Good evening, everyone - with apologies for the lateness and complexity of this note . . . :

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Terror in the anticipation:

Horror in the landfall:

Unimaginable pain and hardship in the aftermath:

We will hear from Lois and her team on Thursday the horrific, but undeniable, truth that with no abatement in the rate of climate change, storms like Ida will not only continue to devastate the Gulf Coast – which they have throughout history – but will also become more frequent, more intense, and more deadly as the climate continues to warm.

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Like the fires raging in the West . . . the droughts draining the Colorado River reservoirs . . . the flooding submerging communities in Tennessee and Detroit and Miami . . . the heat islands suffocating low-income communities in too many cities to count . . . these extreme weather events will accelerate the unthinkable – transforming the living conditions in vast swaths of our country (and, of course, every other nation) into zones of extreme risk, increasingly uninhabitable.

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But what does that mean for New Orleans? And for the Kresge Foundation’s investments there?

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I am loathe to say it, but they are two respects in which we’ve been here before.

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After Katrina, there were recriminations on virtually every front. The inadequacies of the physical infrastructure – i.e., substandard engineering of the levees. The shortcomings of the anticipatory planning . . . The shameful inadequacy of the rescue and evacuation responses in the city’s poorest communities. The general mismanagement of the federal role. And on and one.

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It appears that with respect to many of these, the story of Ida will be different – although a great deal remains to be seen. It was a different storm from Katrina . . . essential infrastructure investments had proved their worth . . . and governmental response, so far, appears to have been better managed.

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But . . . . no matter how many levees you build, pumps can fail . . . no matter how well you orchestrate evacuations, rainfall in such incredible volumes will put pretty much everything under water . . . no matter how many houses you put on stilts, coastal erosion will ineluctably impair the buffers to nature’s overwhelm . . . . no matter how many generators you find in Lakewood and the Garden District, 150-mile-an-hour winds will take out your electrical transmission towers everywhere.

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So, that’s the first “Groundhog Day” sense of having been here before. Climate change unabated ensures that the day will repeat, again and again. That’s why the Environment team’s message – why the Biden Administration’s message – is so critical: you have to trip the circuit to stop the cycle.

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But there is a second Groundhog Day sense as well – one that centers on the question of building the resilience of the city’s residents over the longer term.

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Money cascaded in in the immediate aftermath of Katrina – as it should have. Kresge determined that we would play a part in those efforts, joining thousands of others.

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But we also decided to supplement those investments with a long-term commitment to helping re-build the community, with an emphasis on people. For a decade, we have invested in climate mitigation, to be sure, but also in the city’s cultural and artistic fabric . . . in the development of neighborhood small businesses . . . in community organizing and capacity-building, particularly in the Lower Ninth Ward . . . in the human services ecology . . . in the re-imagined public health system . . . in college access and success at the city’s HBCU’s.

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We will now be called to reaffirm that commitment. We will.

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Information on the exact ground-truth and what our partners can do in the next short while is spotty. It is no surprise, but nevertheless distressing, that – for example – the city’s website is down.

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But the outlines of our path forward are clear.

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Immediate Actions

Although the storm has passed, it leaves behind dangers of staggering proportions. Many people with means evacuated the city before the storm, and many more will evacuate the city during the coming days, weeks, and even months while they wait for the city to again become inhabitable. Neighbors are being told to watch out for each other . . . are being asked to share housing, food, potable water, and generators . . . and are being encouraged to feed emergency-response workers. It goes without saying those with neighborhood and social supports are faring better than those without these networks or financial means.

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Community-based organizations will join the front tier of response in providing water, food, medication, shelter, housing repair materials, FEMA application support, and health services (not the least of which is COVID testing) to the city’s residents. Local donors are providing essential backbone support to these organizations.

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There is a complex interplay between relatively limited philanthropic capacity and the enormous pool of federal funding available after disasters. That was true after Katrina, and will likely be equally true after Ida.

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Our partners in New Orleans have worked diligently over the last decade to make improvements in how resources from federal agencies reach those in greatest need. They have told us unequivocally, however, that difficult issues remain, making philanthropy’s role even more important. FEMA doesn’t cover all the costs an individual household might face . . .. FEMA dollars don’t move to all the key organizations on the ground . . . FEMA often moves money through reimbursement, placing huge burdens on cash-strapped nonprofits. We can work with our partners to help rectify these shortcomings.

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We will accordingly make grants through the American Cities program to the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Foundation for Louisiana, with an eye toward enabling them to supplement their normal operations with essential relief services.

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Each of our teams is also assessing how best to help. For example, the Health Program has connected with the Louisiana Public Health Institute and the Environment Program plans to contact its grantees.

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The extended effects of the power outages, flooding, and wind damage will require countless residents to find transitional housing, much of it outside the city – we intend to work with the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Foundation for Greater Louisiana to understand whether there is a role for philanthropy to play in what our partners term “managed migration.”

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Priorities over the Longer-Term

Our conversation at the Board meeting on Thursday could not be more timely. It is clear that over the longer-term, Kresge’s focus on climate change will powerfully shape our investments in New Orleans, as they have to this point. Lessons learned from the New Orleans region about hard and social infrastructure, about self-determined retreat, and about the interplay of federal, state, and local climate change policy will inform the nation. This was said after Katrina and will be even more resonant today.

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Climate change makes New Orleans home to some of the most vulnerable low-income people in the country. Given our mission to expand opportunities for people with low-income, our commitment to the well-being of New Orleanians should remain steadfast.

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It will – we will stay the fundamental course.

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We will dedicate more time and thought to determining what, exactly, that will look like. But I’m confident that it will include:

• Asking Chantel and the American Cities team to help integrate even more fully the work of our discipline-based teams who invest in New Orleans;
• Elevating climate change as a variable to be considered in each investment we make in the city;
• Continuing to acknowledge that “community-building” is rooted in the full spectrum of public system investments represented in Kresge’s program teams; and
• Grounding all of our investments in full economic and social racial and ethnic inclusion.

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We’ll keep you closely apprised.

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Rip