Hurricane Katrina altered the city of New Orleans so drastically that officials there are still scrambling to construct a reliable demographic portrait of the city. A report from the Census Bureau last week provides a variety of data that should prove useful to the task. One number in the accounting stands above the rest. According to the report, there were 343,829 people living in the city in April 2010, a 29 percent drop from the 484,674 reported in 2000. The decline in population likely will have long-term repercussions for the city.
The report shows that the racial composition of the community has changed drastically in the wake of the hurricane. According to a sociologist who analyzed the census report for The New York Times, New Orleans has about 24,000 fewer white residents than it did in the 2000 census. Even so, the proportion of the white population has increased to 30 percent. The change in proportion of population was fueled by what appears to be a mass exodus of black residents.
Indeed, the analysis of the 2010 census indicates that New Orleans, once two-thirds black, is now less than 60 percent black. In addition, the census indicates there was a drop of about 44 percent in the number of children living in the city.
The drop in population will be felt on many fronts, but its most dramatic and long-lasting effects are likely to be most noticeable at the state and federal level. Since appropriation of funds in many federal programs is based on population, the lower figure could prove costly to New Orleans. Housing, infrastructure and public health programs are likely to be the hardest hit.
If that proves to be the case, New Orleans will have suffered a double blow — the damage done by Katrina and a significant reduction in federal funds to rebuild the community.
The federal government can minimize the harm done by the population-funding matrix by granting an exception. New Orleans surely can prove that the money is necessary if the city’s well-documented rebuilding effort is to succeed. Even so, even the best prepared appeal might fall on deaf ears. The new Congress is reluctant to appropriate funds, even for the most worthy projects and programs.
Similar battles loom in the state Legislature, where the population decline has reduced New Orleans’ influence. For years, the city was routinely exempted from complying with many state laws. Its representatives were able to force passage of a rule that exempted any city in the state from certain regulations if that city had a population in excess of 400,000. At the time the rules were approved, the only city in the state that came close to that number was — you guessed it — New Orleans.
Whatever the legislature does when it tackles that issue and others than affect post-Katrina New Orleans, there’s sure to be fireworks as suburban and rural legislators do political battle with a subdued New Orleans delegation. Indeed, legislators from nearby communities are likely to be in the forefront of any battle involving special funding for New Orleans.
Nearby Jefferson Parish grew by 60 percent and St. Tammany Parish grew by almost 65 percent, according to the census report. Representatives of both parishes, joined by others where populations are moving in an opposite direction to that of New Orleans, likely will make common cause in the effort to secure funds and other benefits for their own projects. A diminished New Orleans is likely to be the loser of those skirmishes.
The same thing is likely to happen when the legislature tackles redistricting. Louisiana has lost a legislative seat, though that might have happened even if Katrina had not hit. Nevertheless, mandated Congressional redistricting could reduce New Orleans’ power in the state’s congressional delegation. If that occurs, the city will lose influence on both the state and federal levels.
One thing seems certain. Despite protests about an undercount, there will be official protest. City officials say such challenges rarely succeed. Their time, they say, is better spent on rebuilding infrastructure and providing services for current residents and for those who might return to the city in the future. Given the need for expediency, that is a sensible decision.
New Orleans was not the only city ravaged by Katrina, but it is the largest and most familiar to the public. The information gathered in the wake of the hurricane has changed the way that people and institutions react to predictions of fierce storms and other natural disasters. That lesson came at considerable cost. More than four years after the hurricane hit, New Orleans still has much to teach as it continues to work through the physical, fiscal, civic, social and demographic issues that are the lingering legacy of the storm.