What the community development field can learn from Katrina

Recently released, Katrina, After the Flood, by NY Times reporter, Gary Rivlin, is a rich and focused look at the efforts to help New Orleans recover and is full of lessons for any one who cares about improving conditions in America's cities.  There are some inspiring successes and too many colossal failures in the efforts to bring New Orleans back.  There are the depressing and even comical leadership failures of Mayor Nagin and President Bush but even more disturbing is the sheer inability of government bureaucracies to even care about being effective.  In the chapter entitled "Eight Feet Across," Rivlin describes how the state of Louisiana hired a consultant to map out how to use HUD funds that had been provided for rebuilding housing.  His flow chart laying out the steps required to secure HUD funds was eight feet across.   Said an official working on the recovery, "It took us six months just to get two feet."  Even in the midst of one of the worst disasters in our lifetime, HUD could not get out of its own way.  Many American cities face the same challenges of disinvestment and population loss that devastated New Orleans (although in a more slow burn kind of way) and an effective public sector will be essential to their revitalization.  But we are going to need to revitalize or recreate the agencies that are suppose to help.