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Private dollars leading recovery of New Orleans
With government money for New Orleans trickling through the pipeline, private foundations, wealthy individuals, and philanthropies are playing a larger role than expected.
from the June 27, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
Building public works in areas of heavy resettlement is not only practical but also will encourage more private investment, says Professor Ahlers, who founded the New Orleans Neighborhood Empowerment Initiative.
Onerous government red tape and demands for careful auditing of public funds have contributed to the glacial pace of federal reconstruction dollars into famously corrupt southern Louisiana, experts say, thus partly driving the city's early reliance on charity for rebuilding.
But others say it's common for government's capabilities to falter in a situation where damage is beyond comprehension and private money fills in the gaps, says Erwann Michel-Kerjan, managing director of the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
"There's been ... an awful lot of waiting around and an awful lot of promises that help was just over the hill," says Ahlers. "Now, a lot of neighborhood leaders have begun to understand that the cavalry [the government] is not coming."
Meanwhile, some have taken action, drawing on private money:
• Thousands of Vietnamese immigrants have resettled in New Orleans East, building everything from an urban farm to a community senior center with privately raised funds.
• Actor Brad Pitt, who recently moved to the upper-class Vieux Carre neighborhood with his partner, actress Angelina Jolie, and their children, is using his celebrity status to help Global Green, a progressive nonprofit raise money.
• This month the organization opened an energy-efficient school in the 7th Ward, one of five that will eventually be funded with donations from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.
• The Baton Rouge Area Foundation raised $12 million, which was primarily used to hire professional planners to help all New Orleans neighborhoods plan for inclusion into the unified plan. Orleans parish was considered first for federal funding by Louisiana recovery officials partly because of the foundation's work.
"A lot of us were naive in the early days that it was going to be easy somehow, and that we could put this thing together fairly quickly," says John Spain, executive vice president of the foundation. "The plan took longer than people thought it should, but ... now that there's a blueprint, you're seeing a lot of philanthropic dollars."
In a city known for its strong top-down government, the ability of citizens in New Orleans to influence the recovery plan is a sign of success, some say. "[Reconstruction] has to be a collective force, and that's the beauty and challenge at the same time," says Professor Michel-Kerjan.
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