Lower Ninth Ward

• Venetian Isles (north)
• Arabi, St. Bernard Parish (east)
• Holy Cross (south)
• Bywater (west)

The City Planning Commission defines the boundaries of Lower Ninth Ward as these streets: Florida Avenue, St. Bernard Parish, St. Claude Avenue and the Industrial Canal.[3]

The Lower Ninth Ward is also commonly used to describe a slightly larger area. This area borders the Mississippi River to the South and St. Bernard Parish to the east. To the west is the Industrial Canal, across which is the Bywater section of New Orleans. The northern or inland boundary is often given as the Florida Canal with Florida Avenue, a levee, and railroad tracks running beside it. Alternatively, the industrial area north of Florida Avenue is sometimes included as part of the Lower 9th Ward, extending the boundary to the southern edge of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

In 1965, Hurricane Betsy struck New Orleans. A levee on the Industrial Canal collapsed, and much of the Lower 9th Ward was flooded. President Lyndon B. Johnson visited the devastated flooded area shortly after the storm, and ordered aid for the storm victims.[4][5]

Ruins of residential area in the Lower 9th Ward, with ING 4727 barge in the background

Painting depicting a National Guard helicopter rescuing people in the flooded Lower Ninth Ward

Damaged photo in flood silt. Remains of ruined possessions were common on the streets of the Lower 9th Ward for months after the floodwaters had been drained.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall just east of New Orleans; the fifth deadliest hurricane and the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States. At approximately 10:00 am, the levee wall protecting the Ward broke in multiple sections and flooded the area. Multiple breaches in the levees of at least four canals resulted in catastrophic flooding in a majority of the city; see Effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Nowhere in the city was the devastation greater than in the Lower 9th Ward. This was largely due to the storm surge generated in the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a deep-draft shipping channel built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1950s. The construction destroyed tens of thousands of acres of protective coastal wetlands that once acted as a storm surge buffer for the community.

Storm surge flood waters appear to have poured into the Lower Ninth Ward from at least three sources. To the east, water flowed in from Saint Bernard Parish, while to the west the Industrial Canal suffered two major breaches: one just south of Florida Avenue, the second between North Galvez and North Roman streets. The force of the water did not only flood homes, but smashed or knocked many off their foundations. A large barge, the ING 4727 (owned by the Ingram Barge Company), was swept by flood waters into the neighborhood through the breach near Claiborne Avenue, leveling homes beneath it. The storm surge was so great that even the highest portions of the Lower 9th were flooded; Holy Cross School, which had served as a dry refuge after Hurricane Betsy, was inundated. The foot of the Mississippi River levee, the area's highest point, took on some 2 to 3 feet (0.91 m) of water. In total, 72 bodies were found as of December 2005.[6]

The Lower 9th Ward was flooded again by Hurricane Rita a month later in September.[7][8]

In December 2005, Common Ground Collective volunteers gutted the first house in the area. Volunteers and residents began gutting other houses in the community. Soon after, the Common Ground Collective opened the first distribution center in the area, in order to provide returning residents with water, food and other necessities.

Due to the great devastation and lack of population and services, the Lower Ninth Ward was the last area of the city still under a curfew half a year after the disaster. It was also the last area to have power and water restored, and the last to be pumped dry.[9] Officially, residents were allowed in during daylight hours to look, salvage possessions, and leave, although some few had already done extensive work gutting and repairing their damaged homes in preparation to move back. By January 2006, the widespread damages and difficulties in restoring basic utilities and city services still prevented the official reopening of the Lower 9th Ward to residents who wished to return to live.

The most severely damaged section of the Ward was the lower elevation section, north of Claiborne Avenue. A Bring Back New Orleans Commission preliminary report suggested making this area in whole or part into park space because of the high risk of future flooding. Most Lower 9th Ward residents have strongly objected to this proposal, but outsiders worry about the high risk of future flooding in the area.

In March 2006 a group of residents and Common Ground Collective volunteers broke into Martin Luther King Elementary School to begin cleanup efforts. Not long after, the state school officials agreed to repair the school. The school has subsequently become a Recovery School District charter school and is running at full capacity.

In 2006, Mayor Ray Nagin threatened to use his powers of eminent domain to seize vacant, severely damaged properties in all of New Orleans that had not been gutted or scheduled to be gutted before early 2007. Such blighted properties had been creating serious problems for returned New Orleanians, including infestations of rats and other vermin. Similar actions to seize abandoned blighted property are in effect in other Louisiana parishes, as well as in Mississippi counties affected by the storm. However, as hundreds of thousands of locals were still waiting for promised insurance or Road Home money, many of the poor lacked resources to work on their houses. The neighborhood had few stores and only a handful of schools reopened.

By early 2007, a small number of local businesses in the area reopened, and residents began to return, many living in FEMA trailers as they rebuilt (the last FEMA trailer was removed in 2012). However, much of the area was still little-populated and in ruined condition. Work crews continued to remove debris and demolish unrepairable houses daily, but hundreds if not thousands were vacant and gutted. Many more buildings had hardly been touched since the waters were drained, and ruined possessions were still inside severely damaged buildings.

On December 3, 2007, Make It Right Foundation, founded by the actor Brad Pitt, committed to rebuild 150 houses in the Lower Ninth Ward. The houses are sustainable, energy-efficient and safe.[10] Make It Right homes were designed by award-winning architects from New Orleans and around the world, including Frank Gehry, Shigeru Ban, Hitoshi Abe and Thom Mayne. Pitt stated: "I walked into it blind, just thinking, 'People need homes; I know people who make great homes.'"[11] As of March 2012, the foundation has rebuilt about 80 solar-paneled homes.[12]

In the spring of 2008, Build Now,[13] a local, non-profit homebuilder, began working to bring New Orleans families back home. It constructed site-built, stilt houses on hurricane-damaged lots. The homes reflect the style and quality of traditional New Orleans architecture but are built above potential flood waters. Build Now is in the process of bringing more than a dozen New Orleans families back home; nine houses are currently under construction in the Upper and Lower Ninth Ward areas, Lakeview and Gentilly. The organization has moved three New Orleans families back home.

As of September 2008, 3 years after Katrina, hundreds of houses have been rebuilt and renovated, and dozens of new homes have been constructed. Volunteers continue to come to the area in mass numbers, working for dozens of organizations including Common Ground Relief, formerly Common Ground Collective; and lowernine.org, a grassroots organization that coordinates volunteers' and residents' efforts in rebuilding homes in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Residents and volunteers are striving to make the Lower Ninth Ward a sustainable community. They are working to restore the local wetlands, lower the crime, and control weed overgrowth. It is widely believed that if it were not for the extensive canal dredging to support commercial development, resulting in subsequent wetlands subsidence, the Lower Ninth Ward would not have suffered such extensive flooding during Katrina.

In September 2011, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, announced a landscaping maintenance program called the "Nuisance Lot Maintenance Program", to attempt to clear the overgrown lots in the Lower Ninth. The program consists of 12 men, residents of the Ward or ex-offenders, going block-by-block to maintain the overgrowth. As of 2012, the program has cleared more than 1,200 lots.[12] However, as of September 2016, there are still many overgrown lots remaining, and the program has been diminishing in effort and organization due to a lack of funds and motivation, since it is difficult to control overgrowth due to the rapid speed at which grass grows.[12]

In March 2012, the New York Times described what the area looked like almost seven years after Katrina:

"The neighborhood has become a dumping ground for many kinds of unwanted things. It no longer resembled an urban, or even suburban environment. Where once there stood orderly rows of single-family homes with driveways and front yards, there was jungle."

— Nathaniel Rich, Jungleland: The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans Gives New Meaning to 'Urban Growth'[14]

As of October 2017, lowernine.org has fully rebuilt 88 homes, and completed repair and renovation projects on over 250 more properties.[15]