New Orleans shows striking potential, persistent problems, 8 years after Hurricane Katrina, economic report says, by Mark Waller, August 14, 2013, New Orleans Times-Picayune: “With the eighth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina impending, the New Orleans area is showing encouraging signs that it might be pulling off a rare reversal of a once-entrenched economic decline, but some weaknesses persist, concludes the latest check on the region’s economic health by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. The Data Center’s report, called the New Orleans Index at Eight and released Wednesday, compared the city to national averages, a group of growing cities that New Orleans might hope to emulate and a group of cities with moribund economic numbers from 1990 to 2000, more resembling New Orleans during the same period…”
Tag: Natural disasters
Hurricane Sandy and Low-Income Residents – New York City
- For some after the storm, no work means no pay, By Shaila Dewan and Andrew Martin, November 2, 2012, New York Times: “Chantal Sainvilus, a home health aide in Brooklyn who makes $10 an hour, does not get paid if she does not show up. So it is no wonder that she joined the thousands of people taking extreme measures to get to work this week, even, in her case, hiking over the Williamsburg Bridge. While salaried employees worked if they could, often from home after Hurricane Sandy, many of the poorest New Yorkers faced the prospect of losing days, even a crucial week, of pay on top of the economic ground they have lost since the recession…”
- In New York’s public housing, fear creeps in with the dark, By Cara Buckley and Michael Wilson, November 2, 2012, New York Times: “It would be dark soon at the Coney Island Houses, the fourth night without power, elevators and water. Another night of trips up and down pitch-black staircases, lighted by shaky flashlights and candles. Another night of retreating from the dark. On the second floor of Building 4, an administrative assistant named Santiago, 43, who was sharing her apartment with five relatives, ran through a mental checklist. Turn the oven on for heat. Finish errands, like fetching water for the toilet, before the light fades…”
Mobile Banking – Haiti
How Haiti is fighting poverty by killing cash, By Margo Conner, January 27, 2012, Christian Science Monitor: “In Haiti, cash is escaping from wallets and savings accounts are breaking free from brick-and-mortar banks. Two years after 2010’s devastating earthquake, mobile money has taken off in the island nation. While the country has seen setbacks in many areas and continues to struggle, one bright spot is the transformation of the country’s traditional banking sector. Physical banks were wiped away by the quake and subsequent hurricane, and a mobile banking network that uses cell phones has grown up in their place…”