The Louisiana Recovery Authority’s (LRA) most recent population estimates for Katrina-affected parishes (i.e., counties) are in dispute as parish officials jockey for government rebuilding funds. The LRA puts New Orleans’s population at 200,000, about forty percent of its pre-storm make-up. Mayor Ray Nagin disagrees, and it's feasible that a large invisible population exists in an urban world so tenuous as in parts of his city. A recent survey on the quality of life of New Orleanians indicates that one-third of interviewees are considering moving in the coming two years.

Researchers Report:

“To keep them from moving, interviewees said local governments need to make people feel safe, slice through red tape, fix levees, prevent flooding, repair streets, and provide more jobs and affordable housing...”

Respondents had relatively stable lives, as evidenced by their having land lines, impossible for those living in FEMA trailers. Yet, these population estimates and survey data demonstrate how the post-Katrina plight of very poor or marginalized New Orleanians has measurable implications for all New Orleanians. Furthermore, it is instructive for our national efforts to disperse the urban poor around metropolitan regions, which do little to combat the roots of poverty, but instead leaves them isolated in neighborhoods that would just as soon evict them too.

The prolonged displacement of so many New Orleanians is self-perpetuating, as their absence from the city justifies to the LRA withholding the monies necessary to help bring them home. In turn, East Baton Rouge and Jefferson Parish - adopted home to many former New Orleanians, and neighbor to Orleans Parish, respectively - compete for most populous district in the state and the funds that accompany such a distinction.

The 200 survey interviewees likely represent the 65% of current New Orleans households that are in the same home they occupied prior to the storm (accordingly, the city’s owner-occupancy rate has shifted from 46% to 62% since Katrina). Yet, they speak of the universal concerns of jobs and affordable housing in a city experiencing rental rates that are three times higher than they were prior to the storm. They also highlight the widespread concerns about infrastructure, crime and the role of government in securing the city’s safe and sustainable future. Nonetheless, the displacement of so many poor residents that many believe is essential to cleaning up the city is a phenomenon likely to deny New Orleans the full resources to rebuild.

Conversion of public housing to mixed-use properties as proposed in New Orleans (and nationwide) has the (arguably desired) effect of erasing the most vulnerable poor from urban communities. Yet, the local debate over post-storm population estimates demonstrates that far from disappearing, the displaced merely re-appear elsewhere, often with an increased need for public services. Some scholars argue that our policies towards the poor and marginalized in the US reflect a “politics of disposability.” Rather, the population shuffle in Louisiana illustrates that whether we warehouse or deconcentrate the poor, their headcount remains materially relevant to healthy and prosperous futures for all Americans.