This is Robert E. Lee in the Gentilly neighborhood. This photograph was taken on the other side of the New London Ave. Canal, only one block away from Lakeview. By contrast, Gentilly is a mixed income neighborhood, similar to Mid-city, with a large elderly population before the storm.

Many families have rebuilt their homes and have returned to the neighborhood. Other houses have been rebuilt by their owners as rental properties. However, much of the elderly were on fixed incomes, almost none of them have returned to the neighborhood. Many of the neglected properties here in Gentilly belong to elderly homeowners. I have spoken to a few former residents from the area, and many have moved to apartments or out of the city entirely rather than go through the difficult process of rebuilding.

This image is part of a series titled Four Years After. To view a pdf version of the entire series, please use the following search term to perform a search within the database: Gentilly-Lakeview. To view all of the individual images, please select this tag: Four Years Later.