Neighborhood Small Business Recovery: Three Years After Katrina (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION On August 29, 2005, the most destructive hurricane (Katrina) in the history of the United States struck the City of New Orleans, surrounding parishes and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Katrina claimed over 1800 lives (Bevan et. al. 2006) and caused an estimated $81.2 billion in damage (Wikipedia, 2006). Major breeches in the New Orleans levee system left some 80% of the city flooded (Murphy, 2005).