I've got pictures!

Second home which was a little dark. The sun was going down. We found old high school notebooks and yearbooks from the 1950's and 1960's.

First home and you can see the mold right above the fireplace.

First home which had a beautiful New Orleans (Creole) architecture. We hated tearing down the walls in this place.

Well, the New Year is already here and my pictures are finally ready. It was so funny because as I sent my pictures to my e-mail account while in New Orleans, some pictures and video clips didn't even start appearing until this week. Go figure! I must say that I had a wonderful time and I was so busy working that I really didn't have time to reflect the entire experience until now. As expected, there is so much that needs to be done and it's always the poor that are left carrying the bag. As I spoke with Patty, a volunteer coordinator from Raleigh who left a good paying marketing position to help in the rebuilding efforts, she said that there is talk from the city government to completely eliminate the poorer sections of the city such as the lower 9th ward. That could be why it felt like I was pulling teeth just to get into the 9th ward to begin gutting out homes. The myth about the lower 9th ward and some of the poorer sections of New Orleans is that the people were not home owners, that is not true because many of the residents were homeowners and had received homes passed down from generation to generation. The catch 22 was that there were sometimes no deeds and/or no insurance for the homes. In order to get help from FEMA for home rebuilding you needed to have insurance. Also, in order to get a FEMA trailer in front of your home, you have to have your home gutted out. The United Methodist Churches Disaster Recovery Stations work from a list of people registered through FEMA to have their homes gutted out at no charge. How do you get on the list to have your home gutted if you have no insurance? To pay out of pocket for these services is ridiculously high. As always the poor are caught between a rock and a hard place.