Working Class May Be Forced Out Of 'The Big Easy'

Thousands of blue-collar workers who never lived in publicly subsidized housing increasingly have no place to live in New Orleans. The planned demolition of 4,500 publicly subsidized apartments is less significant to the future, policy experts say, than Katrina's destruction of nearly 41,000 inexpensive rentals that once housed the city's self-sufficient working class.

With no concrete plan to replace those apartments, some say the city's economic base erodes with every blue-collar worker pushed out by higher living costs. Many local officials bank on rebuilding the city's health and biotech sectors, which were emerging before Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans.

Robert Tannen, a New Orleans urban planner, fears the housing crisis for blue-collar workers is undermining eclectic qualities that attract the upwardly mobile.