Rivlin spoke Wednesday in Walter Hall to a crowd of about 50 people about his book, Katrina: After the Flood, as part of the James Lecture in Urban Politics series.
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 29, 2005, Gary Rivlin was living in San Francisco covering Silicon Valley for The New York Times.
Just 11 days later he was on a plane headed to Louisiana for eight months to cover the effect the storm had on a local business. It was not until six years later that Rivlin started to write a book about the racial and geographic problems that arose from the disaster.
Rivlin spoke Wednesday in Walter Hall to a crowd of about 50 people about his book, Katrina: After the Flood, as part of the James Lecture in Urban Politics series.
“Katrina was an equal opportunity storm and it has not been an equal opportunity recovery," Rivlin said. "There are racial biases to our policies and I just think they need to be understood and exposed.”
Rivlin’s lecture focused on the issues of race and politics in rebuilding New Orleans. He said there were two narratives that needed to be told: that of the black community and that of the white community.
In New Orleans, it was historically difficult for black people to own property due to land contracts and the reluctance of banks to loan out money, Rivlin said.
By the time that banks, such as Liberty Bank — which Rivlin studied for The Times — were founded in the early 1970s, people of color were able to get loans to purchase land, but property at higher elevations were already taken by a mostly white population. That left many black people to build and purchase homes in low-lying areas, Rivlin said, which were the areas most heavily damaged by flooding from Katrina.
The cost to build a house is the same regardless of where it is located, Rivlin said, but the value of a house varies by location. The difference in value ultimately left many black home owners with a lack of funds to rebuild because they received less insurance money as a result of the lower home value.
"It was based on the assessed value of the home rather than the cost of rebuilding, and the truth is that the home in the black community is typically assessed at much less than the home in the white community," Rivlin said. "In fact, the statistics, it says two thirds of the homes in New Orleans that were flooded costs $120,000 or less."
Matthew Layton, an assistant professor of political science, assigned Rivlin's book to the urban politics class he is teaching this semester because he felt the themes covered in the book were relevant to the course.
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“It's a book that talks about themes, like mentioned in the talk today, like race and politics in the United States," Layton said. "It also gets at basic questions about what defines a city, what's the relevance of people, what's the relative importance of infrastructure and, in this context of (Hurricane) Katrina where 80 percent of the city was under water, how do you rebuild and what is the new city that emerges from that kind of disaster?”
Imani Edwards, a sophomore studying political science, was assigned to read Rivlin's book as part of Layton's class and said she enjoyed hearing Rivlin speak in person.
“I didn't realize how big the racial issue was," Edwards said. "I know New Orleans is a very diverse city, so just seeing how much of an impact that race actually played ... that's just so sad to think about."
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