Rebuilding Homes and Lives: Progressive Options for Housing Policy Post-Katrina

By Derek Douglas, Jal Metha, Joel Horwich, Jason Lakin, Lydia Bean, Andrew Jakabovics | October 14, 2005

The destruction of the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina has left more than 250,000 families homeless, and has devastated the infrastructure of New Orleans and surrounding areas. The question for policymakers is how to rebuild homes and lives, to not only provide shelter and replace lost housing stock, but to do so in a way that creates opportunity and builds sustainable communities. A new report co-authored by Center for American Progress and New Vision: an Institute for Policy and Progress offers a series of policy options, based in research and successful practice, which will allow policymakers to effectively and pragmatically respond to the housing crisis produced by Katrina.

The options presented not only seek to aid in rebuilding, but to address the shameful legacies of concentrated poverty that plagued New Orleans as well as too many other cities in our great nation.  This report offers a series of pragmatic steps that policymakers could take to simultaneously rebuild after Katrina and to create opportunity by de-concentrating poverty.

Click here to read the entire report.