Future quantified, New New Orleans: Part 2, prognosis
[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
As explained in yesterday’s post, the
The new
(Which, as far as I can tell, chose to ignore both its prophecies and their implications.)
“Thanks for your report, fellas.”
… and is designed to help government officials plan the city’s rebuilding.
Where the water went.
From this, and based on interviews, the
Houses drown slowly based on submergence.
Using this proxy, the authors then projected a census of the damage, block by block, with water depths derived from satellite photographs:
28% of households were largely dry; 55% were very wet.
Anecdotes speak to our emotions, but statistics are more representative: 52% of Old
1. Zero damage, immediate reoccupancy
2. Minor damage, +6-12 months
3. Serious damage intended to be repaired, +6-12 months for assessment, +0-36 months reconstruction.
4. Serious damage not intended to be repaired, not replaced.
This would have been considered ’serious damage.’
They reached these model assumptions based on their assessment of people’s behavior:
We see several scenarios whereby people with habitable homes choose not to return to them ….
1. Perceived cutbacks in service, such as health care and public safety.
2. Unemployed individuals [a large fraction in Old
The authors footnote that as of December 2005, two-thirds of all Katrina evacuees that had not returned were already employed.
3. Lack of adequate schools.
4. Impoverished individuals who were evacuated to distant locations and who may find it difficult to return.
The authors also footnote that:
Poorer people tended to be evacuated to more distant locations in the wake of Katrina. More than 26% of Katrina evacuees who had yet not returned home were classified as unemployed compared with a national unemployment rate of 4.7%.
It’s worth noting that the authors omitted the following additional potential drivers:
5. Homeowners who find they can build a better house with insurance proceeds.
6. Those who, having moved, prefer their new location.
7. Renters whose original apartment is gone and whose owner is demotivated to rebuild.
To this last point, the authors observe how homeownership further changes behavior:
Nearly half of the housing units in
This is worth flagging.
Get the message?
Whereas home restoration is a one-entity decision (the homeowner), to restore a rental apartment requires two decisions: that of the tenant to move home, and that of the owner to rebuild.
(Rental apartments are financially more complex than owned homes, a concept I’ll develop in future posts.)
Many rental landlords will be uninterested in rebuilding (better economics not to rebuild) or unable to do so:
The study also says that a significant number of the homes located in federally designated flood zones were not covered by insurance, suggesting a need to review federal programs and guidelines.
Beyond the pure economics, a homeowner has an emotional investment in his home; an investing landlord does not, instead bowing to the law of economic gravity:
In addition, many of those with insurance were inadequately covered, and so may find it difficult to rebuild – particularly in light of rising construction costs and stricter new building codes.
Concrete is up 2.5% since Katrina; Wallboard and gypsum are up 5.5%. (Page 22)
What happens, therefore, is that economics and human behavior perform their own triage, as the report shows four different recovery curves based on housing habitability:
(Note vertical scales are different.)
The water decided which homes can recover and which cannot.
I doubt New
With that as the prognosis, is there a viable prescription?
[Concludes tomorrow in Part 3.]
