Even before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was in a downward population death spiral

Jeff Crouere:

A report released this week by the Rand Corporation, a non-profit think tank, shows that New Orleans will only reach 272,000 by September 2008, 58% of its pre-Katrina level. Currently, the population has reached 189,000 compared to 455,000 prior to the hurricane. The study showed that the areas severely damaged by the storm will take a long time, if ever, to return because of a lack of contractors, the high costs of building materials and the scarcity of rental units, leading to extremely high rents in New Orleans. Poor people will have a difficult time traveling back to former residences and finding the money necessary to repair or rebuild damaged structures.

However, the fact that New Orleans is facing a bleak population situation is nothing new. One striking statistic provided by the U.S. Census Bureau yesterday is that New Orleans had lost 30,000 people in the five years prior to Katrina. This is the biggest drop of any parish in the state, except for three rural parishes in the northeast section of Louisiana. New Orleans was just ahead of Jefferson Parish, who was also losing population, although very slowly.

Compared to the decline in New Orleans, St. Tammany Parish was skyrocketing, with a 15.2% growth rate in the 2000-05 years, reaching 220,000 people. St. Tammany offers residents a good quality of life with low crime, clean streets, great public schools and beautiful scenery. New Orleans had been declining for decades before Katrina ever hit. Ever since the late 1960’s, New Orleans has been losing population. At that time, over 600,000 people lived in the Crescent City. Unfortunately, the decline continued for almost 40 years prior to Katrina and was due to a host of reasons such as poor public schools, high crime, race, poor political leadership and a number of other factors.

So, even before Katrina, New Orleans was in a downward population death spiral. Katrina has accelerated what was already happening, as a once thriving city was becoming a ghost town, as one of the Queen cities in the South was rapidly becoming a tourist only destination.

New Orleans had fewer people than realized before Katrina

Study: New Orleans about half old size by '08