Why New Orleans population is shrinking

The Daily Advertiser:

Jacob Ambrose knows the blessings that can come after the storm.

Two years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Ambrose home in east New Orleans, the Carencro Middle School teacher is happy, at peace and lives in a house nestled in a wooded area in Maurice with no bars on the windows.

"We always knew we would get back on our feet," Ambrose said from his language arts classroom in Carencro.
But getting here wasn't easy.

The Ambrose family - wife Patrice, who is a psychiatrist, and four children Jasmine, Kelsey, Jacob and Kaylin - headed to Lafayette for the weekend before Katrina hit to spend time with Patrice's family. Aug. 28 is her birthday.

They spent the weekend fishing in Lafayette with plans to avoid a little rain and wind projected for New Orleans and head back to their home. They left behind two Siberian huskies, one calico cat and two cars.

"No one could imagine," said Ambrose, who was a fourth-grade teacher in the Ninth Ward.

He remembers watching on television New Orleans fill with water and thinking it was a nightmare. He wondered what would happen to their home, what would happen to the life they had in New Orleans. His wife had always wanted to move back to her hometown of Lafayette. They even thought that by 2007 they might make the move.

"We wanted to move because of crime and the school system," he said.

After a gun incident at one of their schools, the four Ambrose children all were enrolled in private schools - at nearly $20,000 a year total - spread across the city. They made it home at nearly 6 p.m. each night.

Now a school bus picks them up and drops them off only feet from their home in Maurice.

In New Orleans, the Ambrose house was broken into three times.

But this wasn't the way the Ambroses planned to move.

After three and a half weeks wondering what happened to their home and their beloved animals, the Ambroses went to see the damage.

"It was like visiting the Titanic afterward. Mold had taken over, all over the walls, the furniture floated to different rooms," he said. "Nothing but thick black mud, the smell of fish, a cesspool of destruction."

...

Ambrose said the moment he realized all would be well in their lives was when he turned the key to the family's new apartment after those six months of separation. And although the insurance money still hasn't come - $130,000, "and we haven't collected one dime," Ambrose said - the family was able to build a new home in Vermilion Parish that feels much safer than their New Orleans neighborhood.

"A lot of good came," he said. "Kids are going to better schools than they'd ever been in."

...

BTW, their cat survived the ordeal of the storm.

If you want to understand what is really holding New Orleans back now see this story by Nicole Gelinas about the growing murder rate and home invasions in New Orleans that have gotten worse since Katrina. Until New Orleans can get a grip on its crime problem there will be little incentive for families like the Ambrose to return. The people in the community are also going to have to take ownership of the problem and stop waiting for Washington to fix it. Taking responsibility is not a natural talent for Democrats in Louisiana.

While this CNN story talks about young people moving to New Orleans, the population figures are hard to argue with. The city is shrinking in population.