To most of her neighbors in the Ninth Ward, Kelly Gaus is often referred to as the woman with the dogs.

To the 56 four-legged animals she has saved in the past year, she is a redeemer.

Gaus, a law student at Tulane University in New Orleans, is the founder and director of Dogs of the 9th Ward, which rescues stray, abandoned and feral dogs in the devastated, storm-stricken community.

“I always thought it would be really great if I could do something for the incredible number of strays we have here,” she said. “I always sort of assumed that I couldn’t.”

She was wrong.

This month, Dogs of the 9th Ward celebrated its first anniversary. Gaus said the inspiration for the organization came in the form of a dog that she found and initially mistook for a gargoyle statue.

She got the injured dog veterinary care and sought a permanent home for her. Ultimately, she decided to keep the hairless pit bull she named Pauline, after the street in the Ninth Ward where she was found.

“I had no idea how I could afford to help her, but I knew I couldn’t just leave her there,” Gaus said.

News of Pauline’s rescue spread throughout the community and Gaus said the response was overwhelming.

“People in the community reached out and really helped me,” she said. “They gave so much money and support that it actually more than covered her vet bills.”

Gaus began to toy with the idea of rescuing other dogs. Only a week later, a 5-month-old puppy followed her home. Homer, whom she is still hoping to adopt out, became the second 9th Ward dog.

“Once I started, it was hard to stop,” she said with a smile.

Gaus is proud of what the organization has accomplished so far, but is now focused on its future.

She said the organization is in a transitional state.

“The organization is continuing to grow, but we need to back up a little bit and become a more structured organization than we are right now,” she said.

She hopes to secure nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service and develop more structured roles within the group.

“I see the organization continuing to grow at the same rate as it has, but right now we don’t have the internal structure in place for it to do that,” she said. “We’re going to shift the focus for the next few months so we can continue to rescue over 100 dogs this next year.”

For Gaus, her happiness has been tempered with sorrow.

When Pauline, the pit bull she rescued, died unexpectedly this month from an autoimmune disorder, Gaus thought about ending the rescues.

She said she then realized she couldn’t.

“Every time I think these things, I realize that I can’t stop because the fosters are all there and they’re depending on you finding them a home,” she said. “Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s difficult, but it’s what I do and what I’ll continue to do.”

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After receiving approval in April, demolition of homes began this week to pave the way for new medical centers in downtown New Orleans, and although the biomedical corridor is expected to generate thousands of jobs, it will also displace hundreds of residents and many businesses in a historic district.

Plans call for a university medical center, funded by the city, to replace the former Charity Hospital. In addition, new medical campuses will replace hospitals run by Louisiana State University and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which closed after Hurricane Katrina. The medical campuses, which will be located in a 27-square block part of New Orleans’ Mid-City neighborhood, will serve as a training ground for the area’s medical students.

Preservationists and residents, however, have expressed concern over the location of the centers. More than 200 homes and buildings in the historic Mid-City area will be removed to make way for the hospitals.

Last year, more than 1,000 people marched in a second line parade to protest the proposed medical corridor.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation also urged officials to build the medical corridor in other areas of the city, arguing that there are less expensive and destructive options than demolishing an entire neighborhood.

In 2008, the National Trust placed Mid-City on its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Last May, the organization sued the VA and Federal Emergency Management Agency for not considering the full environmental consequences of selecting the site. However, a federal judge denied their motion for summary judgment.

On its Save Mid-City website, the National Trust explained its position: “Nearly all of these homes were damaged by the storm, and after years of toil to bring them back and revitalize the neighborhood in which they sit, it is difficult to believe that city leaders continue to believe it is in the best interests of the city to knock them all down and toss them in a landfill.”

However, Rob Goaz, chief of public affairs for Southeast Louisiana veteran’s health care system, said the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana chose the location for the new VA medical center after extensive environmental assessment. Goaz said the VA will repurpose the urban area and will take into consideration the architectural history of the buildings.

“We’re trying to restore the Pan American building to its original use as an educational training site,” said Goaz. “We’re trying to preserve that piece of the New Orleans skyline.”

Goaz also said the historic Dixie Brewery will be saved, as well as some homes that are indicative of classic New Orleans shotgun homes.

“They will be used for rehabilitation,” said Goaz.

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Reforming the New Orleans Police Department is a lot like rebuilding a home after Katrina, said Mary Howell, 60, a civil rights attorney in New Orleans for more than 30 years.

“We learned that it’s not enough to hose down the exterior of your house,” she said. “It’s that kind of deep gutting and cleaning that we need here.”

Now the new mayor, Mitch Landrieu, is seeking a similar transformation of the department.

While New Orleans experienced a 12 percent decrease in the overall crime rate in 2009, the police department has come under national scrutiny in the killing of two unarmed men and the injuring of four others on the Danziger Bridge, just days after Hurricane Katrina. Five officers have pleaded guilty in a cover-up of the incident, and a federal investigation is continuing.

Mona Sexton, 42, holds a photograph of her 24-year-old son, Kenneth, who was brutally beaten two blocks from her home after being stopped by the police. (Taylar Barrington/NYT Institute)

Even police officers themselves now say the department has lost the confidence of many in New Orleans.

“We don’t have the constant trust between the public and police,” said Henry Dean, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, a union that represents 1,232 of NOPD’s 1,457 members.

Two-thirds of New Orleans residents are unsatisfied with the city’s police department and a majority feel the police are incompetent, according to a 2009 survey by the New Orleans Crime Coalition, a group of community organizations working to reform the local criminal justice system and to reduce violent crime in the city.

Kamau Foderingham is one of those dissatisfied city residents. Foderingham said that he waited more than 20 minutes for police officers to arrive after a shooting outside his house in February.

Two bullets entered his Uptown home just five feet from where he was sitting, and another entered his neighbors’ home.

It took officers 25 minutes to respond to the incident, he said, even though it took place only a few blocks from their district stationhouse. “Three people could have been dead that day,” Foderingham said.

In early May, Landrieu invited the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the police department. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Landrieu wrote that the department had been described as one of the worst in the country. The Justice Department began an investigation May 17.

For Dean, the mayor’s invitation was a tactical one and avoided the hostile connotations of a takeover of the department. This way, he said, the Justice Department is able to begin its investigation into the police force, while the NOPD is able to maintain control.

“I don’t want somebody to come in and tell me how to do my job,” Dean said. “When you lose control, you’ve lost everything.”

In an effort to increase public trust and confidence within the police force, Landrieu has ordered the department to hand over documents requested by the city’s independent police monitor.

“The police department has a long history of being very secretive and very closed with regards to just the most basic data,” Howell said. This frustration, she added, has led to an increase in the number of community monitoring organizations.

William Winchester, 44, a staunch critic of the department, said things had gotten so far out of control on the streets that it wasn’t easy to tell who the good guys were. Winchester said he has been an advocate for victims of police abuse since he was 16 years old, when an officer hit him with a billyclub.

“I decided then it would be my last experience unchecked,” he said. Now he roams downtown New Orleans handing out pamphlets and DVDs that advise citizens of their rights. He said on several occasions, people have called him for help after violent clashes with police officers.

During a drive through the 7th Ward – the area bounded roughly by North Broad Street, and Esplanade and Elysian Fields Avenues — Winchester pointed out the homes of people he knows who have been victims of police brutality.

In a small yellow home is Mona Sexton, 42, who said her 24-year-old son, Kenneth, was brutally beaten two blocks from her home after being stopped by the police.

Next door a 22-year-old paraplegic, who would give his name only as Tator, said police officers harass him by pulling him out of his wheelchair. He said he feared that if he gave his name, he would face more harassment.

People in the community are scared, said Winchester.

“Cops do things and if society doesn’t stop it, it becomes an unwritten law,” he said, adding that misconduct typically happens in communities that “can’t afford to fight back.”

Winchester does not believe Landrieu’s administration will put an end to police brutality, especially in impoverished communities. The promises Landrieu has made, he said, are similar to the unmet goals set by former Mayor Ray Nagin.

“We can’t go through all these years and keep thinking, ‘Well one day somebody is going to stop it,’” Winchester said. “How many lives are going to be lost before that day ever arrives?”

In more affluent communities, like those around Magazine Street, few people talked about violent encounters with the police. Still, their frustration with the department ran deep.

Henry Dean, the president of the New Orleans Fraternal Order of Police, adresses the concerns of police relationships with the local community. "We don

“No one really views them as a go-to, most people see them as the opposite of help,” said Holly Brown, 25, an undergraduate student at the University of New Orleans. “Even when you are in the right, I feel like you don’t get the benefit of the doubt from them.”

After her car window was broken, she called an officer who, she said, left the scene without even offering her any assistance.

For Reserve Police Officer Andre Menzies the tense relationship the police force has with the community is a result of the Danziger shootings and negative media attention.

“Danziger brought the New Orleans department to its knees because everybody believed in what had happened,” he said. “I think that tore the community from us.”

For Menzies, the NOPD is the number one police force in the country, especially with its ability to manage a constant influx of travelers, more than 1 million at Mardi Gras alone.

As an outsider, the Justice Department will examine the New Orleans’s department for any patterns or practice of misconduct and enforce regulations to eliminate them.

“Our goal is to fix the problem, not the blame,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez.

“People are weary,” Howell said. “And very hopeful at the same time.”

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After the largest environmental catastrophe since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a New Orleans environmental organization has stepped up to prepare workers for the hazards of oil spill clean-up.

The organization, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, is a community partnership with Dillard University that aims to train workers for what it calls the “Mississippi River Chemical Corridor,” the 85 mile-stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

“We are fighting for our culture,” said Mary Williams, program manager of community outreach. “We’re fighting for our seafood industry.”

The center runs a training program devoted to oil spill clean-up along the coastlines in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana, according to assistant director Myra Lewis. Seventy-five students have graduated from the program, which includes hazmat training, a 40-hour certification program for hazardous waste workers.

The training can help focus young people on something important and inspiring, said Tracy Johnson, supervisor of hazmat, asbestos and mold remediation.

Johnson said he arrived at the center during a time of tragedy. His mother planned to attend the school herself, and wanted him to attend the program, as well. She died three months before the start of the program.

“I actually quit a job to come to the school,” he said. “I wanted my mom’s last wishes. That’s all.”

The program is housed at 3334 Annette St., Gentilly, a few blocks from Dillard, in a brown-brick cottage with only three rooms. There is a striped couch in the living room, sparse furnishings in the others, and glass doors that lead to the deck and backyard. The intimate setting fosters community among the small staff of eight.

The center focuses research, public attention and remediation work on environmental issues that disproportionately affect minority and poor communities.

Since 1987, locals have referred to a two-block stretch that originates from Jacobs Drive, as “cancer alley,” said Williams. That year there were 22 cancer victims living in the area, where industrial accidents and releases of chemicals were common occurrences.

A study by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice has documented the release of polyvinyl chloride from manufacturing sites since the 1970’s. “Environmental Justice and the PVC Chemical Industry,” a *factsheet released in 2009, states the plants release cancer-causing dioxins, and are disproportionately located in low-income and minority communities.

Williams said the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice is currently fighting what they call “risky technology,” the building of a trash incinerator in a majority African-American neighborhood. The recycling incinerator would create natural gases, to be used for power, but the burning of waste would release harmful toxins.

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Louisiana experts are disputing newly published findings that high concentrations of lead in the poorest and oldest parts of New Orleans posed significant risks to residents, even before hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

A multidisciplinary research group of 11 scientists from Texas Tech University published the report, “Lead distributions and risks in New Orleans following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” in the May 14 online issue of the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Published by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, it is a highly regarded academic journal.

The Texas Tech research group, with Michael T. Abel and George Cobb as lead authors, studied 128 sampling sites of soil across New Orleans and combined their findings with data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They found that 15 percent of the samples exceeded the regulatory threshold for safety, with the highest concentrations of lead found in the oldest and poorest parts of the city.

In one sample, the team reported 8,000 micrograms of lead per gram of soil, 20 times the safety threshold of 400 micrograms per gram.

But Louisiana government specialists said the findings are misleading.

LuAnn White, consulting toxicologist for Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, made a distinction between lead found in soil and lead-based paint, which more commonly results in lead poisoning.

She said children would have to consume large amounts of soil for it to be harmful in most cases. However, they are more vulnerable when exposed. Children absorb 48 percent of lead when ingested, compared to a 5 to 8 percent absorption rate for adults.

White added that blood-lead levels in New Orleans residents have actually declined since the hurricanes.

When lead-based paint chips in older homes, the protective varnish falls off and lead is exposed, White said. The silver lining of the hurricanes, White said, was a reduction in blood-lead levels in children as a result of the destruction of many older homes.

Tom Harris, administrator of remediation services in the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, also said the findings were inaccurate. He said that he has seen no indication of abnormal arsenic levels in New Orleans samples, and that he has never seen an area with levels of lead concentration close to 8,000 micrograms per gram.

Harris agreed with the study’s finding that high concentrations of lead are more likely in poorer areas of the city that contain older homes, but he also noted New Orleans is a “checkerboard,” with more affluent households interspersed with poorer ones. Older homes tend to have lead paint, he said.

Cobb said in a release that the findings were important since lead in soil posed a significant risk to residents who returned to their homes following evacuation, especially children.

But White said issues with lead in soil become a problem only if rebuilders don’t follow the rules of proper lead abatement, causing lead dust to be released.

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The School at Blair Grocery, in the Lower Ninth Ward provides much needed fresh food and produce to one of the many New Orleans neighborhoods that are experiencing a grocery desert. (Imani M. Cheers/NYT Institute)

Once a week, Mary Thomas makes the 20-minute trek from her home in the Lower Ninth Ward to a Wal-Mart in St. Bernard Parish, where she has had to shop since Hurricane Katrina devastated her life and neighborhood.

Simple necessities like grabbing a gallon of milk or picking up her diabetes prescription are a hassle for Thomas, 67. When she doesn’t have access to a vehicle, Thomas has to walk eight blocks and catch the only bus in her neighborhood to a Winn-Dixie in Gentilly, a half-hour trip across the Industrial Canal. And she can’t buy everything on her list.

“I make sure I don’t get anything too heavy that I can’t carry back,’’ she said. “I only get like two or three bags.”

Since Katrina closed their local Winn-Dixie, Thomas and thousands of other residents of the Lower Ninth Ward have not had a single grocery store or supermarket in walking distance. This lack of access to fresh produce and foods has turned the neighborhood into what socio-economists call a “food desert.”

Today, efforts on several fronts are under way to bring healthy food to the Lower Ninth. The government is establishing tax breaks for supermarkets to relocate there. Farmers’ markets sell local vegetables like peppers, tomatoes and okra, as well as fresh fruits and eggs. And there’s a national movement to encourage corner stores to stock fruits and vegetables alongside chips and sodas.

“Where you live can impact your health,” said Mari Gallagher, who runs a research and consulting organization that helped to popularize the term “food desert,” defined as large areas where people have poor access to fresh produce and healthy food. “If you don’t eat well you don’t live well. If you are turning to the dollar store, the gas station mart, and fast-food restaurants day in and day out for your food choices, that takes a toll over time on your quality of life and on your length of life.”

Thomas, who has lived in the Lower Ninth Ward for 20 years, said she has had to do without some things, since corner stores and mini-marts are her only options in walking distance. Prices there are high, she said.

“I’m not going to pay $6 for a gallon of milk, so we do without milk until we can go to the big store,” Thomas said. She said she spends an average of $130 a week on groceries, excluding transportation, to shop for the five in her household.

The School at Blair Grocery occupies a former neighborhood store in the Lower Ninth Ward. Eight children are homeschooled with a curriculum focused on food, health and the market itself. Classes are held weekdays, and the farmers market is held on Sundays and sometimes during the week. (Imani M. Cheers/NYT Institute)

Before Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward was a working-class, largely African-American neighborhood where most residents owned their homes. Now, it is more like an abandoned wasteland with vacant houses, broken roads and a small selection of businesses. Thomas said: “If anything, we still need stuff in the Lower Ninth Ward. We still look like Katrina.”

As for being a food desert, New Orleans is unique nationally, experts say. According to Vanessa Ulmer, policy and advocacy coordinator at Tulane University’s Prevention Research Center, which fights obesity, the city had fewer grocery stores per person than the national rate before the hurricane. Now it is worse. The city lost 15 of its 38 grocery stores, as defined by the New Orleans Food Policy Advisory Committee as having three or more registers and selling fresh produce.

And the 23 remaining supermarkets are concentrated in more affluent neighborhoods like Uptown. Neighborhoods with mixed economies are also lacking. New Orleans East, with about 19,000 people, has only one supermarket, and Gentilly, with about 16,000, has two.

Three initiatives would help bring healthy produce to the neighborhoods of New Orleans.

• The State of Louisiana approved the Fresh Food Retailers Initiative in 2009, a three-year plan to give retailers low-interest loans and grants to provide fresh foods in underserved neighborhoods. The program will be financed by $7 million in federal Community Development Block Grant Funds.

• The Lower Ninth has been opening farmers’ markets as part of the “local food” movement nationwide.

• Finally, the national Food Desert Oasis Act of 2009 would provide tax benefits to businesses providing fresh, healthy food in certain cities designated as “food desert zones.” Introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Illinois, the bill is in committee.

After Hurricane Katrina, half the estimated population of 455,000 left New Orleans, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. Businesses, including grocery chains, followed. While residents are coming back, Ulmer said “the rate of grocery stores coming back to New Orleans has not kept pace with the number of people returning.” Sites are available, she said, but “it’s not really clear as to how many people are back in the area.”

So instead of depending on a new Winn-Dixie or Wal-Mart, Ulmer and others, like the Healthy Corner Store Network, are pushing for minimarts to restock their shelves. “Corner stores can play an important role in making a difference,” said a Healthy Corner official, Kai Siedenburg.

But, she added, getting healthy foods into corner stores is risky for shopowners since they can lose money; they usually prefer to stock items that don’t spoil easily.

Other organizations, like the New Orleans Food and Farm Network, are helping to promote farmer’s markets in underserved neighborhoods.

Already, the Lower Ninth has a farmer’s market that is attracting customers daily and does double duty as a homeschool for neighborhood children. Created by community activist Nat Turner in October 2008, School at Blair Grocery occupies a former neighborhood store. Eight children are homeschooled with a curriculum focused on food, health and the market itself. Classes are held weekdays, and the farmers’ market is held on Sundays and sometimes throughout the week.

School at Blair Grocery manager and teacher Brennan Dougherty said fresh produce options are rare for the Lower Ninth Ward. “If you’re not doing the educating behind it, what’s the point?” she said.

While farmers’ markets in New Orleans have expanded, Ulmer says many of them operate only monthly, which is not enough. Another problem is making sure the farmers’ market accepts food stamps, something the School at Blair Grocery is working to do.

Lower Ninth Ward residents like the Beatrice Barnes, 59, remembers when there were 30 residents who lived on her block – now she and her husband, Donlynn, are the only two residents in the neighborhood.

The Barnes family said the lack of grocery stores in the area is inconvenient. “Money is tight sometimes and we are still working on our house after Katrina,” Beatrice Barnes said.

The Barnes family travels to the Wal-Mart two miles away from their home twice a month to eliminate going as often, but after a recent car accident now they have no vehicle.

But the School at Blair farmers’ market has helped in neighborly ways. Not only can the Barneses buy fresh produce there, but managers let them use a vehicle when they need to go to a grocery store. As Dougherty said: “It’s not just about food.”

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Hurricane Katrina victim Karen Smith’s devastation is now art. She walked through an art gallery in the French Quarter with a sense of familiarity on Saturday.

Five years ago, Smith, a native of New Orleans, found her Lakeview home flooded with 10 feet of water. Smith and her husband, Jimmy, had to make a decision about the home they had lived in for 25 years – they decided to start all over and rebuild on the same site.. The Smith family moved into the newly rebuilt home in 2007.

Three years later, the Smiths can find before and after photographs of their home along the Williams Gallery walls as part of the Historic New Orleans Collection’s recently opened exhibition, “Katrina +5: Documenting Disaster.”

“It’s good to show people what we here have been through,” she said.

The exhibit reflects the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina and the progress New Orleans has made over the past five years. Residents and photographers affiliated with the Historic New Orleans Collection submitted the material used.

”Katrina +5” is a continuation of a 2006 exhibit, called “City of Hope,” that featured materials gathered by the collection a year after the hurricane.

Smith’s home was also featured in the 2006 exhibit. Back then, she felt it was difficult to view.

“I feel better now,” she said. “When I came to see it in ’06, it brought me back to the beginning.”

While the focus of the new exhibit is on the city’s recovery from Katrina, it also includes information about the past with a short documentary on Hurricane Betsy, a Category 4 storm that sent water gushing into Lake Pontchartrain and flooded parts of the city in 1965.

The exhibit also includes maps and photos from hurricanes in New Orleans dating to 1831, starting with the Great Barbados Hurricane.

JoAnn Lohergan, a survivor of Hurricane Betsy, said she recalled crying when she was 16 after realizing that she couldn’t find her dog in the wake of the storm.

Lohergan now lives in Mandeville and was at the gallery on Saturday viewing the exhibit. Her parents were among those devastated by Katrina.

Lohergan picked them up from their house in New Orleans two days before the storm. When they returned, she said, the house had been destroyed.

“It was like a war zone,” she said.

For Katrina survivors like Lohergan, the exhibit shows the resilience of the city’s residents.

Past and present photos of houses, businesses and streets that were swamped by Hurricane Katrina line the blue walls of the gallery space.

Visitors can listen to voices of residents that collection officials interviewed as a part of a separate initiative, “Through Hell and High Water: Katrina’s First Responders Oral History Project.”

As the “Katrina +5” exhibit captures the progress of New Orleans after Katrina, residents like Smith and Lohergan said they continue to cope.

“It’s not an easy progress, but we made it,” Smith said. “Some parts are slow and others are moving along faster.”

The exhibit is at the Williams Gallery, 533 Royal Street in the French Quarter, through Sept. 12. Admission is free.

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Gretchen Bradford's renovated home in Pontchartrain Park is next to an empty lot. Actor Wendell Pierce is leading an effort to build hundreds of new "green" homes in the New Orleans neighborhood that has traditioanlly housed middle-class African-Americans. (April Buffington/NYT Institute)

Dominique Adansi-Bona’s house on Seminary Place in Pontchartrain Park is a shell: stripped to the studs, concrete floor, a dirt-filled window air-conditioner and remnants of her former life stacked in the driveway.

A couple of blocks away on Mithra Street, the neat new tan-and-white stucco home of Gretchen Bradford, with its curved driveway and flower garden, sits in stark contrast to its untouched deteriorating neighbors and weed-filled vacant lots.

Five years post-Katrina, the neighborhood known to many as New Orleans’ “black Mayberry” remains a “jack o’ lantern” neighborhood with well-kept renovated homes alternating, more often than not, with blight.

An estimated 50 percent of residents of the 1,000-plus homes in the 200-acre subdivision have returned. A foundation led by the actor Wendell Pierce is seeking to build hundreds of new “green” homes. And a new 18-hole golf course is in the works.

But will that be enough to restore this place to its former glory?

Adansi-Bona is just beginning the rebuilding process at her grandmother’s home in Pontchartrain Park, the storied black neighborhood whose houses filled with 10 to 17 feet of floodwaters in August 2005.

Created in 1955 as the first subdivision for middle-class black families in New Orleans, the neighborhood featured a large kid-friendly park, a ballfield and an18-hole golf course. It was home to black doctors, lawyers, teachers and postal workers, including New Orleans’ first black mayor, Ernest Morial, Pierce and the jazz musician Terence Blanchard.

Adansi-Bona, whose grandparents were among the first subdivision residents, and her husband are getting help from AmeriCorps in rebuilding her home. She said they didn’t receive a grant from the Road Home, the state program designed to compensate homeowners affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita with up to $150,000 to rebuild: The home belonged to her aunt, and she purchased it after Katrina.

“My husband and I decided to rebuild this house as part of our legacy, ” she said.

Like Adansi-Bona, Bradford’s family also was one of the first families to move into the subdivision. However, Bradford was approved for Road Home funds. After evacuating to Houston and living there two years, Bradford returned to rebuild. Her renovated three-bedroom, two-bath home was completed in spring 2008.

“The people in Houston were wonderful,” said Bradford, “but my heart was in this neighborhood. I said, ‘I’m going to go home, and I’m going to rebuild.’”

Yet today, her well-kept home on Mithra Street sits between an empty lot and an abandoned, boarded-up house.

The scenario is replicated through the subdivision. Of the 70 lots in the six blocks of Mithra Street between Press Drive and Paulene Street, 40 homes appear to be livable. Another 26 are blighted, such as the one down the street from Bradford with the roof falling in, and another eight are vacant, some with weeds taller than a man.

The Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corp. is seeking to rectify that. The nonprofit, created two years ago by Pierce, star of “The Wire” and the current HBO series “Treme,” wants to rebuild about 500 homes in Pontchartrain Park over the next seven years.

“A lot of people are excited because this is giving us hope,” said Bradford, director of membership for the neighborhood association.

Pierce tapped his old friend, Troy Henry, managing partner for Henry Consulting, to head the development.

Already the foundation has built a model home on Press Drive, bought by Pierce, and is building a second model adjacent to it, according to Henry.

Errol George, a business consultant for Henry Consulting and the project manager, said the nonprofit is scheduled to receive 125 properties in the neighborhood that were sold to the Road Home program. So far, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, or NORA, has provided four lots, with another 41 lots expected to be transferred in June, George said.

George said the nonprofit hopes to have 25 modular homes that are shipped in segments and finished onsite by the fifth anniversary of Katrina in August.

Ten models, starting at 1,400 square feet, will be offered and will range from $160,000 to more than $250,000, depending customization, Henry said, not including the cost of the lot. The houses are ecologically friendly and will include geothermal heating and air, solar panels, Energy Star appliances and lighting, and a rain collection/water conservation system.

According to George, if a prospective homeowner working with the CDC makes 80 percent or lower of the area’s median income, NORA will absolve the buyer of the cost of the lot. An applicant who makes 120 percent or more of the AMI will pay full price for the lot. Other applicants will pay for the lots on a sliding scale, he said. The area’s median income in 2008 was just under $50,000.

George said the biggest roadblock so far has been the transfer of lots from NORA with clear titles and land surveys – about 40 applicants have been approved for financing and are waiting for lot transfers.

Shannon Fazande is a newcomer to Pontchartrain Park, having signed on to purchase a new model. Fazande returned to her native New Orleans in 2008 after living in New York for more than a decade.

“I just wanted to experience the familiarity again and have some kind of link to my past,” said Fazande, 36.

Fazande, who currently lives in Metairie with her husband and two children, learned about the Pontchartrain Park program from George, a childhood friend.

She said she was hesitant because of previous problems with financing programs.

“Before going to the Pontchartrain meeting, my husband and I prayed, ‘Please give us people with integrity,’” said Fazande.

“From the moment I walked in the meeting, I thought this has been the answer to my prayers.”

She said she remembers the neighborhood well.

“Growing up, there were a few hot spots where middle-class African-Americans lived, and Pontchartrain Park was one of them,” said Fazande. “The community, the way the people lived, it was very family-oriented, stable.”

That’s the kind of environment Fazande, who works at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business as a career consultant, hopes to have for her family.

“I’m building my dream home,” said Fazande.

The nonprofit will need quite a few more Fazandes to return Pontchartrain Park to its original glory. Before Katrina, the neighborhood had a mostly elderly population. Today middle-class blacks can live anywhere.

Then there’s the matter of nearby amenities to attract prospective homeowners and new residents to the area. The primary businesses located in Gentilly Mall pre-Katrina – a grocery store, theater, restaurant, shops – have not returned.

But Henry said he believed the renovated golf course would help revitalize the area.

“It was a popular golf spot, and hopefully with the new design of it, it will be even more popular,” said Henry. “It will add to the unique appeal of this neighborhood.”

A new golf course is the last thing on the mind of Adansi-Bona. She didn’t get the Road Home money and can’t afford the model homes, although she is information director for the neighborhood association. As four AmeriCorps workers helped prepare her home recently for a mold remediation certificate, she reflected on the future.

“Everything was lost,” said Adansi-Bona. “What the storm didn’t take, somebody came and cleaned out. Now my husband and I will start the long journey of rebuilding.”

An earlier version of this article gave incorrect affiliations for Gretchen Bradford and Dominique Adansi-Bona.

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In a small area of the Lower Ninth Ward, uncertainty about whether residents will rebuild the hundreds of homes destroyed during Hurricane Katrina has morphed into a debate over how it should be done.

Before the hurricane, this hardscrabble neighborhood was dotted with long “shotgun” style homes, an architectural design prominent throughout New Orleans. Now, through the efforts of a nonprofit organization with ties to Hollywood, towering contemporary homes redecorate the neighborhood.

Many in the community see the new homes as a welcome improvement, crediting the investment and public attention the project has generated to a corner of the Ninth Ward typically called the worst in New Orleans. Others view the new designs as an affront, saying that architects have imposed an outsider’s vision of progress instead of asking residents, who’ve lived in the area for generations, for their input.

Valeria Schexnayder, a Lower Ninth Ward resident, scowled while looking at one of the new houses and said, “That’s not New Orleans style. That’s California style.”

The debate has neither halted construction, nor affected the friendships among the neighborhoods that are largely populated with elderly and retired residents. However, it offers a glimpse inside the rebuilding of the city and a look at how good intentions are changing the face of New Orleans.

The new homes were built by the Make It Right Foundation, an organization launched by the actor Brad Pitt in September 2007 to rebuild homes in the Ninth Ward devastated by Hurricane Katrina. After he toured the Ninth Ward in December 2006, he was frustrated by the lack of progress the government was making with the rebuilding.

The foundation, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, plans to rebuild 150 out of the hundreds of homes the storm destroyed. Pitt enlisted the help of 21 architects to design affordable, durable and green homes that preserved traditional New Orleans style. The construction centers on Tennessee Street, with additional houses scattered along neighboring blocks in what’s dubbed the “Brad Pitt neighborhood.” Fourteen houses have been completed, and 17 are currently under construction.

Residents give the contemporary designs mixed reviews.

Robert Lynn Green Sr., one of the first residents to return to Tennessee Street after the waters receded, has been on board with the foundation since the beginning. Green was living in a FEMA trailer and planning to rebuild his home when he met two Make It Right workers touring the neighborhood in August 2007.

Green, whose mother and young granddaughter drowned in the 20-foot floodwaters, decided not only to be a part of the program, but to help spread the word to his neighbors.

“Talking to them it seemed like a good idea,” said Green. “I stopped trying to rebuild my own house and joined in because if I’m going to try to convince my neighbors to be a part of a program, then I have to be a part of it myself.”

Residents who participate select the design of the new homes from 21 offerings. Green selected a raised house with a two-story shotgun base and ample kitchen space where he can cook his signature meals for his family. He acknowledged the departure from traditional New Orleans architecture, but said the community has to change with the times.

Green admitted that if given the opportunity to design his home at the beginning of the Make It Right process, his house would look different. But he prefers the Make It Right houses because the “green” features save him money on water and electricity. His electricity bill is $56 a month, down from the $170 he paid in his FEMA trailer and the $300 he paid in his original house.

A short walk from his home lives Schexnayder. Unlike her friend, Schexnayder opted not to participate in the Make It Right program even though she was qualified. According to Make It Right, a prospective resident had to live in the Ninth Ward during Katrina and be able to contribute to the cost and maintenance of the house — about a third of the prospect’s income.

Schexnayder doesn’t believe the new designs pay homage to traditional New Orleans architecture at all. She has even bought the lots on both sides of her home to prevent “those funky-looking houses” from being built next to hers.

“If they would have just put up normal houses, people would have been here, back home,” she said.

Besides the obvious design differences, Schexnayder cites small bedrooms, wasted space and a lack of design input as her main issues with the Make It Right Homes.

Schexnayder’s original home floated down her street during the flood and was destroyed. Her new home, a slightly modified shotgun design, was rebuilt after she told the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, about the problems she’d been having with the Road Home, a state relief organization, during a tour Pelosi took through the Ninth Ward. Photos of Pelosi and Schexnayder are displayed proudly in the Schexnayder home along with a wreath Pelosi gave her.

Along with the aesthetic debate, the question concerning the “Make It Right” foundation’s effect on the community is also a hot topic among residents. One of the most noticeable changes has been the Ninth Ward’s addition to the tourist attraction list, with guided bus tours through the neighborhood. Opinions on the tourist presence vary among residents.

Green said he’s OK with the influx of tourists because it stimulates the economy.

“The tour bus driver has a job; the gas station attendant has a job,” said Green. “It builds a bigger economy than people actually realize.”

Schexnayder, though, is vehemently against tours of the neighborhood. She feels the tours are disrespectful and ignore the residents’ pain. In addition, the area does not receive proceeds from the tours.

Home values in that area have always been some of the worst in the city, said real estate broker James Simmons, and the program hasn’t had a noticeable effect on property values.

Residents pay Make It Right an average of $150,000 for a single-family house But according to Simmons, even though the Make It Right houses are green and modern, because of the neighborhood they’re in, on the open market they would be listed at only $130,000 to $140,000. Other houses in the neighborhood, not built by Make It Right, are listed at approximately $100,000. Though Simmons said Pitt’s project is “just a drop in the bucket,” but said the actor should be commended for “stepping up.”

Although neighbors like Green and Schexnayder don’t always see eye to eye on Make It Right’s role in their community, they both want the same thing, to see their neighborhood restored and thriving again.

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The house smelled rotten. Blades of the living room ceiling fan drooped. Black circles of mold climbed the walls and ceilings. Every door was off its hinges. The roof was caved in.

The buzzing from a hive of bees was the only sound in the house.

Family portraits once hung on the walls and in this kitchen Sunday dinner was prepared.

Now the house is dead.

Evidence of Hurricane Katrina lingers across New Orleans through the thousands of abandoned homes still standing nearly five years after the disaster. Homes that have yet to be renovated are running out of time, according to Michael Gurtler, president of Gurtler Bros. Consultants Inc., a New Orleans home inspection company. He estimates that, without intervention, they will collapse in another three to five years.

According to Gurtler, any damage to the building envelope, which consists of the roof, walls, windows and doors, will result in a domino effect of damages. Wind and the results of the saturating combination of salt water, fresh water and oil in Katrina will continually weaken the structure.

Deterioration begins with roof damage.

The roof covering is damaged by winds that loosen nails and cause shingles to blow away. Shingles should last 20 to 30 years, but in a tropical climate the lifespan decreases to 16 to 25 years, Gurtler said. Nails rust after years of neglect and water “When the roof starts to lift it creates other failures,” Gurtler said. “The roof is anchored to the walls, walls to the foundation, and foundation to the earth, so everything is tied together.” Roof damage creates water intrusion, causing electrical connections, appliances, wood and drywall to become wet. Drywall, the material used to build walls, absorbs water like a sponge and crumbles when wet.

The second step in the deterioration process is caused by sitting in floodwaters.

“Our houses suffered a different kind of flood; it didn’t come in and right back out,” Gurtler explained. Sitting waters promote mold growth.

During a residential mold inspection by the pest-control service Orkin and the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) conducted in the Lower Ninth Ward in 2006, two types of mold, Cladosporium and Aspergillus were common found. Aspergillus, or black mold, thrives on wet wood in humid and tropical climates, making New Orleans homes particularly attractive. The common architectural style of a New Orleans home is an all-wood structure. Water causes wood to weaken and expand. Mold also consumes wood like a termite.

The condition of a house before Katrina is also important. For example, black mold grows on paper. If a home had never been stripped, there would have already been mold on the drywall, which is made of sand, gypsum and heavy paper.

Don Tavlin, NCHH’s assistant region manager of Louisiana and Mississippi, said he witnessed mold on drywall after removing framework and carpet from a house.

The interior structure of a house begins to rot when studs, structural members that hold up the roof, are attacked by mold and water.

Also, termite activity is promoted through roof leaks, in addition to five years of humidity and rainfall.

“Mold damage, termites and rot weaken the structure of a house until a thunderstorm blows it down,” Gurtler said. “But, if you have had a water leak for 10 years, you’re in danger of collapsing soon.” Rats, raccoons, water moccasins and wild dogs found living in properties can also add to the deterioration process.

“Any building neglected for several years will collapse,” Gurtler said. “If a tree doesn’t fall on it first.”

Brandon R. Coley contributed reporting.

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