Two years after Hurricane Katrina and breached levees flooded New Orleans, we remain at risk of rebuilding a divided city—one where tourist districts and residents with existing resources have bounced back, and another where disinvested neighborhoods still struggle with inadequate recovery funding, red tape, and lack of amenities. While these communities face an uphill battle in their efforts to create a city with opportunities for all, the unprecedented level of civic engagement throughout New Orleans is cause for optimism.

The “stories of hope” below profile some of the countless people and organizations that are working tirelessly to rebuild a strong, vibrant, more inclusive city. Their victories are inspiring—but New Orleans needs equitable policy solutions and greater investment to sustain and replicate these success stories. Based on nearly two years of work at both the state and community level in Louisiana, PolicyLink compiled Building a Better New Orleans: Hope Needs Help [PDF], a Katrina anniversary issue brief that includes these and other stories of hope—and, most crucially, calls on the federal government to commit the necessary resources to truly revitalize New Orleans.

Hope Needs Help focuses on three critical recovery areas—housing, jobs, and education—and is receiving national and international media coverage (see “PolicyLink Speaks,” left).

Where most people saw blighted, abandoned streets, Roz Peychaud of the Neighborhood Development Foundation saw potential. She realized that the Hoffman Triangle neighborhood in Central City could become a model for creating vital communities. Not only would the area offer affordable homes, it also was a slate on which new homeowners could draw renewed visions of an ideal neighborhood. By restoring long-abandoned recreation areas, recruiting new charter schools, and encouraging first-time homebuyers to anchor the community, Hoffman Triangle could be a beacon of hope to the rest of New Orleans. The Neighborhood Development Foundation is helping make that happen. In addition to providing support for potential homebuyers, the organization has helped develop 10 affordable, energy-efficient homes in the neighborhood.

The dream of a revitalized Hoffman Triangle is coming true. Peychaud and the families who have followed her lead are making sure of it. Federal infusion of capital resources to invest in redevelopment of 17 target zones would leverage Peychaud’s vision and other struggling neighborhoods in New Orleans.

The property in GertTown, off of Earhart Boulevard, was beyond repair even before Katrina hit. After the storm, the Louisiana Freedmen Missionary Baptist Association, a group of faith leaders who have been active in affordable housing work for 30 years, realized the land it owned could be the site of much-needed affordable housing. With support from the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, Regions Bank, The Richman Group, the city of New Orleans, and Fannie Mae, the Freedmen are creating 29 new affordable rental modular housing units for single parents, seniors, and other residents of GertTown. Through partnerships and federal funding, this piece of land may be the key to recovery for dozens of New Orleanians. Federal commitment of further tax credits and affordable housing subsidies could help restore half of the city’s lost affordable rentals.

Tyronne Hayes had always wanted to work in the construction business. After returning to his native New Orleans from his evacuation to Houston, Hayes decided the post-storm construction was the perfect time to follow his dream. Soon after returning home, Hayes, 27, began working as a laborer at MR Pittman Group, LLC. Seeking greater responsibility and better wages, he entered a union-based apprenticeship program to become a carpenter. This year, his work has centered on rebuilding the levees and pumps to protect New Orleans. For each year that Tyronne completes his apprenticeship he gets a 25 percent wage increase. Established in 2005, MR Pittman Group’s total revenue for 2006 reached over $90 million. As a union employer, MR Pittman knows that trained, skilled, and passionate workers like Hayes will be the key to rebuilding a truly vibrant and equitable New Orleans. Incentive for training is key programmatic support that the federal government can offer to grow newly skilled workers in diverse industries.

“The Belles of Bayou Road” are determined for their small stretch of New Orleans to breathe hope and inspiration into the city’s dispersed and worried small business community. On the 2500 block of Bayou Road, these five African-American female business owners have brought their small businesses back after the storm—against all odds.

Their shops—a book store, a day care center, two restaurants, and a beauty salon—form the heart of a successful neighborhood (and their story was featured on American Public Media’s Marketplace Morning Report on August 29). The businesses which employ and serve the city’s most vulnerable, typify the new pioneering spirit blowing through their hometown.

Despite the Belles’ personal dedication, they couldn’t have succeeded without help from The Idea Village, a collection of business professionals, academics, investors, political leaders, and entrepreneurs that has supported business innovation in New Orleans since 2000. Since the 2005 tragedy, The Idea Village has helped provide start-up cash or triage loans to more than 160 businesses. Over 90 percent of the ventures it supported pre-Katrina remain open, and 37 percent of those have expanded. Entrepreneurs like the Belles and organizations like The Idea Village are creating the vibrant and vital small business economy New Orleans needs. The Idea Village has been supported by grants from the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, which channels donations made by Americans after the storm to nonprofits helping with key recovery activities to ensure more equitable recovery. Federal investment in similar loan products could help restore tens of thousands of similar businesses.

The Dryades YMCA James Singleton Charter School is a community-based school in the center of a neighborhood where a spike in murders prompted the National Guard to redeploy to New Orleans in 2006. Without selective admissions criteria, the school takes all students and has had remarkable success at serving some of the city’s most vulnerable children and their families. Singleton leaders have worked doggedly to raise outside funds for high-quality facilities.

The school boasts impressive levels of parental involvement, including over 200 parents that receive training—by the children—in literacy and computer skills at Singleton’s state-of-the-art computer labs. With the school and community center serving as islands of calm in a stormy neighborhood, Singleton proves that state-of-the-art facilities, strong educational pedagogy, and community engagement can yield better outcomes for students as well as the neighborhood. Federal support for facilities, staff recruitment and development, and stabilization of operating budgets in transitional recovery years can help other schools replicate Singleton’s success—and make education a centerpiece of neighborhood recovery.

Kids Rethinking New Orleans Schools (Rethink for short) believes that many of the best ideas for reviving and remaking New Orleans education will come from those who see it every day from the inside: the students. Last summer, about 25 Rethink students ages 8-13 came together to envision the ways—big and small—l that the New Orleans school system could better serve the needs of kids. Some of their concerns are immediate, like a call for cleaner bathrooms. Other demands are more visionary: more funding for school counselors and more information on school admissions processes they say cut off too many students from academic opportunity. By harnessing the ideas and passions of students, Rethink seeks to create a New Orleans school system in which every student “receives a quality education no matter their parents’ income, neighborhood, or skin color.” Community engagement is a linchpin of equitable, systemic change in New Orleans schools. The calls from these youth focus on two key arenas where the federal government could lend support: resources for high quality facilities (both freeing FEMA funds already committed and committing new funds to rebuild a damaged infrastructure); and support for the counseling and mental health services young people with post-traumatic stress disorder need in order to be able to learn.

To learn more about equitable rebuilding, read additional success stories, and view the policy recommendations outlined in the full Hope Needs Help report, visit: http://www.policylink.org/Communities/Louisiana.