Areas Covered:
Lakeview
There was an abandoned school that we had visited earlier this week that we absolutely had to explore. After navigating to it using the power of the Blackberry and the wonders of Google, we just had to walk through the open gate. After all, it was on public land. While shooting, a few locals from across the street came to talk to us about the state of the city. The area that we were in, known as Lakeview, had the highest return rate of any neighborhood in the city at only 38 percent. Within the city, there are still around 150 abandoned schools. The reason why is there are simply no kids to occupy the schools. Many residents fled New Orleans to go to other cities like Atlanta, where they could get jobs. New Orleans also just took Detroit's place as the city with the most blight, or abadoned buildings, in layman's terms. If you walk down Canal street, you can see all the abandoned office towers that line the six lane main drag. As we were leaving the school, a team from Florida showed up, presumably to start gutting abandoned houses on FEMA's behalf.
Day 6: Team Coal vs. Team Champagne
Areas Covered:
East New Orleans
Boondocks
Today, we headed out to St. Roch, because Amanda wanted to get a shot. Keith and I wandered off to a nearby park to talk to some contractors that were hired by FEMA to resod the parks that were annexed by FEMA for the purposes of housing the displaced in trailers. The contractor we talked to was hired to refurbish nineteen parks. Apparently, they were also supposed to be done by October 1st, but they were delayed by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. At the time of this writing, only six parks had been completed.
Following that, we headed East to go to Chuck's brother's home to see the damage inflicted by Hurricane Gustav.
Arby's is calling my name.
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