know," she says. "Because if he was elected, they'd expect Obama to pull a rabbit out of a hat. And if he doesn't, they'll say he's just another politician who has turned his back on his people."