A City's Changing Face

Despite months of national publicity and an intensive effort to encourage out-of-town voting, turnout in the Lower Ninth fell 40 percent compared with the 2002 mayoral election. In the precinct that includes the 2500 block of Delery, turnout was down 50 percent. The falloff was mirrored in other black districts across the city.

In Lakeview, where most houses are also still empty, turnout dipped by only 6 percent. On the day of the primary, the neighborhood's polling center at St. Dominic became the site of a joyous homecoming party -- as cars rolled in all day long from the suburbs. In the precinct that includes the 6500 block of Memphis, turnout increased as it did in undamaged, mostly white neighborhoods such as the French Quarter and the Garden District.

Election results -- and the results of a mayoral runoff on Saturday -- will "have a big effect on what neighborhood voices are heard by city politicians," predicted John R. Logan, a sociology professor at Brown University who has begun a long-term study of demographic change in post-Katrina New Orleans.

"Lakeview is going to be an increasingly important political constituency in the future," he said. "And the Lower Ninth is almost certainly going to have less clout in coming years, and that really puts its future on the line."

The prospect of increased political power is an enticement drawing homeowners back to Lakeview, said Dvorak of St. Dominic. There is a growing certainty among returnees to the neighborhood, he said, that they will shape the future of New Orleans.

Waiting in the Suburbs

"When people don't vote, you lose your right to complain about services," said Ron Martinez, an architect who expects to move back with his family to Memphis Street by the end of the summer.

Ever since the storm, Martinez has been saying that race relations are as great a problem for New Orleans as hurricanes. But he says he can do little to redress the imbalances that have been worsened by Katrina. He and his wife, Cathy, have been preoccupied with the cost and complexities of finding a way to bring their own family back to New Orleans.

After the storm, they agonized about the financial sense and physical risks of returning to Memphis Street. It is below sea level (lower by five feet, in fact, than the Lower Ninth Ward) and just half a mile from where a levee breached along the 17th Street Canal, flooding Lakeview.

They opted last October for a holding pattern in the suburbs, buying a house in Destrehan, a 40-minute drive west of New Orleans. Since then, Ron has been commuting to his office in the Garden District. Their children, Evan, 12, and Marcelle, 11, commute to St. Dominic's School, in its temporary location about two miles from Lakeview. Ron usually takes the children in and Cathy drives them home.

On the first day of spring, they decided enough was enough. They took a financial leap that will soon take them back to Lakeview. They bought another house on Memphis Street and will use it as a base while fixing up their larger house on that street. They have not yet sold their house in the suburbs. "We weren't risk-takers before, but after Katrina, what the hell," Cathy Martinez said.

The Martinezes said they are taking the risk because their block, their church and their neighbors are all up and running. They want to be part of it without driving in from the suburbs every day. And St. Dominic School is scheduled to reopen in August in Lakeview. The kids will need to walk only two blocks to get there.

'Look and Leave'

Until last week, the city had designated the entire Lower Ninth Ward as a "look and leave" area because city water tested unsafe for drinking. That order has now been lifted, but only for about half of the neighborhood.