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• Ms. Liu on the post-Katrina recovery
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Tavis: Tavis: A look at the rebuilding effort in New Orleans tonight with Amy Liu, deputy director and co-founder of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Prior to her current post, she served as a special assistant to Secretary Henry Cisneros at the Department Of Housing And Urban Development. She joins us tonight from where else? Washington. (laughs) Amy, nice to have you on the program.

Amy Liu: Glad to be here, Tavis.

Tavis: Tell me what this study by Brookings was intended to do. What'd you want to accomplish here, before we get into the details of it?

Liu: Sure. We have been releasing, since about January of 2006, a monthly progress on the recovery effort in the New Orleans area, both in the city and the metropolitan area, as well as in the state of Louisiana and Mississippi. The goal was just to let decision makers know how well New Orleans was coming back on a whole slew of important social-economic indicators.

Tavis: And the kinds of things that Brookings has been tracking include?

Liu: We have been looking at the number of public schools that have reopened, the number of public transportation lines that have been back available for residents. Number of hospitals, restaurants that are now opened.

Tavis: I wanna get to some of the specifics here in just a moment, Amy, with regard to work force and housing and infrastructure, and the like. Let me start, though, with what made obviously some news some weeks ago, and that was the reelection of Mayor Ray Nagin. The election, of course, very political, as if every election isn't. (laughs) But this one, really political. Tell me how his reelection has impacted the rebuilding process.

Liu: I think the most important thing that the election has done, of Mayor Ray Nagin, is at least put some confidence into the system about who is now running the city. Because I think that many of the plans in place, about the future of the city, what the plans are for rebuilding the city, was really up in the air for a long time because they didn't know who was gonna be running the city.

Tavis: The government promised a lot of money, and I've had Mary Landrieu, the Senator from that state, and others connected to New Orleans on this program complaining, not necessarily about what the government committed, but what the government was actually delivering. So as we sit here, today, tonight, tell me how the government is doing with honoring its commitments where the money is concerned, to put it in New Orleans, on the ground.

Liu: Well, right now, the federal government has now committed over $100 billion for all the recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast. I think that, at this point, the most important piece that everyone has been concerned about is the money for the levees, and the money for restoring all the 100,000 homes that have been severely damaged in the New Orleans area.

The most important point at this juncture is how well is the Governor and the city going to be able to work together to spend down that money so that homeowners and families can get back to the city.

Tavis: How well are the Governor and the Mayor doing, then, in that regard? Since you set me up, I had to follow up.

Liu: (laughs) Well, I think they are making a really concerted effort to be a unified team when it comes to the rebuilding effort in the New Orleans area. But the details are still to be seen on how they're gonna be able to spend that money down, and to be able to let families know about how they can access those dollars.

Tavis: Let me ask a practical question here. Maybe impractical, depending on one's point of view. So the government commits over $100 billion. Obviously a good chunk of that goes to the city of New Orleans. Tell me whether or not that money that the government has committed is available now. I'm asking only because if the money is available right now from the federal government, why does it appear, at least looking from the outside, that the process is moving so slowly?

Liu: Well, first I would like to correct you and tell you that it's not clear that a lot of the $100 billion is going to the city of New Orleans. One thing I want to correct is that the vast majority of the $100 billion actually goes back to the federal government. It goes back to the FEMA for all the emergency clean-up work they did right after the storm. A lot of it goes to FEMA for a lot of the emergency housing they provided, again, right after the storm.

A lot of it goes to the Army Corps for the Department Of Homeland Security for clean-up. So, when I think about the kind of money that actually has gone to the state of Louisiana and to the city itself, it's actually quite small. And I think this is why it's really important for there to be a federal, state, and local partnership on the spend down. Because a lot of that money goes to the Department Of Education for the school reform effort that is underway.

Some of that money has gone to HHS to help them work with the state on any healthcare reform efforts they are pursuing. And obviously, the latest money, with regards to housing, those are the only ones that go directly to the state and the city.

Tavis: I'm glad you said that, Amy, because you have now provided for me, and I suspect many others watching right now, a critical and crucial distinction about what this $100 billion actually means. So, let me ask whether or not Brookings or anybody else, to your knowledge, has any idea of how much of that 100 billion the government did not allocate back to itself, but really does have a chance of landing and being used on the ground in the rebuilding effort in New Orleans.?

Liu: Tavis, I wish I could answer that question, but it's so hard to track that money. But I will have to say that I think we're only now beginning to see money being spent on the actual rebuilding effort. A lot of that money, I have to say, has gone to the emergency response right after the storm. And only now are we seeing money go into infrastructure building, into housing, and into job creation. And again, I hope that that money can be seen hitting the ground very soon. But I agree with you. The recovery and the evidence on the ground is still very thin.

Tavis: All right, let me, let me pick four areas, then, in the time that I have left, and ask you to give me an update on how we're doing or not doing in these areas. Let's start with job creation.

Liu: Well, right now, we do know that some jobs are being created or being recovered in the city of New Orleans, but it's not that many. I think I have to be frank again that we've seen only half of the restaurants back up and running, half of the hotels back up and running. So the tourism industry is doing okay, but it's certainly not at the full level it was once before.

Tavis: So you segued slightly here from job creation to infrastructure. Let's go a little deeper. How is the infrastructure there, as we speak?

Liu: Well, right now, the most important piece of the infrastructure question is the levees. Everyone has been saying, including the families and the businesses there, that they need to make sure that the city is safe in order for them to come back or reopen up their doors for customers. And right now, I think that the federal government, the Army Corps Of Engineers, still is committed to have a restored, hurricane level three levee completed by the end of this summer.

Tavis: So, with regard to the levees then, they are not at the level, as we speak now, that they need to be at.

Liu: Not yet. But I would have to say another way of looking at infrastructure that's really important to having a city come back and supporting a population is a public service infrastructure. And again, this is whether the utility infrastructure for energy and lights and traffic lights, if those are back up and running. Again, some of that is restored. Most of it, actually.

Many neighborhoods are restored. But the number of businesses and families that are hooking up to that system is still 60 percent. Which again only reinforces that not everyone has returned. The public, the hospitals, the schools, which are a really important part of public service infrastructure, that also remains very thin at this time.

Tavis: What about public safety? You mentioned public service, what about public safety?

Liu: Well, right now there was a survey that was just released, reported by the Times-Picayune today, that shows that public safety is now the number one priority of residents in the New Orleans area, particularly given the spate of increased crime the area has seen lately. And again, that means that we need to have a fully functioning government in, in the city of New Orleans.

Do we have a police force back up and running? Do we have a juvenile, or not juvenile, but a criminal justice system, and a prison system that's fully functional again, so we can return that city to a safe place.

Tavis: Speaking of public safety being the number one issue for residents in the city, let's talk about housing. How is the housing issue moving or not moving, as it were?

Liu: Well, housing is the number, well, one of the most important factors for the economy to recover there. Many of the businesses are saying that it's really hard for them to bring workers back until they have housing, and particularly affordable housing, in the city region. What we're seeing right now is rental prices are skyrocketing at this time because of the limited supply or availability of rental housing.

Which is making it very difficult for some of the workers to come back. But the other concern is that there has been some progress. One of the good things that we've seen is that rehab activity is certainly picking up in the city and in the region. That's a positive sign that folks are starting to make some improvements, and made some commitment to stay.

But the other thing that's really interesting that's happening at the same time is that the number of homes that are on sale now in the city is at the highest level we have seen since the storm hit. There are about 1,500 more homes now on the housing market since March, which could be a sign that families are finally making a decision, and...

Tavis: But Amy, I also read that many people are selling those homes for $50 or more less per square foot than they would have sold it for before the storm. So, they ain't making no money out of this.

Liu: This number is a real mixed bag. It could mean a number of things. It could mean that some families are actively deciding just to leave the city and either move into the suburbs or leave the area completely. It could mean, though, also that there are a lot of families who are really hard pressed right now to have the fiscal wherewithal to rebuild their homes or renovate their homes.

And some are actively deciding to sell their homes to speculators, to sell their homes to developers. And I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, 'cause in many respects, it is better to have someone else fix up that home and put it back on the market than have it sit, abandoned and foreclosed, for the market. So, I think we're gonna continue to see a lot of churning in the housing market. And we will see. We won't know for a while what that means.

Tavis: We'll have you back at a later time. I'm out of time now, 'cause I would love to get back to that conversation about what it does mean, 'cause I think I might have a different point of view (laughs) than you on that latter point about how we protect the cultural diversity of these neighborhoods. But that's another conversation, I gotta go now.

Liu: I completely agree with you. There's a mixed bag there.

Tavis: There you, I accept that. We'll talk about it more. Amy, nice to have you on the program.

Liu: Great to have you (unintelligible).

Tavis: It's my pleasure. Up next on this program, award-winning Nigerian novelist Chris Abani. Stay with us.