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KAI RYSSDAL: From American Public Media, this is Rebuilding Biloxi One Year After Katrina, a documentary from Marketplace and American Radioworks, I'm Kai Ryssdal.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

A year ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. It hit hard in Biloxi, Mississippi.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): I've got two small kids, and the water's steady rising.

SPEAKER: When I looked out this back window here, the water was all the way up to the top.

SPEAKER: My house is gutted.

KAI RYSSDAL: While New Orleans got paralyzed by Katrina, it's a different story in Biloxi.

SPEAKER: It will come back bigger and better than probably any of us can imagine at this point in time.

KAI RYSSDAL: But Biloxi's comeback won't be easy.

SPEAKER: If we don't build back safely, we will get destroyed again.

SPEAKER: Families started getting ripped off from the start.

SPEAKER: I had a false sense of security that our government was like, we're going to come in and we're going to help.

KAI RYSSDAL: In the coming hour, Rebuilding Biloxi One Year After Katrina. For Marketplace and American Radioworks, first, this news update.

This is Rebuilding Biloxi One Year After Katrina, a Marketplace and American Radioworks documentary from American Public Media. I'm Kai Ryssdal.

[WHIRRING]

Monday, August 29, 2005.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): 911. What's your emergency?

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Yes, ma'am. We then got over flooded over here.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Where are you at?

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): 210 Brown.

KAI RYSSDAL: Hurricane Katrina thrashes 200 miles of America's Southern coastline from Alabama to Louisiana.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): My apartment's coming apart. ABOUT 4 foot of water is underneath me. I'm on the second floor.

KAI RYSSDAL: But the hurricane Bears down hardest on Mississippi. Winds up to 120 miles an hour rip through cities like Pascagoula, Gulfport, and Bay Saint Louis, tearing off roofs and shredding trees. Then water surges in from the Gulf of Mexico.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): I'm at 45 Fishermen here in Biloxi.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): And I've got two small kids, and the water's steady rising.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Ma'am, we don't have anybody that we can send to you. All of our officers are off the road for their safety.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): How am I supposed to get out? I've got two small kids.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): I don't know, ma'am. We don't have anybody that can get to you.

KAI RYSSDAL: In the city of Biloxi, floodwaters rise 25 feet in some places. The city is built on a Peninsula and the storm surge gushes through town, trapping residents in their homes. People scramble onto tables and counters then into attics and then onto rooftops. Houses are swept into the street. A child begs 911 for help.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): I want to get out of here.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): I know, sweetheart. I know you do.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Get me out of here.

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Sarah, listen to me, OK? We can't get to you, but your daddy and your mom are going to stay right there with you, and you're going to be OK, OK?

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Why can't you get to me?

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Because, baby, there's water over the road.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Can't you get a lifeboat to me?

SPEAKER (ON PHONE): Baby, we can't get a boat there.

KAI RYSSDAL: Katrina eventually subsides and the nation begins to grasp the scale of the disaster.

GEORGE W. BUSH: The vast majority of new Orleans, Louisiana is underwater. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses are beyond repair. Along the Mississippi Gulf Coast has been completely destroyed. Mobile is flooded. We are dealing with one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history.

KAI RYSSDAL: America's attention has been focused on new Orleans, on how devastating the flooding was there, and how slowly city is picking up the pieces. But 90 miles East in the city of Biloxi, on Mississippi's Gulf coast, a dramatically different story is unfolding.

[ENGINE WHIRRING]

Unlike New Orleans, the rebuilding in Biloxi began almost immediately. It was fueled in large part by the city's casino industry, which poured billions of dollars into rebuilding and expanding. In New Orleans, flooding forced most of the population to abandon the city. More than half is still gone. But in Biloxi, many people rode out the storm at home or moved back soon after. Biloxi is poised to recover faster than any place else on the Gulf Coast. Some say the city will be a better place to live after Katrina, but not for everyone.

Over the past year, producers Kate Ellis and Stephen Smith followed four Biloxi families who lost everything they had. They bring us an intimate portrait of people struggling to rebuild their lives. It's a struggle against mud and bureaucracy and bad luck in a struggle against despair. A year after the storm, some families are recovering and some are mired in misfortune. Stephen Smith has this part of our program.

[WATER SPLASHING]

STEPHEN SMITH: Biloxi is defined by this waterfront on the Gulf of Mexico, 26 miles of White Sand, the largest man-made beach in the world. French explorers landed here in 1699, making Biloxi one of the oldest cities in the United States. About 50,000 people live here. When you ask people in Biloxi what they love about their city, they talk about deep family roots, the diverse mix of European and Vietnamese immigrants drawn here by the seafood industry, about the campy tourist joints along the highway. But mainly, they talk about the water.

SPEAKER: This is a beautiful place. The water out there is gin clear. You can see bottom at 20 feet.

SPEAKER: When I dated, we didn't have cars, so we dated in sailboats, you know? When I had to go to school, we rode to school in the boat, you know? I mean, boats have just been my life.

SPEAKER: One of my favorite scenes, every June when shrimp season opened, you would look out to the water at night, and it would look like a city because there were so many shrimp boats and the lights were out there and it seemed magical.

STEPHEN SMITH: Biloxi's coastal location defines the city another way. The Gulf of Mexico is where the Hurricanes come from.

ETHEL CURRY: I was standing in the hallway when the shed popped and tilted forward.

STEPHEN SMITH: Ethel Curry's house is in one of the oldest parts of Biloxi. She is 60 and grew up in this neighborhood. Ethel was at home alone the morning hurricane Katrina's floodwaters surged in.

ETHEL CURRY: And I looked out this back window here. The water was all the way up to the top, and it was like a front loading washing machine. It was sloshing from side to side, and then it would turn back and forth.

STEPHEN SMITH: The foul, gritty water burst into the house. A refrigerator tipped on its back and began to float. The door splayed open. Frantic for a safe place, Ethel climbed inside. Then the tide pushed her makeshift raft up against the ceiling. She punched through the ceiling tiles to get air. The water kept rising.

ETHEL CURRY: And I said, Lord, please take it down because if it come any higher, I can't swim. Well, I was through the rafters, holding my head up, trying to keep it, you know, from getting in my mouth because I couldn't stand it.

STEPHEN SMITH: A few blocks away, Ethel Curry's brother Stanley Smith watched the water rise on his property.

STANLEY SMITH: I was trying to find a couple of shovels, kind of digging some trenches out back so some water flow, you know? And by the time I made it back around the house, the water had already started coming across the street. So I went out back and found my little aluminum boat and I started bailing the water out of it. And about 8:30, the National Guard truck pulled up and they hollered for us to, you know, come on with them. And so that's what we did. We grabbed what we could. They took us to the police station to ride it out.

STEPHEN SMITH: After the storm, Stanley, his wife Leslie, and their dog Tater returned home to a sodden house, and the house had moved.

LESLIE SMITH: This was the back step right here. That door used to be right here.

STEPHEN SMITH: So it's moved off its foundation about four feet.

LESLIE SMITH: Here's the brick.

STEPHEN SMITH: This is the block inside Stanley's house, a brown stain runs in a line around the walls of each room up by the ceiling. It's the high water mark.

LESLIE SMITH: Sorry, I hadn't cleaned up.

STEPHEN SMITH: Well, I'm sorry I didn't take off my shoes.

LESLIE SMITH: That's OK. That's OK. That's fine. That's OK. You see, you can see the line on the ceiling.

STANLEY SMITH: And as you can see, that room there is totally destroyed in there. The roof is all down inside of there and everything.

STEPHEN SMITH: And there's, like, a-- I mean, it looks like just piles and piles of dressers and clothes and--

STANLEY SMITH: It took everything and just busted out the drawers and everything and all the clothes and stuff that we're hanging in the closets and stuff. They just--

STEPHEN SMITH: Pulled them right out.

STANLEY SMITH: --pulled them right out, mm-hmm.

STEPHEN SMITH: It is six days after the hurricane. The stench of floodwater sours the air. Biloxi's streets are choked with fallen trees and shattered houses. People's stuff, an old Andy Gibb album, a muddied Hello Kitty hat mingles in the street with broken toilets and lamps. Emergency crews from around the country are starting to pour in and so are relief supplies.

STANLEY SMITH: We got crackers, cereal, peanuts. We got, you know, potted meat and stuff like that, vienna sausages. We got Spam sardines--

STEPHEN SMITH: Stanley and his wife are sleeping on their front porch. They've made a narrow bed from sofa cushions they dried out in the sun. Before the storm, Stanley was the head of groundskeeping at a retirement home. Leslie was a clerk at a department store. Katrina wiped out their jobs. It also wiped out their cars, so Stanley cruises the neighborhood on foot.

STANLEY SMITH: Hey. How are y'all doing?

MR. WHITTLE: Good morning, Stanley.

STANLEY SMITH: Hey, Mr. Whittle.

MR. WHITTLE: Everybody good?

STANLEY SMITH: Oh, yeah, we're doing good.

MR. WHITTLE: Come on up.

STANLEY SMITH: At this trying time, we're all going-- been through some turmoil. I can keep my pains and frustrations and stuff back because somebody is feeling bad at-- worse about it than I am. And what I'll do is I'll try to say something encouraging to lift them up. And in doing so, if it does anything for them, it's going to make me feel better too. SPEAKER: yeah thank the Lord.

- (SINGING) Your grace and mercy brought me through. I'm living this moment--

SPEAKER: Thank you, lord,

- (SINGING) --because--

STEPHEN SMITH: On the first Sunday after Katrina, Stanley Smith and his sister Ethel make their way to New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. The service takes place on folding chairs in the parking lot because the church got flooded.

SPEAKER: Jesus, Jesus is able to manage our storm. I tell you, my brothers and sisters, I tell you, the Lord is able to put shelter over our heads. Can I get a witness?

STEPHEN SMITH: As a military helicopter patrols the sky, about 30 people join in the service. Ethel Curry and a few others are staying in a dry corner of the church, the only shelter they can find. New Bethel church is about a mile from the shore, and many of the people who decided not to evacuate before Katrina felt safe in this neighborhood. After all, they'd made it through Hurricane Camille in 1969.

[TRUCK BEEPING]

At the end of the service, a truck backs into the parking lot. Volunteers from a Florida church spring open the back door and begin unloading provisions. In the weeks after Katrina, thousands of volunteers show up unannounced to help.

SPEAKER: We've got food, baby supplies, and some first aid supplies. We have flashlights as well. We got batteries. There's a few radios in there, I believe.

STEPHEN SMITH: Batteries and portable radios are welcome. Biloxi's residents have no phone service, electricity, or running water. Even those who have cars can't easily get gas, so people are feeling isolated and trapped.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): We're going to take a quick break here and be back in just a second.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): Here's an announcement for State Farm policyholders. State Farm is aware that the recent severe weather has caused extensive property damage.

STEPHEN SMITH: In the weeks after the hurricane, Biloxi radio stations broadcast scores of reassuring ads from insurance companies. Teams of insurance adjusters roll into town to begin taking claims. The hurricane destroyed 6,000 homes and businesses in Biloxi, about a quarter of the buildings in the city. Thousands of other homes were damaged, but could probably be repaired. One of those belongs to Julie Suaste. She and her family are sorting through the wreckage.

JULIE SUASTE: There's still some canned goods. Boy, this thing's going to be heavy.

SPEAKER: Yeah, it's either you take--

STEPHEN SMITH: Julie and her husband were both dealers at a Biloxi casino. They evacuated to Florida before Katrina hit. When they got back two days after the storm, they found a house from down the street washed up in their front yard. The Suaste's one-story home was still standing, but shoulder high floodwaters had wiped out nearly everything inside.

JULIE SUASTE: Sewage, mud, debris, just muck in general. We just had this house built. We moved in April 1. We've been in here less than-- just right at four months.

STEPHEN SMITH: With help from family and friends, Julie and her husband pick through their house to see what can be saved.

SPEAKER: Leave the microwave?

JULIE SUASTE: The microwave is fine.

SPEAKER: All right, leave it there.

JULIE SUASTE: That never got-- that never got any water.

SPEAKER: OK.

JULIE SUASTE: Well, we're on day-- well-- 13 from the hurricane. It still looks like a war zone here. It looks like ground zero.

STEPHEN SMITH: So you have been doing what in the last week?

JULIE SUASTE: Getting a hold of insurance companies, creditors, mortgage companies, FEMA, Red Cross, anybody that we can get a hold of for any kind of assistance, whether it be food, shelter, financial, just help with clearing debris, repairing properties. And it's a long haul. Every day we're busy all day long, and it still seems like we're getting nothing done.

STEPHEN SMITH: But less than two weeks after Katrina, Julie has heard from her insurance company.

JULIE SUASTE: If you don't have flood insurance, it's pretty much too bad is what they say. My house is gutted. There is nothing salvageable in here. Appliances, carpet, furniture, everything is completely gutted. Since I did not have flood insurance, it's classified as a flood, I have no coverage.

STEPHEN SMITH: So they're going to give you--

JULIE SUASTE: $3,400.

STEPHEN SMITH: That's on a house that had been worth $170,000. Without insurance money to rebuild, without a job, the question in Julie's mind is, will she lose her house to the bank?

JULIE SUASTE: You know, I hate to have to give the house back, but if I have to, I feel compelled that I'm going to have to give the house back if I don't get some kind of relief or help to rebuild.

STEPHEN SMITH: As it turned out, roughly 30,000 South Mississippians would need the same help to save their homes.

RICKY MATTHEWS: So you have families who had all their equity tied up in their homes, and now they don't have a mortgage for a slab.

STEPHEN SMITH: Ricky Matthews is publisher of the Mississippi Gulf Coast's Sun Herald newspaper.

RICKY MATTHEWS: And they were told by the federal government and the floodplain maps that they didn't need flood insurance. And 30,000 homes for a place the size of South Mississippi, that is significant.

STEPHEN SMITH: So significant that Matthews ran an editorial calling for the federal government to award Mississippi $4 billion in aid for homeowners alone. People on the Mississippi Gulf Coast desperately needed massive help from the federal government, but would they get it?

[JAZZ MUSIC]

KAI RYSSDAL: You're listening to Rebuilding Biloxi One Year After Katrina, a documentary from Marketplace and American Radioworks. Coming up--

NOAMI FOSTER: When the Red Cross truck came through the neighborhood for feeding, you know, they'll bring lunch or dinner. And it was the most humiliating thing in my life that I ever had to do to walk up to the truck and say, I need five meals, please.

SPEAKER: When you have to choose between your medicine and a homeowner's insurance policy and you're living in a house that maybe you haven't had to pay for, you're probably going to try and keep yourself alive before you go and insure the house.

KAI RYSSDAL: I'm Kai Ryssdal. Our program continues in just a moment from American Public Media.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

This is Rebuilding Biloxi One Year After Katrina, a Marketplace and American Radioworks documentary from American Public Media. I'm Kai Ryssdal.

BRUCE NORRIS: Before the storm, this was a 70,000 square foot casino. We had a half a dozen or so high-end restaurants across the back wall.

KAI RYSSDAL: By late October, two months after Hurricane Katrina, the massive shell of Biloxi's Beau Rivage Casino was crawling with construction workers and machinery. Before the hurricane, Mississippi law said casinos had to be on water, either on riverboats or on barges tied to shore. But soon after the storm, Mississippi changed its laws to allow Gulf Coast casinos to build on land. It was a boost that casino developers had wanted for years.

Land-based casinos will be less vulnerable to hurricanes. They can also be much bigger. Beau Rivage spokesman Bruce Norris says Mississippi's new law will change the face of Biloxi.

BRUCE NORRIS: It will come back bigger and better than probably any of us can imagine at this point in time. We're talking three to five years down the road. But we feel that it's a pretty safe bet to invest money in Biloxi, Mississippi, because given our history, how it's been very pro-business, three to five years down the road, we're going to be rocking and rolling.

KAI RYSSDAL: Rock and roll may be the future, but for most folks in Biloxi, the first months after Katrina are all about the blues. That includes Julie Suaste. She and her husband lost their jobs as dealers at the Beau Rivage. Producer Kate Ellis caught up with them just before Halloween.

KATE ELLIS: It's late at night in Mobile, Alabama. In a parking lot, sitting in the car, Julie and her husband Ruben just got off work.

JULIE SUASTE: We're working for an Allstate Insurance company that's helping settle flood claims for those that were affected by the storm from Rita and Katrina.

KATE ELLIS: And we had to meet in the parking lot because they're staying in a FEMA shelter on Mobile Bay. No visitors allowed.

JULIE SUASTE: We're living on the holiday cruise ship, which is one of the Carnival Cruise lines that FEMA has set up. They treat it as a shelter. So there's no alcohol, there's no entertainment. They serve three meals a day. There's laundry facilities. And it's actually a quite nice set up for us.

KATE ELLIS: What's not so nice is the separation from their 13-month-old son, Nico. Julie sent him to live with his sister in Indiana until life settles down. For now, Julie and her husband work seven days a week, 12 hours a day. They're processing flood insurance claims from homeowners in New Orleans. It's temporary work. With their casino jobs gone, Julie and Ruben need the money. Talking to other storm victims is almost like hearing themselves on the other end of a line.

JULIE SUASTE: Everyone has a story and they're all the same story, that their home is destroyed, they lost all their belongings, the things that were most precious. And they get upset. They start crying on the phone. You don't understand what it's like. I tell them, I do, but I'm not really in a position to tell them that my personal situation is exactly the same, if not worse. We still don't know what's going on and we don't have any flood insurance to even wait for the check.

KATE ELLIS: Julie Suaste's family is treading turbulent water. If they don't get money from either insurance or the government, they're not sure they can afford to rebuild. But just walking away from the mortgage on their damaged house will ruin their credit. Still, they can leave. For others, that's not an option.

[CHATTER]

Back in Biloxi, Ethel Curry's goal for now is simple survival. She's hunting through boxes of donated clothes in the parking lot at her church.

ETHEL CURRY: Oh, I'm getting some bed linens and some shirts for Desmond because it's hard to fit him. And hopefully, I can find him some pants as well.

KATE ELLIS: Ethel is raising her nephew's sons. She gave up her job in a school cafeteria to care for them because their father, a mechanic in the military, travels so much. She survives on the money her nephew gives her and on welfare. Ethel and the boys are squeezed into a FEMA trailer parked in the yard. Desmond is 8 and Brandon's 6. Their house is still in one piece, but no one can live in it.

ETHEL CURRY: No, the mold is so bad in there and the floors are like wavy and buckles and stuff. We're waiting on the people to come and gut it out.

DESMOND: I almost fell once on it.

KATE ELLIS: Ethel says it's hard for the boys to understand why they can't stay in the house.

ETHEL CURRY: I had to take them in because they didn't believe, you know-- because the first night we was here, they cried. They did not want to stay in this trailer. So I had to take them in the next day to let them see that it's not livable, you know, and the first thing they talked about, their toys and their books and their games, all the stuff they lost.

[CHATTER]

KATE ELLIS: At his elementary school, Brandon and the rest of his class try on Halloween costumes donated by teachers in New York. Brandon squirms into a skeleton suit.

SPEAKER: Let's see if your hand will fit in here.

SPEAKER: Party city.

SPEAKER: This'll fit.

KATE ELLIS: One of the classroom teachers is Naomi Foster. She says many of her five and six-year-old students are preoccupied by what they lost in Hurricane Katrina. The children are easily distracted and quick to tear up. At nap time, they now do something they'd always tried to avoid in the past, they sleep.

NOAMI FOSTER: And they sleep very soundly. They are exhausted. And I think they fall asleep here on their mats because they feel safe, they're comfortable, and I don't think their living conditions-- and I'm sure they're not ideal because mine aren't either. And I'm sure these children aren't sleeping as well as they should at night.

KATE ELLIS: Naomi and her husband Barney are living with their two sons in a FEMA trailer parked in their backyard. Their house was heavily damaged by Katrina's floodwaters. The fosters didn't have flood insurance. So for Naomi, trying to get money to rebuild is one long game of wait and see.

NOAMI FOSTER: You wait for the insurance to make a decision and then you wait for FEMA. And your life is in someone else's hands, you know, and it's hard that strangers are going to make the decision about your future for your life and your children.

KATE ELLIS: Naomi says the toughest thing, though, is being truly needy for the first time in her life.

NOAMI FOSTER: When the Red Cross truck came through the neighborhood for feeding, you know, they'll bring lunch or dinner, and it was the most humiliating thing in my life that I ever had to do to walk up to the truck and say, I need five meals, please. And I don't have a problem giving and helping because that's what I do. And now we are in the position to ask for help, and it's very embarrassing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

STANLEY SMITH: I've tearing the carport down, getting everything ready and stuff.

SPEAKER: Well, come in.

STANLEY SMITH: Yeah.

KATE ELLIS: December 15, nearly four months after Katrina, Stanley Smith and his wife Leslie are living in a FEMA trailer parked in the front yard. It's just a camper. And it's so narrow that if Stanley tripped going in, he'd hit his forehead on the opposite wall. But Stanley's thrilled to be out of his moldering house.

STANLEY SMITH: Oh, yeah, you know, the first night I slept in this thing, I woke up the next morning, I felt like a newborn baby. I felt like I was reborn. I mean, I just had a burst of energy. I could breathe. I mean, it was really wonderful, you know, the first night.

KATE ELLIS: Stanley seldom strays far from home. In the quest to rebuild, he doesn't want to miss a visit-- usually unannounced-- from insurance adjusters, FEMA inspectors, or relief workers. So far, Stanley has gotten a $17,000 insurance settlement for his house and $5,000 in FEMA aid. Stanley thinks he should be getting more money from FEMA, but he can tell the agency has problems.

STANLEY SMITH: A lot of people blame a lot of stuff on FEMA, but FEMA started getting ripped off from the start, you know? And that might have put a halt to things for a while until they can go like, whoa, wait a minute. I think I've seen this Social Security number three times already.

KATE ELLIS: Stanley would know. He found out recently that a man in Florida was using his Biloxi address to bilk money from FEMA. Stanley worries about the fraud and waste.

STANLEY SMITH: Because it's hurting people that really need, you know? People are out riding the new vehicles right now, and they never owned cars. How do they pull stunts like this, you know? And FEMA wasn't asking questions. They were just giving out money.

KATE ELLIS: Stanley Smith's mood at Christmastime is optimistic. He keeps from brooding by fixing up the yard and tinkering with projects. But the scene around him and across Biloxi remains bleak.

[ENGINE WHIRRING]

Bulldozers are still scooping up tons of storm debris. Lots where splintered houses stood are now empty. This is progress, but the sight is lonesome. Some 100 days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Congress is still debating how much aid to send to the Gulf Coast, aid to restore bridges and schools and businesses and aid for those who can't afford to rebuild their homes. So many people in Biloxi and across the Gulf Coast are on the edge of financial ruin. Newspaper publisher Ricky Matthews wonders how many will stay.

RICKY MATTHEWS: These people have an incredibly important choice to make, and that is they're facing bills like they've never seen before. They didn't have insurance. And even if they had insurance, they've lost their job. And they're doing the math, and they're thinking, OK, if I go to work for this much an hour, it will take me about 150 years to pay it all back. So they're in a limbo state. And I call that the Katrina factor.

KATE ELLIS: Matthew says the Katrina factor is paralyzing people at a time when they can't afford to stand still.

RICKY MATTHEWS: And, you know, some of those people will make choices to be part of the rebuilding effort and raise their sights higher and get more training and get better jobs and whatever, and some of them will not. And the reality of the situation is that those people, those exact people will end up being replaced by other workers who will come into this market, and take their jobs from them. It is a sad part of the severity of this disaster.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KATE ELLIS: And it's a part of the disaster that will take years to unfold. Biloxi officials are bracing for a tide of bankruptcies to wash in as unemployment benefits run out, bank accounts run dry, and bills keep accumulating.

NOAMI FOSTER: My FEMA trailer, home away from home. Now, come on in.

KATE ELLIS: A week before Christmas, Naomi Foster is at home in her FEMA trailer in the back yard. There's a miniature Christmas tree with ornaments that are eight-year-old-made. Naomi, her husband, and two boys are here for the duration.

NOAMI FOSTER: You know, it has its ups and downs. It's very cramped. It's, you know, difficult to move around. But I'm just thankful that we do have it. You know, it's not-- if I thought it would be permanent, I would go out of my mind.

KATE ELLIS: At the school where Naomi teaches, donated gifts have been pouring in for the students and their families. But the help Naomi really wants depends on Washington. She's always admired George and Laura bush, who have made repeated trips to the Gulf Coast, showing support for storm victims. But Naomi's faith is being tested.

NOAMI FOSTER: First Lady Laura Bush was down, I want to say, Monday at the Seabee base, visiting with the children for Christmas and said, parents, you need to give your children a normal Christmas. Well, hun, tell Congress to pass a bill to help us. I mean, look around you. How can you have a normal Christmas?

KATE ELLIS: Five days after Christmas, President Bush signed a relief package for the Gulf Coast. The aid would contribute to the largest disaster recovery effort in American history. The package included more than $3 billion for direct grants to South Mississippi homeowners, people who lived outside the official flood zone but still had their homes damaged or destroyed by Katrina's tidal surge. But there's a catch. You can only get the aid if you had insurance on your home. Many people didn't.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

February 2006, nearly six months after Hurricane Katrina, a city inspector is examining Ethel Curry's house.

SPEAKER: You know, structurally, it can be built back.

ETHEL CURRY: Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER: The house can be brought back the way it was.

ETHEL CURRY: Most people tell me that it's cheaper to rebuild than it is to patch this place up.

SPEAKER: The hardest thing is that this is your home, you know? And it's just not an easy choice to just all of a sudden say, yeah, tear it down, or how am I going to build a new one. Or, you know, if it is torn down, where do I start with?

KATE ELLIS: Whether she tears down or builds back, Ethel Curry can't do anything without financial help. She lived outside the flood zone, so she didn't have flood insurance, but she didn't have any other kind of housing insurance either. She stayed in the family home when her folks died. And because the mortgage was paid off, she wasn't required to carry homeowner's insurance.

ETHEL CURRY: A few years prior, I did have until a few years ago when my nephew came to live with me and trying to help them out with the small kids and stuff like that and never having enough money to take care of special things. I just didn't renew my policies.

KATE ELLIS: Since Ethel didn't have insurance, she doesn't qualify for federal help. It's a problem facing many low income homeowners in Biloxi.

RILEY MORRIS: The idea is supposedly that you are promoting financial self-discipline, financial self-responsibility.

KATE ELLIS: Riley Morris is a Gulf Coast lawyer who helps poor people with housing problems.

RILEY MORRIS: When you have to choose between your medicine and a homeowner's insurance policy and you're living in a house that maybe you haven't had to pay for, you're probably going to try and keep yourself alive before you go and insure the house.

KATE ELLIS: Mississippi officials are working on a grant program for homeowners who couldn't afford insurance, but that's months away. In the meantime, Ethel applied for rebuilding assistance offered by charities and church groups. Nothing's come through. She's all alone with a problem that seems unsolvable.

ETHEL CURRY: And I'm saying, well, what do I do? How can I get started? Who can I see to tell me what to do or what to start on first? Then I said, well, if I come in and start sweeping some of this out, maybe I can get somebody to come in and say, well, maybe you just need to take off a few boards and stuff and spray it down. And then I said, other people say it's not that simple because that mold is growing in. All of this stuff is going to have to be taken out. And it's back to square one again. So, you know, I don't know.

STANLEY SMITH: Things turned around. Hey, Mr Calvin.

MR. CALVIN: Stanley.

STANLEY SMITH: How are you doing?

MR. CALVIN: All right.

STANLEY SMITH: All right. Yeah, yeah, I'm just showing some friends of mine some progress as things are going.

KATE ELLIS: A few streets over, Ethel's brother Stanley Smith chats with a neighbor over the fence. Stanley's feeling good about his future. It's six months since Katrina, and he's got the money he needs to rebuild. With insurance and a federal disaster loan, he's got about $144,000. So Stanley and his wife are thinking about a three bedroom prefabricated house.

STANLEY SMITH: I was planning on remodeling a while back. It just that the storm beat me to it.

KATE ELLIS: He made joke, but Stanley Smith spent six diligent months tracking down insurance agents, bird dogging FEMA officials, working on forms and finding receipts for the property he lost. He figures his 16 years in the military taught him how to navigate government systems. Stanley says too many others in Biloxi give up when they get befuddled by bureaucracy.

STANLEY SMITH: It's just like getting on the road that you never traveled before, you know? And if you read the signs, you might not get lost. But I've read signs and still got lost. But you learn from experience, you know?

KATE ELLIS: Even people who carefully negotiate those road signs can still run into plain bad luck. Barney and Naomi Foster were prosperous middle class people before Katrina, people were their lives in order.

[WATER SPLASHING]

Before the storm, Barney ran a successful business, renting out jet skis and other gear on the Gulf shore. But the hurricane wiped out the beachfront hotels that fed Barney customers. He figures it'll be years before he can restart his business. Problem is, seven months after Katrina, the federal government offered him a disaster relief loan for the business, but not his house.

BARNEY FOSTER: When you call them up and you go, do y'all understand? I don't care about my business. We want to get back in our house. We live in a trailer. And they just-- no clue.

NAOMI FOSTER: Hope-- you run out of hope, it's gone. You think you're never getting back in your house. And they surely will not move those FEMA trailers. Those things are going to stay for 100 years. My youngest, Matthew, said the other day, I'm tired of camping now. I'm ready to go home. You know, there's only so much a little kid can do in a trailer.

KATE ELLIS: Across town, Ethel Curry can't seem to find a way out of her FEMA trailer. In early spring, she's already worrying about the coming hurricane season, which starts in June, and she's suffering flashbacks.

ETHEL CURRY: When I lay down sometime at night and the fall off to sleep and I dream about, like, the sky, it's waves of water coming in, and I can't get up or turn so that I can find a way to the door. And sometimes I see myself floating on something, trying to get higher up as high as I can get so that I can keep my head above the water.

And I think about, you know, like, the boys is there. Can I get to their beds to get them up so that, you know, they won't drown in the water? Sleep like 45 minutes to an hour. If I get three hours of sleep, I do good.

KATE ELLIS: So this kind of dream keeps waking you up?

ETHEL CURRY: Yeah.

KATE ELLIS: Every night?

ETHEL CURRY: Mm-hmm.

KATE ELLIS: The same one?

ETHEL CURRY: Mm-hmm.

KATE ELLIS: Ethel is scared and she's isolated. She has a large extended family in Biloxi, but they don't seem to offer much help. She says they're too busy with their own lives. For Ethel, her worries and hopelessness are a new storm closing in.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

KAI RYSSDAL: I'm Kai Ryssdal. You're listening to Rebuilding Biloxi One Year After Katrina, a Marketplace and American Radioworks documentary. Coming up--

SPEAKER: It's just vitally important that we are able to safeguard this area. It would be just a low down, dirty shame for people to have worked all their lives only to be displaced and pushed out.

KAI RYSSDAL: Find out more about Hurricane Katrina and the city of Biloxi at our web site, americanradioworks.org. You can find all of ARW's previous documentaries or sign up for our email newsletter. That's at americanradioworks.org. Our program continues in just a moment from American Public Media.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is Rebuilding Biloxi One Year After Katrina, a Marketplace American Radioworks documentary from American Public Media. I'm Kai Ryssdal.

[CHATTER]

Springtime in Biloxi, Mississippi. Once again, gamblers crowd the craps tables and work the slot machines. Three of the city's original nine casinos are open and doing record business. All the others are expected to reopen soon. The mayor of Biloxi predicts the casino business will double in size within a decade. Biloxi hopes to become the gambling destination in the South. Nine months after Katrina, there's a land rush of sorts in East Biloxi, the city's long peninsula ringed by casinos.

It's a part of town that's historically been home to poor and working class Blacks, Vietnamese, and other ethnic groups. The new high-end development there is an economic boon to Biloxi, but it threatens to squeeze out people with deep roots in the community. Stephen Smith has the final part of our program.

[CHATTER]

STEPHEN SMITH: East Biloxi residents crowd around a big map at the local community center. It shows a master plan for rebuilding the tip of the Biloxi Peninsula.

SPEAKER: My property would be right in-- well, this should be Crawford Street and run back up and goes to the bay here. But it'll be probably where this ballpark is here.

STEPHEN SMITH: With colorful pen strokes, the map predicts new casinos, hotels, and other tourist attractions hugging the shoreline. Further inland are neighborhoods and parks.

GORDON BRIGHAM: Thank you all very much for coming. Let me just again get a sense, how many people are here tonight for the first time?

STEPHEN SMITH: Gordon Brigham is with a New York-based nonprofit group called Living Cities. Biloxi's mayor hired the group to create a blueprint for rebuilding East Biloxi. Homeowners at these meetings often view Brigham with skepticism. He's asking them to consider living in a place that will look different but be more affordable to rebuild than the single-family bungalows they lost.

GORDON BRIGHAM: What they have known is they had a little house. And in many cases, they didn't have a mortgage on it because it had been passed down through the family. And that place is gone now. And in some parts of that area, it's just not going to be possible to build that house back.

STEPHEN SMITH: Not possible because new FEMA flood regulations will make people have to build high off the ground on stilts or tall cinder foundations. That will make rebuilding a single family home too expensive for many low-income residents of East Biloxi. Gordon Brigham says living cities will show them types of homes they can't afford. The plan includes higher density housing like apartments and townhouses. Some would have parking lots on the first couple floors so floodwaters could wash right through.

GORDON BRIGHAM: Our job is to say, here's the kind of city that's coming and the kind of city you could have.

STEPHEN SMITH: But the Living Cities' plan is just one of many. Other powerful forces have different maps for the future of East Biloxi.

LINWOOD SAWYER: Here's Imperial Palace. Here's Beau Rivage. And then you come down and here is where the Grand Casino Magic and Ale Capri is located.

STEPHEN SMITH: Linwood Sawyer is a Gulf Coast real estate agent and a seasoned broker of Casino land deals. When Sawyer looks at a map of East Biloxi on his office wall, he doesn't see affordable housing.

LINWOOD SAWYER: In my opinion, you're going-- and I have-- and I represent folks that are right now looking at this-- you're going to see real high-end condo development, high-rise, mid-rise condo development. You're going to see retail. You're going to see more business office buildings and that type of thing located in the center part right through here. And then all the rest of this will be back into gaming. In 10 years, all of this will be developed.

STEPHEN SMITH: As Sawyer sees it, if you don't want to live in a high-rise or a condo or you can't afford to, you'll have to live somewhere other than East Biloxi. Longtime residents of the area, including a large Vietnamese population, fear they're getting left out of the plans for their community. But East Biloxi resident Stanley Smith didn't wait for anyone to map out his future.

STANLEY SMITH: This is where I'll be conducting my sleep [CHUCKLES] from now on, hopefully.

STEPHEN SMITH: It's almost a full year since Katrina and Stanley Smith shows off the second story bedroom in his brand new house. It's a two bedroom prefab cottage with a steel roof. The front porch is big enough to fit an outdoor grill and several chairs. Stanley's house has a tall foundation. It's 4 feet higher than his old place and just above flood level. The house isn't finished yet. The inside is still just framing and plywood, but it's looking like home to Stanley.

STANLEY SMITH: Oh, I'm going to end up in a house, I would say, hmm, 200 times better than one I was in, yeah, a much nicer house, yeah. It doesn't compensate for a lot of the things that were lost, you know? I mean, I can't really look back at what was, you know, here before, you know, because then that would be depressing. How are you doing?

SPEAKER: Good. How are you?

STANLEY SMITH: All doing good, thanks.

STEPHEN SMITH: As we talk, a church group from Massachusetts drops by. They're walking the neighborhood looking for people to help.

SPEAKER: We got some Home Depot cards.

STANLEY SMITH: Oh, do you?

SPEAKER: Yeah, our church for this trip, we had, you know, people donating money. And so we had like-- what was it-- $4,000 converted into Home Depot cards, and we want to give them to guys like you who can hopefully use it.

STANLEY SMITH: Oh.

SPEAKER: I don't know if there's anything you can use.

STANLEY SMITH: Yes.

SPEAKER: But we're just doing it in Jesus' name.

STANLEY SMITH: That's wonderful.

SPEAKER: Just want to, you know, share God's love with those that we can, so--

STEPHEN SMITH: Stanley has one of the first new homes on his block. He never thought about abandoning his place or moving away from Biloxi, but he can see from his front porch that other folks have.

STANLEY SMITH: A lot of people have left. I noticed a lot of the houses down this way have been torn down. There's no FEMA trailers for them to live in, so that's-- that's a pretty bad sign. A lot of them ain't going to come back.

STEPHEN SMITH: Some empty lots in East Biloxi have already been bought up by condominium developers. Many city leaders say it's a good thing. New wealth and new jobs will come to what's been an historic but threadbare part of town. But one Biloxi politician is trying to make sure that poor and working people don't get driven from the neighborhood.

BILL STALLWORTH: Hey there.

OLIVIA KIM: Oh, brother Stallworth.

BILL STALLWORTH: Hey. I'm going to-- we're going to look in the house for just a minute.

OLIVIA KIM: OK.

BILL STALLWORTH: And then--

STEPHEN SMITH: Councilman Bill Stallworth visits Miss Olivia Kim at her FEMA trailer, which is parked in the driveway of her storm-damaged home. Stallworth heads a group of nonprofit organizations that is rebuilding houses for poor and working class people in East Biloxi, people like Ms Kim. About half the housing in this part of town is rental property, but there's also a long tradition of home ownership.

BILL STALLWORTH: It's just vitally important that we are able to safeguard this area. It would be just a low down, dirty shame for people to have worked all their lives only to be displaced and pushed out.

STEPHEN SMITH: For Stallworth, it's a race against time. New FEMA flood regulations will kick in sometime in the coming year. People who can rebuild before the rules take effect don't have to meet the new elevation requirements that will make construction so costly. So Stallworth's group is working overtime.

BILL STALLWORTH: My goal is to produce a house a day.

STEPHEN SMITH: And it's not just about getting people back in their houses. For Stallworth, it's also about making it harder for condo developers to buy up big blocks of property in East Biloxi flattened by the storm.

BILL STALLWORTH: I want to seed that area. I want to seed it with houses so that it breaks up. the idea that you can come in and buy any one big tract of land for cheap.

STEPHEN SMITH: It's a chess game, he says, protecting low-income homeowners from getting overpowered by the market. So far, a few hundred houses have been rebuilt. There are thousands more to go.

RICKY MATTHEWS: Question is, is he giving the best advice to the people who live there?

STEPHEN SMITH: Newspaper publisher Ricky Matthews worries about Stallworth's plan. He says Stallworth is betting there won't be another storm with the kind of tidal surge produced by Katrina. Matthews believes the experts who say there will.

RICKY MATTHEWS: So, you know, Bill will have to live with the consequences of asking people who have limited means to rebuild in areas where they could be susceptible to future storms.

STEPHEN SMITH: Matthews argues Biloxi should not cut corners on designing homes that can survive future hurricanes.

RICKY MATTHEWS: If we don't build back safely, we will get destroyed again. And believe me, the federal government is not going to be spending billions of dollars in rebuilding again, particularly if we don't do it right this time.

STEPHEN SMITH: Meanwhile, Katrina destroyed so many houses and apartments, housing is virtually impossible to find in Biloxi. With all the casino and tourism employees going back to work, there's a critical shortage. Add to that the thousands of construction workers pouring into the region. Matthews says housing is the Gulf Coast's number one problem.

RICKY MATTHEWS: We need 70,000 housing units just to get square. The estimates by 2010 are somewhere North of 100,000 housing units. If we continue to build houses on a yearly basis the way we were headed before Katrina, it takes us about 50 years to get where we need to be. We need it today.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

STEPHEN SMITH: Nearly a year after Katrina, there are some 2,300 FEMA trailers in Biloxi. One of them belongs to Ethel Curry and her two boys.

ETHEL CURRY: Today is the first day of school. Thank God. They're bored, and I'm bored too because I'm ready for them. I can't find enough things for them to do.

STEPHEN SMITH: It's August 4, 2006, the first day of school for the two grand nephews Ethel Curry is raising. She drops the boys off at the bus stop and returns to the quiet of her FEMA trailer. One year since the storm, Ethel still has no idea how to get her house rebuilt. You can hear the exhaustion in her voice as she explains her predicament.

ETHEL CURRY: I've had-- three churches came out last week and took a look at the helm. They tell me that they don't have anybody in that does the roof. Habitat for Humanity came out. They told me that right now they don't have people to do the roof. They say I could go to the Salvation Army, but the Salvation Army was only like helping you with sheet rock and stuff.

But I mean, I can't get sheet rock and I don't have a roof on the house, you know? I don't want to do that. I don't know what to do.

STEPHEN SMITH: Ethel says she never thought about leaving her home in Biloxi before, but she would now if she had somewhere else to go.

[KNOCKING]

JULIE SUASTE: Hi. Oh, stop. Let me put her away. You don't need her jumping on you. Come on. Come on.

STEPHEN SMITH: Over at Julie Suaste's house, life almost seems normal again. She and her husband are about to go back to work as dealers at the Beau Rivage Casino. They've got their son Nico back from his aunt's house in Indiana, and they're living under their own roof.

JULIE SUASTE: 11 months after Hurricane Katrina, and we're finally back in our home. We have furniture and still have yard work to work on. And I'm still waiting for my kitchen cabinets. But I really didn't think a year later, we'd even be this far. It's a nice feeling to be home.

STEPHEN SMITH: But what about the feeling that another hurricane could come through and wipe out her house again?

JULIE SUASTE: Tell me an area that is not dangerous. On the West Coast, you've got mudslides, forest fires, earthquakes, Midwest, tornadoes, brush fires. I guess, choose your medicine.

STEPHEN SMITH: Julie and her husband chose to stay in Biloxi in spite of getting virtually no rebuilding money from either insurance or government grants. They took out a loan and sold a rental property to fix up their house.

JULIE SUASTE: It could have been very easy for us to pack up what little we had left and moved and filed bankruptcy and just give in to everything. But if I did that, I lost everything that I had put in thus far. And to me, I was not willing to give up that easy.

STEPHEN SMITH: On the anniversary of Katrina, the Suastes have resettled in Biloxi, but they've learned from the storm that they need to be better prepared for trouble. Ruben is training to be an electrician, Julie an insurance adjuster, jobs they can do anywhere if they need to get out of town.

NAOMI FOSTER: Good luck. Call me if it gets finished. We'll come over there and stay with y'all--

SARAH: OK, OK.

NAOMI FOSTER: In a real house.

SARAH: I have three bedrooms.

NAOMI FOSTER: Good. We'll take them.

SARAH: All right.

NAOMI FOSTER: Bye, Sarah.

STEPHEN SMITH: Naomi and Barney Foster hardly thought of giving up on Biloxi when they lost everything to Katrina. But after a year of struggling to rebuild, they now wish they had. Even knowing they'll soon move back into their house doesn't make it any better.

NAOMI FOSTER: Actually, it's worse because the year anniversary is coming up, and we just knew that, you know, we would be back in the house. So the longer you're in the trailer, the more closed the quarters become because the more things you accumulate. Now I have uniforms for the boys. Now I have their school supplies. Now I have my school supplies.

STEPHEN SMITH: That's not the hardest part for the Fosters. It's the months-long fight they had to get a federal disaster relief loan. They were handed from one official to the next, each seeming more indifferent than the last. Hurricane Katrina stripped the fosters of the middle class life they once had in Biloxi, but their battles with bureaucrats took away something else, a kind of faith.

NAOMI FOSTER: I had a false sense of security, believing with my heart and soul that no matter what catastrophe or disaster happened to this country, that our government was like, poof, we're the big giant. We're going to come in and we're going to help. I'm not saying they didn't come in and rescue people. We did need that. I'm talking about long-term recovery. They're not there to help.

STEPHEN SMITH: Nearly everything Barney and Naomi did this year to get their lives back together, they did more or less themselves or with the help of volunteers. Tens of thousands of volunteers from around the country have come to Biloxi over the past year to help clean up and rebuild. The volunteers, it turns out, are what kept the fosters from despair.

BARNEY FOSTER: In the church groups, some of them, they take their vacation. Instead of going on vacation, they come down here to help. And then they're like, oh, you don't realize what this does for us. And we try to explain to them, you know, if you feel that good, it makes us feel, like, 100 times better. You just don't know. I said, you know, I don't think it's the fact that you all came in here and worked. It's that you all came, that you all care.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

STEPHEN SMITH: It's been one year since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. In Biloxi, the city is a mix of recovery stories. By the looks of it, casino and condo development is galloping ahead. That may mean Biloxi will outpace other communities-- certainly new Orleans-- in getting back on its feet. Some people in Biloxi are back in their houses and back at their jobs, trying to make life feel as normal as possible. It's what locals call the new normal, where life, in some ways, looks like it did before the storm, but nothing is the same.

One year later, thousands of people are still in limbo, waiting for the help they need from insurance or government or charities to get a roof back over their heads. Officials don't know how many have simply given up and moved on. Most people we talked to said Biloxi was their home. It would be too hard to go. But it's hardly been easy to stay.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KAI RYSSDAL: Rebuilding Biloxi One Year After Katrina was produced by Kate Ellis and Stephen Smith. It was edited by Katherine Winter. Coordinating producer, Sasha Aslanian. Project coordinator, Misha Quill. Production assistant, Ellen Guettler. Special help from Linda Van Zandt. Mixing by Stephen Smith and Craig Thorson. Web producer Ocean Kalan. The executive producer is Bill Buzenberg. For Marketplace, editor, Peter Clowney, senior producer, Celeste Wesson, executive producer JJ Yaw.

To learn more about Hurricane Katrina and the city of Biloxi or to listen to this program again, visit americanradioworks.org. You can find all of our previous documentaries or sign up for our email newsletter. That's at americanradioworks.org. I'm Kai Ryssdal.

SPEAKER: Major funding for American Radioworks comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Rebuilding Biloxi was supported in part by the Candida Sustainability Fund of the Tides Foundation, furthering values that contribute to a healthy planet, and from US programs of the Open Society Institute.

[AUDIO LOGO]

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