When I think of New Orleans, I don’t think about the Saints or even Bourbon St. Thoughts of Olive Trees and Veronica Ave. Visions of bunk beds and hammers fill my head with joy. All I can see are the people I worked with and supported while I was there on two occasions during 2007 and 2008.

The restoration effort to return the people of New Orleans to their homes has been a slow and painful one. As usual we want some one to blame but in this case it seems to be a perfect storm of factors slowing down the progress. Bureaucracy, misappropriated funds, …you name it. A finger could be pointed in so many directions that you have to forget about blame and just start working. Problems with rebuilding stem from financial to heart ache. Many home owners are still waiting for insurance money while some just don’t have the will to return and face the anguish of rebuilding.

While progress has been made, awareness maybe NOLA’s greatest nemesis. When the local government failed, private organizations stepped in with support from around the US to start rebuilding. Presbyterian Disaster Relief (PDA) and the Peace Core have spearheaded a volunteer effort supporting 3 volunteer camps and working on more than 15 homes at a time. Olive Tree, the only volunteer camp in the city limits, houses up to 90 volunteers every week from across the country. While facilities for volunteers have increased, the demand for volunteer labor has not been met leaving many projects sitting in the que waiting for helping hands.

While progress has been made, awareness maybe NOLA’s greatest nemesis. Because of the financial support and media attention that New Orleans received in the first year after Katrina, outside perceptions are that the city has returned. Just because the Saints are playing and music fills Bourbon St. bars does not make everything alright.

From the main streets, most neighborhoods appear fine. Even driving down the side streets, although deserted, most homes appear normal. But walk up to the door or pear into a window, dig a little deeper and you find rebuilding that could take 10 years or more. Maybe even a lifetime.

The remains of homes are nothing more than skeletons waiting to be rebuilt. Stripped to the core to destroy any mold, there are nothing but the faint visions of memories as you walk around the empty rooms. Memories are all that make this foreign place a home.

The disasters severely damaged an area larger than Great Britain, turned 1.2 million people into evacuees, and destroyed 600,000 homes. Post-hurricane damage in Mississippi and Louisiana was (and still is) massive and unprecedented. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and its subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1928. Moreover, is was the most costly disaster in our nation’s history and totaled over $81.2 Billion.At Katrina’s two-year anniversary, New Orleans was still only at about 66 percent of its pre-hurricane population.

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive hurricanes in history. Two levee breaches sent water from Lake Pontchartrain, coursing through the eastern part of New Orleans, and 53 additional breaches were eventually noted. The result was that eighty percent of the city was flooded, with some areas under twenty feet of standing water. All this devastation was only exacerbated by the high population density in this world-famous city.

At Katrina’s two-year anniversary, New Orleans was still only at about 66 percent of its pre-hurricane population. Now four years after the disaster, many people still live elsewhere paying rent and mortgages while trying to repair their gutted homes. Most don’t have the money, the help, or the even the will to re-build. Even more homes sit gutted, unoccupied, and unclaimed – their owners never returned.

It has been almost four years, but the Road Home has just begun…

See more of stories of New Orleans in A New Orleans Tale

To get involved in helping New Orleans rebuild download the project PDF and lead your own group.