[StBernard] Orleans has growth spurt, count indicates

[Westley Annis]

Orleans has growth spurt, count indicates
Analysis of postal data shows city at 76% of pre-Katrina households
Friday, July 31, 2009 
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
Contrary to expectations, New Orleans grew faster in the fourth year of the
recovery from Hurricane Katrina than in the third, with the number of
households in the city reaching 76.4 percent of the pre-storm total,
according to an analysis released Thursday. 

A similar trend unfolded across the region, with St. Bernard and St. Tammany
parishes also seeing large gains between August 2008 and June 2009 in the
number of households actively receiving mail, according to The New Orleans
Index, which gauges Katrina recovery using a range of social and economic
indicators. 

At the same time, the rate of school enrollment across the region slowed,
suggesting many recent arrivals are single or couples without children, the
report finds. 

Many experts predicted that the city's growth would slow and plateau as
Katrina receded into the past, figuring that after three years, most of
those who were trying to get back home would have done so. But the data
center found that the number of households receiving mail in the city grew
by 6 percent between August and June, easily outpacing the 4 percent growth
rate over the same period last year. 

According to the index, a joint project of the Greater New Orleans Community
Data Center and the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program,
"rebuilding . . . has helped cushion greater New Orleans from the ravages"
of the national economic downturn. 

"The population growth is not terribly surprising because the rest of the
nation is doing so badly," said Allison Plyer, deputy director of the data
center. "There are foreclosures rampant in Atlanta and Cleveland and Phoenix
and San Diego. There are job losses in Detroit. So many cities are really
making people look for alternatives." 

The metro area continues to weather the recession "relatively well," with
only 0.9 percent of total jobs lost since last June, compared with a 4.1
percent loss nationwide, the report states. That's in part because the
hardest-hit industries have scant local presence. 

However, the pace of rebuilding and new construction in and around New
Orleans appears to be slowing. And in the city and St. Bernard Parish, the
proportion of blighted properties dotting the landscape continues to be a
hurdle, according to the index. 

The report also found a "stalled" real estate market, and a 19 percent drop
from 2007 to 2008 in general cargo moving through the Port of New Orleans.
Further, sales tax revenue in New Orleans declined in April and May for the
first time since 2006, reflecting an overall decline in consumer spending. 

A closer look at recovery within New Orleans offers another counterintuitive
development: 12 neighborhoods, including Broadmoor, Central City, Tremé and
a swath of Uptown from Audubon Park to the Irish Channel lost 50 or more
so-called "active addresses" between June 2008 and last month.

Plyer pointed out that those areas rebounded quickly after Katrina, and she
surmised that as more rental units have opened elsewhere, from eastern New
Orleans to the Tulane Avenue corridor, residents have elected to move within
the city, often to cheaper, newer apartments. 

"In New Orleans, we've thought of the repopulation of neighborhoods as
homeowners rebuilding," she said. "I think we've overlooked renters, who are
much more mobile. When they see a good opportunity, they take it. We might
be seeing a flight to quality." 


The survey's estimates more or less track with recent figures calculated by
the U.S. Census Bureau, which figured an 8.2 percent bump in the city's
estimated population over the year ending July 1, 2008, the most recent date
for which data are available. 
 
The Census Bureau set the population last July at 311,853 residents, though
city leaders have said they will submit utility usage data to show that
estimate should be 336,000 residents. Local officials have successfully
challenged census data twice in recent years. 

Meanwhile, postal data show a 6.8 percent increase in the number of New
Orleans households over the past 12 moths. 

Applying that rate of growth to the city's preferred population figure for
2008 -- 336,000 -- would put the current population around 359,000 people,
or about 79 percent of the July 2005 census estimate of 455,000 residents.