The following is excerpted from Blueprint for Gulf Renewal: The Katrina Crisis and a Community Agenda for Action, a publication of the Institute for Southern Studies.

As of August/September 2007
Amount that Bush administration says has been spent on Gulf Coast relief and recovery since 2005: $116 billion
Estimated percent of those funds that are for long-term recovery projects: 30
Amount of FEMA’s 2005 disaster relief budget that was spent on administrative costs: $7 billion
Percent of the 2005 relief budget that represented: 22

As of August 2006, value of Gulf Coast contracts that a Congressional study found were “plagued by waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement”: $8.75 billion
Scope of post-Katrina rent increases in Louisiana’s and Mississippi’s most storm-damaged parishes: 200 percent
Number of rental units available below fair market rents as of August 2007 in Mississippi’s Hancock County, Katrina’s Ground Zero: 0
Number of Louisiana’s storm-damaged rental units on track for rebuilding under state-administered restoration programs: 33,000
Number of livable public housing units in the city that HUD has slated for demolition: 3,000
Number of planned replacement units that would be affordable to previous residents for which there’s rebuilding money: 1,000
Number of hurricane-affected households still living in FEMA trailers: 81,000
Number of those trailers located in FEMA camps, which are home primarily to displaced renters: 13,000
Number of jobs lost in the New Orleans area since Hurricane Katrina: 118,000
Percent of stores, malls and restaurants that remain closed in New Orleans: 25
Value of Gulf Opportunity Zone projects approved to date in Louisiana to stimulate business recovery: $4.5 billion
Number of GO Zone projects located in New Orleans: 1
Number of luxury condos a developer plans to build with GO Zone tax breaks near the University of Alabama, four hours from the coast: 10
Rank of Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” Casino and Resort among largest private development projects proposed on the Mississippi coast: 1
Rank of “can’t pay for move” among reasons those displaced by Katrina say they aren’t coming back to Louisiana: 1
Number of jobs lost in the New Orleans area since Hurricane Katrina: 118,000