According to The Lens, before Katrina New Orleans had 25,000 derelict properties and the storm more than doubled that number. The city issued 24,000 demolition permits since the storm, and the combination of copious FEMA money and fervor to remove blight resulted in a lot of knocked-down buildings. The Lens created an interactive map of all the demolition permits issued, with before-and-after photos of 150 of these properties.
The disparity in the photos — some depict overgrown lots while others show homes much larger than the ones knocked down — show uneven recovery of neighborhoods post-Katrina. The Lens highlighted the stories of eight of the property owners: stories detail owners' fights to keep their homes, broken promises of development, vulnerable homeowners who fell victim to a scam, and the city demolishing homes without owners' knowledge.
· Missing Home [The Lens]