Trust, partners press on with Coast recovery.

BY KIM O'CONNELL

	At a New Orleans demonstration project, college students from Virginia Tech clear and clean Mildred Bennett's house in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward. (Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans)

After hurricane katrina ravaged her historic New Orleans neighborhood, Bari Landry was determined to save her house. Floodwaters had coursed through the 1923 bungalow in South Lakeview, upending appliances and furniture and destroying treasured belongings. Mold quickly set in, covering the lower walls like a hideous wainscoting. But the structure was solid, its walls and ceiling intact. Optimistic that the house could be restored, Landry turned to the National Trust and the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans (PRC) for help.

Today, the Landry restoration is one of more than a dozen demonstration projects—known collectively as home again!—that the Trust and its partners are spearheading throughout the Gulf Coast. The projects, which provide bricks-and-mortar aid to needy families and inspiration to others considering whether to restore, form just one part of the Trust's hurricane recovery effort. In addition to providing technical assistance, the Trust has been raising more than $1 million in recovery funds, advocating rehabilitation tax credits and other incentives, and working to convince lawmakers, officials, and property owners that historic neighborhoods should be restored.

"The Gulf Coast remains one of the nation's most important centers of economic activity, and so many historic buildings are where its people live and work," says Peter Brink, the Trust's senior vice president for programs. "Federal, state, and local governments—given adequate resources—should make every effort to save those buildings."

Demolition was a chief concern for preservationists in the months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as government officials began to survey neighborhoods. In New Orleans alone, city officials examined approximately 120,000 buildings, red-tagging those deemed unsafe. Although only four percent of surveyed houses were judged uninhabitable, preservationists are working to ensure that even those are not demolished unnecessarily. "Our overall focus is helping people get back into their houses," says Patricia Gay, PRC executive director. "There is still too much eagerness to demolish. Even a very blighted property has great potential. Equity is created whenever a historic house is restored—equity that for decades has been denied to so many homeowners and their families by the erroneous thinking that it is not worth it to restore."

For more of this article, look for the March/April 2006 issue on newsstands or e-mail us to purchase a copy. Subscribe to the magazine.

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