The Lower Ninth Ward remains largely unrecovered two decades after Hurricane Katrina, with boarded homes, overgrown lots, and many empty parcels. The neighborhood population fell from about 15,000 in 2005 to roughly one-third of that number today. Many returnees face isolation as former neighbors, stores and schools have not returned. The city overall has recovered unevenly, reaching about three-quarters of its pre-storm population, while some neighborhoods continue to struggle. Floodwalls breached on the Industrial Canal, unleashing floods that destroyed homes. A few small businesses have reopened, but residents continue to confront economic hardship and limited access to basic services.
NEW ORLEANS Almost 20 years after Hurricane Katrina hit the city, a drive through New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward takes you past boarded homes, empty, overgrown lots and block after block where there are few people or houses. In 2005, 15,000 people mostly African Americans lived in this neighborhood. Today, the population is a third of that. For many of the people who returned to rebuild their homes and lives after the storm, it's been difficult.
Cotlon's little market on Fats Domino Avenue is one of the handful of stores that has opened in the Lower Ninth Ward in the twenty years since the storm. It's just several blocks from the place where floodwalls toppled over on the Industrial Canal, unleashing a flood that washed away homes, including Cotlon says, the one he'd bought after retiring from the Army.
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