For example, in a section on trailer parks for evacuees, we learn about conditions in “Renaissance Village,” run by the Keta Group for the Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group construction company. Conditions, needless to say, are far from ideal. The report then connects the trailer park problem with a set of Shaw roofing contracts, investigated by the US House of Representatives Government Reform Committee.

The committee issued a 2006 memorandum that

examined the so-called ‘Blue Roof’ contracts, where destroyed roofing was to be replaced with blue plastic tarpaulins. When the work was carried out at all, the committee found ‘consistently inflated charges and unsatisfactory supervision and oversight.’

p.s. The New York Times’s Adam Nossiter provides an update on one effect of the private and public sector failure: a diaspora of ex-New Orleaneans.

A subtext is that crime, fear for personal safety, is a big reason for leaving.

They now cast their votes in small Louisiana towns and in big cities of neighboring states. They have found new jobs and bought new houses. They have forsaken their favorite foods and cherished pastors. But they do not for a moment miss the crime, the chaos and the bad memories they left behind in New Orleans.

• 1
• 2