Hundreds of thousands of displaced residents remain dispersed across the country since August 30, when much of the city was flooded after levees along Lake Pontchartrain broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

While millions are being spent to get the city’s Central Business District up and running, working people returned to neighborhoods with no medical facilities or potable water, and sporadic phone and electrical service at best.

Several large hotels have hired hundreds of workers to make repairs and clean up. The hotels are housing thousands of cops, troops, and employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

“They’re throwing lots of money around, but they aren’t ready to open this city,” said Albert Livingston, a maintenance worker at the JW Marriott Hotel. “Opening a few hotels won’t do anything. Where will people eat, buy clothes, and shop?”

Several workers noted that, with the current labor shortage in the area, they’re able to get a somewhat better wage, if not benefits. Temporary labor agencies have placed signs throughout the city offering immediate full- or part-time employment. Labor contractors are bringing in workers from North Carolina, Texas, and Florida.

Shawn Williams, 19, from the West Bank section of the city, works for BM5 Cat, a labor contractor. He is making $10 an hour, substantially more than what he earned before the storm as an attendant at the Convention Center.

In the Central Business District, a group of four workers who had been brought in by a contractor from Texas waited on a bench. Pedro Caramiro exclaimed, “We just quit the job because of the food they give us! The contractor gives us a little roll and a small carton of orange juice in the morning. In the afternoon they feed us a sandwich with a couple of pieces of bologna, and often the bread is stale.”

The four workers, immigrants from Latin America, said they worked 12 hours a day and were paid $8 an hour. They have been housed in the Sheraton Hotel. “They feed us the same food every day and we can’t go out and buy our own because there is nowhere to go,” said Alonso Gaviro.

Many working people throughout the city returned to homes with no electricity or running water. “There is no kind of assistance,” said Juanita Willis, a cook in a nursing home who had just returned to her home in the Algiers neighborhood. “FEMA said it could take up to 120 days just to get a tarp for the roof. That’s not even to speak of fixing it.”

“This is the reason many people don’t want to come back,” said her brother, Gerald Willis, a river barge worker. “You can’t go out because of the curfew. They are out there with their helicopters shining a spotlight on you. There’s all these trees to be cleared and work to be done. People need jobs.”

Liz Zaleweski, a restaurant worker living in the Bywater district, was one of those who has refused to leave. “It’s been two weeks and we still don’t have any services. They talk about diseases but they haven’t even been by to pick up the garbage,” she said.

“I had heard about the killings in there and in the Superdome and I didn’t want to go,” she said. At the time, Dr. Charles Burnell told reporters that half a dozen rapes and three or four murders were committed on two nights that he worked in the Superdome providing medical care.“There is still looting going on in this neighborhood,” Zaleweski said. “The cops and the National Guard say no one can go one block without being spotted by their patrols, but we know that’s not true.”
 
 
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