Return to New Orleans -- the Ninth Ward opens

And it looks pretty bad. This is a good news / bad-- no, very bad news story.
From the AP

At one intersection, the twisted remains of a yellow wood-frame house sat on Antonia Jackson's front lawn.

"It's from somewhere down the road," Jackson said.

She surveyed the destruction in her yard and sighed. "Everything's gone," she said. "Everything's gone."

Darlana and Alfred Green weren't sure the pile of wreckage in the median of Tupelo Street was their house until they saw the Spiderman sheets from their children's bedroom.

Darlana Green said she and her three children were in the house Aug. 29 when floodwaters lifted it off its foundation. They were rescued three days later, and the house eventually collapsed in a heap.

Picking through the debris, they found a water-swollen family Bible and a uniform that one of their daughters used to wear to nearby Martin Luther King School.

And the NY Times

Mrs. Butler said she could not bear to be away from New Orleans when her family relocated to Myrtle Beach, S.C. after the hurricane. She lasted there about two weeks, then took a bus home and stayed at the Marriott Hotel with her niece, who is a housekeeper there.

Thursday, she fought back tears repeatedly. "It hurts so bad," she said, "to look at everything we built gone. I just don't know what I'm going to do now."

Josephine Mitchum, 78, who is staying with her granddaughter just outside New Orleans, said she is having difficulty with her loss of independence. "I'm a free spirit, and I never had to live under someone else's roof before," she said.

With a wink, Ms. Mitchum joked that she would contemplate a fresh start if there was no chance of returning to her home. "I'm a retired domestic worker, but I'm thinking about being in Playboy," she said. "I'm going to be one of them bunnies. I told my reverend, and he said, 'You go, girl!' "

From Reuters:

Jude Williams, who lost his home, said he did not think the area would ever be rebuild, and his brother Dave said the residents didn't have the political muscle to be heard.

"There's only poor people back here," said Dave Williams.