Neighborhood Growth Rates

Executive Summary

A new Census Bureau report named New Orleans as the fastest growing large city in the country between April 1, 2010 and July 1, 2011. Even newer data from Valassis, Inc. on households receiving mail suggests that growth has continued through June 2012, and reveals just where the growth is happening.

Between 2010 and 2011, both Census Bureau population estimates and the number of addresses receiving mail grew by 5 percent. More recent data on households receiving mail suggest that the population of New Orleans continued to increase from 2011 to 2012 by 2.5 percent.

The New Orleans metro’s relatively strong economy continues to attract both old and new residents. And among all metro parishes, Orleans Parish itself experienced the largest gain in households receiving mail over the last year—with an increase of 4,000 households. St. Tammany had the next largest increase with 1,800 additional households.

All told, New Orleans households receiving mail have increased by 12,700 since the Census 2010 count, with fully 66 of 72 neighborhoods experiencing gains. All of the “sliver by the river” neighborhoods added households between 2010 and 2012, marking a reversal of trends between 2008 and 2010 for Audubon, Black Pearl, East Carrollton, East Riverside, French Quarter, Garden District, Iberville, Irish Channel, Touro, Uptown, and West Riverside when these neighborhoods actually lost households. However, only five of the elevated east bank neighborhoods (Black Pearl, Central Business District, East Carrollton, Lower Garden District, and Marigny) have reached 100 percent of their June 2005 pre–Katrina number.

Neighborhoods most heavily flooded by the levee failures continue to grow the fastest as old and new residents move into rehabbed homes and new multi–family tax credit properties. In fact, most of these heavily damaged areas on the east bank experienced double–digit percentage increases between 2010 and 2012, including growth rates of more than 20 percent in Filmore, Holy Cross, Lakeview, Lower Ninth Ward, Pines Village, Pontchartrain Park, and Read Blvd. West. Notably, growth in the Seventh Ward and Pontchartrain Park picked up pace between 2010 and 2012 as compared to the prior two–year period (2008 to 2010).

Of the six neighborhoods that lost households from June 2010 to June 2012, five were on the west bank (Algiers Point, Behrman, McDonogh, U.S. Naval Support Area, and Whitney). As a whole, the west bank of New Orleans grew by 0.6 percent since 2010, with all of that growth in the Fischer public housing development and the most far–flung suburbs of Tall Timbers/Brechtel, Old Aurora, and New Aurora/English Turn.

Seven years after Katrina, about half of New Orleans’ 72 neighborhoods have recovered over 90 percent of the population they had before the levees failed. Ten neighborhoods now have a larger number of active addresses than they did prior to the levee breaches. Only four neighborhoods have less than half the population they had prior to Katrina, including two public housing development sites that have been demolished to make way for new mixed–income housing.