Obama criticised over Katrina ‘recovery’

PRESIDENT Barack Obama yesterday praised the “extraordinary resilience” of New Orleans 10 years after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, but faced criticism that not enough had been done to bridge racial and economic divides.

Mr Obama was due to speak at the city’s new $20 million (£13 million) community centre in the largely African-American Lower Ninth Ward, which was submerged in the floods.

He was expected to say in his speech last night that “what that storm revealed was another tragedy, one that had been brewing for decades. New Orleans had long been plagued by structural inequality that left too many people, especially poor people of colour, without good jobs or affordable health care or decent housing.”

Mr Obama has made it a priority of his presidency to pour money into New Orleans. A $14.5 billion levee system has been built, a $1.1 billion hospital opened last year, $1.8 billion was spent repairing 80 schools, and thousands of homes have been built. But some Afri- can-American residents have complained that money ploughed into the city has led to rising rents and forced them out, or made it too expensive for those who fled Katrina to return.

Norris Henderson, head of a community group called Vote, said: “We didn’t have what we needed to come home.”

Michael Henderson, a public policy professor at Louisiana State University, said Mr Obama’s view that the city was undergoing a miraculous resurgence “does not fully mesh with many residents’ own views or experiences”.