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Katrina Victims Say Brad Pitt's Charity Homes Are Already Rotting By Heather Alexander, Houston Chronicle January 2, 2014 Actor Brad Pitt visits the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans during a trip to lobby government officials to increase the speed of re-construction on July 13, 2006 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Pitt and Global Green USA created a sustainable design architecture competition to showcase affordable, energy-efficient construction. Actor Brad Pitt visits the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans during a trip to lobby government officials to increase the speed of re-construction on July 13, 2006 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Pitt and...

Remember that the schools in New Orleans were a tragedy long before Katrina. ...In the 1970s, Mickey Landry and his wife both taught in New Orleans. “We used to come home and joke that the best thing that could happen to the Orleans Parish school system would be for someone to blow it up and start all over again.” Frustrated, Landry left New Orleans, but stayed in education, eventually running a prestigious private school in Colorado. Landry was lured back to post-Katrina New Orleans by the opportunity to run a school without the bureaucratic constraints of the old Orleans Parish...

Off the bat, let’s get a few things straight: 1) New Orleans is a one-of -a-kind city. It should be on everyone’s list to visit at least once. 2) The Saints played a great game, setting off a massive party in the nation’s greatest party city. 3) Despite the fact that the Colts will always be Baltimore to me, I rooted for Indianapolis in the Super Bowl. And not because I was a Manning fan, but due to the nauseating media coverage that if and when the Saints won the Big Game, that will somehow heal all wounds from Hurricane...

...In 2007, frustrated by the slow pace of rebuilding in the Lower Ninth, Brad Pitt set up a foundation called Make It Right; the foundation then commissioned 13 architecture firms to design affordable, green houses... Indeed, from the main route into the Lower Ninth, the Claiborne Avenue Bridge, it’s impossible to miss the Brad Pitt Houses, as everyone here calls them. They are sprawling, angular buildings in bold hues not usually seen outside a gelateria...

New Orleans, Louisiana, Mayor Ray Nagin arrived in Cuba late Friday on a mission to learn about how to deal with storms, a spokeswoman said. "We understand we may have a lot to learn from the Cubans in terms of disaster preparedness and how they have dealt with hurricanes," spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett said. Cuba is internationally applauded for exceptional disaster management, according to a news release from Nagin's office. In the Cuban capital, Havana, Nagin plans to meet with several officials, including some from the Latin American Medical Centers for Disaster. He will also learn about preparations the Cuba Defense...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, who accused former President George W. Bush of leading a government "that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns," is hearing directly from New Orleans residents who have struggled to rebuild their city since the 2005 hurricane season. Obama arrives in New Orleans Thursday on his first presidential trip to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. About 1,600 people were killed in Louisiana and Mississippi by Hurricane Katrina, which caused $40 billion in damages and displaced 1 million people from their homes.

Obama: 'We Will Not Forget' Troubled New Orleans ASSOCIATED PRESS October 15, 2009 NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- President Barack Obama is promising the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast that his administration ''will not forget'' them as they work to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. Obama says he makes no excuses for the fact that the federal government didn't work effectively with state and local officials in the aftermath of the storm four years ago. But he says his administration is ''working around the clock to clean up red tape and eliminate bureaucracy.''

President Barack Obama warned his critics Thursday that on healthcare and other agenda items that he is "not tired" and he is "just getting started." In fiery remarks at at townhall meeting in New Orleans before a "feisty crowd," Obama repeated his belief that healthcare reform would pass this year, and he again said that change would not be easy. The president drew raucous applause after he joked that he was taking criticism from the media for not solving world hunger in his first nine months in office. Even as Obama said that change would take time, he did vow...

Making his first visit to Louisiana since becoming the nation's 44th chief executive, President Barack Obama told a spirited crowd at the University of New Orleans on Thursday that he will help build a stronger Gulf Coast than the one Hurricane Katrina and broken levees wrecked four years ago. "I promise you this -- whether it's me coming down here or my Cabinet or other members of my administration -- we will not forget about New Orleans," Obama said. "We are going to keep on working. . . . Together, we will rebuild this region, and we will build it...

The Big Easy is making a big comeback. New Orleans has steadily won back some of the population it lost in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according to a government report released Wednesday. New Orleans lost more than half its residents during the deluge. Few large U.S. cities have ever had to cope with disaster on that scale. Since then, it has been one of the country's fastest growing cities. Only a couple of instances can compare. Galveston, Texas, was also devastated by a hurricane in 1900, a storm that remains the most lethal natural disaster in U.S....

Reporting from New Orleans -- Nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina, it is the worry that will not fade, complicating the rebuilding of New Orleans and defining and reflecting this fragile city's racial divisions. Call it the fear of a shrunken city. Immediately after the storm, many residents, often African Americans, worried that low-lying flood-ravaged neighborhoods would be left unbuilt and turned into wetlands. Though that possibility has diminished, one fear won't dissipate: that those same areas may wither as a result of restrictive zoning changes or a waning commitment to rebuilding in certain parts of town. It's the issue...

Mr. Pitt is going Washington. Nancy Pelosi's office says Brad Pitt is set to meet with the Speaker of the House on Thursday to discuss the 45-year-old actor's charity efforts in New Orleans. Pitt founded "Make It Right" in 2007 to help build environmentally sustainable housing for low-income residents in New Orleans who lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina. He was nominated for a best-actor Oscar for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

Abandoned by their government, many residents of New Orleans have little optimism about the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House on 20 January Jonny Trask - pictured outside his family's home - is disillusioned by the way he and others have been treated Jonny Trask is black, in his forties, American, and completely indifferent to Barack Obama. "It doesn't make any difference to me," he says referring to the next president. "Or to most of the black people in New Orleans." Trask, a former gang member who has served time both in the military and in prison ("Jail...

About 100 Louisiana National Guardsmen will remain on police duty in New Orleans through March 1, a legislative panel decided Friday. But some lawmakers from outside the metropolitan area bristled at the city's request for continued aid, spending several minutes brow-beating Police Superintendent Warren Riley about his department's repeated trips to the Capitol for help since Hurricane Katrina. Riley defended the city's progress and promised lawmakers that Friday would be his last appearance before the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget. ... There has been a National Guard presence in the city since the post-Katrina flooding, with the aid being...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Some survivors of Hurricane Katrina say they aren't getting enough attention from the Bush administration, so they're turning to Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez for help. Ishmael Muhammad of the New Orleans Survivor Council has visited Venezuela three times to seek funding and forge ties. He says the group hopes to raise $45,000 for a center to house 50 people as they rebuild their homes.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Ask the man assigned to combat corruption and bureaucracy in New Orleans how the fight is going and he will tell you about his telephone problems. "I started last September and they only switched my phone lines on two weeks ago," said Robert Cerasoli, New Orleans' first-ever Inspector General in a recent interview. "Everything has been a battle since, everything has been a fight." < > "This is Louisiana," Cerasoli said with a shrug. < >

Hurdles of language, mistrust addressed: A burgeoning Hispanic population has helped rebuild New Orleans during the past two and a half years. Now officials are coming to grips with the challenge of moving and finding safe refuge for that population should another hurricane threaten. Since Hurricane Katrina, as many as 14,000 Hispanic immigrants have arrived in New Orleans to provide muscle and skills for the recovery effort. Now civic groups as well as government officials say overcoming cultural and language barriers between emergency officials and Spanish speakers -- especially the undocumented -- has taken on new urgency.

Ever since it took over the public housing projects of New Orleans more than a decade ago, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been itching to tear them down. Now, after years of lawsuits and delays, it looks as if the agency will finally get its Christmas wish. The New Orleans City Council is scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether to sign off on the demolitions of three projects. HUD already has its bulldozers in place, engines warm and ready to roll the next morning. Arguing that the housing was barely livable before the flooding unleashed by...

So, President and Mrs. Bush went down to New Orleans to commemorate the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina...Here's a pop quiz: How much money has Uncle Sam spent...since Hurricane Katrina ripped the place apart? The grand total is $127 billion (including tax relief). That's right: a monstrous $127 billion. Of course, not a single media story has highlighted this gargantuan government-spending figure. But that number came straight from the White House... This is an outrage. The entire GDP of the state of Louisiana is only $141 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. So the cash spent there nearly matches...

Two years ago, Robert Lynn Green of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans lost nearly everything precious to him in the world. His granddaughter, Shanai, was swept out of his hands in the flood and drowned. His home was washed away. And the skeleton of his 73-year-old mother, Loyce, was found four months later, trapped in the ruins of his house. Green has been camped out for months in a FEMA trailer, waiting for help that never seems to come. One reason for the delay is that Louisiana's political corruption, unfortunately, was one thing that didn't get washed away...