"If you’re willing to buy flooded houses, you can find some great bargains."

— New Orleans real estate developer F. Patrick Quinn III: January 1, 2006 New York Times quote of the day

If housing and commercial real estate are any indication, New Orleans will be back — and profoundly changed. About 80% of New Orleans homes were flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (the storm damaged or destroyed something close to 200,000 homes in greater New Orleans).

Mr. Quinn III, told the Times he has been snapping up commercial and residential properties throughout the region. Other brokers contacted by the paper indicated they have out-of-town clients, including corporations, looking to buy in New Orleans.

Noted by the Times:

• On the West Bank, which remained relatively dry, November home sales were up 159% over the same period in 2004.
• Sales in the western suburbs were up 189% from November 2004.
• Most of the increases are related to volume of sales not price — properties with inflated prices are not moving.
• The cost of renting in the New Orleans area has risen by 50% or more.
• California builder KB Home bought 3,000 acres in a suburb west of the city, intending to put put up as many as 20,000 houses.

A Rand Corporation projection cited by the Times Picayune predicts New Orleans will have a population between 225,000 and 275,000 in three years — a 40% decrease from the 465,000 prestorm inhabitants. Some of that decline will come from suburban migration. The greater number will be New Orleans evacuees who never return.

A September 26 Times-Picayune editorial brought this perspective:

It will be impossible to get every New Orleanian to move back to the city. Some are making better lives for themselves elsewhere and can hardly be faulted for staying where they are.

But there are plenty of residents who are longing to get home and have yet to make lives for themselves in other cities. These are the people who should be at the top of the list of prospective workers in the rebuilding effort.

Of course, you can hardly entice them back if you’re only willing to pay poverty level wages.

In the face of all this, we wonder about the ebb and flow of business opportunity and responsibilty under such extraordinary circumstances. Last Fall much was made about calling New Orleanians evacuees not refugees. Under present circumstances, how can the poorest of them be anything but refugees?

Meanwhile, corporations and individuals with capital are speculating on New Orleans’ future. "Right after the storm, if I had heard myself talking like I am now, about setting records in some offices and posting three record-breaking months in a row, I would’ve wondered what Kool-Aid this guy was drinking," real estate leader Arthur Sterbcow told the New York Times. The last few months of 2005, he said, have turned out to be "the best period in the history of our company."

What’s the balance between seizing the day — since someone is going to exploit the advantage, if there is one — and engaging people and communities in crisis with compassion and the golden rule?

James, the New Testament writer, puts his finger right on the bruise:

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

— James 4.13-17 [New International Version]

• What is the good that people of faith ought to do in circumstances like those in New Orleans and the wider gulf coast?
• Has your company imagined scenarios in which your enterprise could be distrupted to the degree that Gulf Coast businesses have suffered? What kind of survival and recovery plans do you have in place for your company?
• How do you regard the importance of sober humility in the face of disruptive potentials — be they natural or human-caused disasters or challenges from unforseen competitors (see Who’s Afraid of Google? Everyone. in the December, 2005 Wired Magazine).
• Who in your company could you talk (and pray!) with about these ideas? What could keep you from doing that?