“We in storage,” said Ann Picard... “We just in storage.”

[Sapphire Blue]

Road to New Life After Katrina Is Closed to Many


Gwendolyn Marie Allen lives in a FEMA trailer near Baton Rouge with her son, who has schizophrenia, and her severely retarded brother, right.

By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: July 12, 2007

CONVENT, La. — This was not how Cindy Cole pictured her life at 26: living in a mobile home park called Sugar Hill, wedged amid the refineries and cane fields of tiny St. James Parish, 18 miles from the nearest supermarket. Sustaining three small children on nothing but food stamps, with no playground, no security guards and nowhere to go.

No, Ms. Cole was supposed to be paying $275 a month for a two-bedroom house in the Lower Ninth Ward — next door to her mother, across the street from her aunt, with a child care network that extended the length and breadth of her large New Orleans family. With her house destroyed and no job or savings, however, her chances of recreating that old reality are slim.

For thousands of evacuees like Ms. Cole, going home to New Orleans has become a vague and receding dream. Living in bleak circumstances, they cannot afford to go back, or have nothing to go back to. Over the two years since Hurricane Katrina hit, the shock of evacuation has hardened into the grim limbo of exile.

“We in storage,” said Ann Picard, 49, cocking her arm toward the blind white cracker box of a house she shares with Ms. Cole, her niece, and Ms. Cole’s three children. “We just in storage.”


Continued @ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/nationalspecial/12exile.html

[pitohui]

1. she was in storage in the lower ninth ward too

are these people fucking crazy? they would not be willing to live in a $275 slum housing in the lower ninth ward in new orleans, they write their articles from some loft in manhattan while they romanticize desperate poverty and try to slant it to sound like life is worth living like this

it just makes me sick

baton rouge is not intrinsicly worse than new orleans and for someone who can't drive, at this time of global warming, it's an improvement

i wish everyone who romanticizes slum housing in new orleans comes back in their next life and has to live in one of these slums c. 1987, too bad you don't reincarnate into the past!

[waiting for hope]

2. Since you have disabled

your profile - I don't know where you are from. Let me enlighten you, what part of "next door to her mother, across the street from her aunt, with a child care network that extended the length and breadth of her large New Orleans family." did you not understand? Perhaps, yes, the Lower Ninth Ward wasn't like Lakeview, but it was HOME, home for many families that have lived there for generations, many families that built those house with their own two hands.

I know quite a few people that lived in the New Orleans area, not in the Lower Ninth Ward, but with the same circumstances of not having any savings and not being able to rebuild and return. I lived there for almost 14 years, my husband was born and raised there, my first child was born there. This was my husband's home, and when we went back last year for a family reunion in Thibodaux, it broke our hearts to see the city the way it still was, nine months after the hurricane. New Orleans has a special culture all onto it's own and for many, the not being able to return can be a soul wrenching, life changing event.

[Minimus]

3. she considered it her home not "slum housing" - It was where her family lived.

[Sapphire Blue]

4. ..

:smilieforshakingmyheadinutterdisbeliefinresponsetoyourtotallackofunderstandingoffamily&community:

[EFerrari]

5. Without my family, I don't know what would have become of me.

This is horrible. :(