Like many Americans, I feel a strong connection to New Orleans and the destruction that happened as a result of Katrina. Several months after the hurricane hit in 2005, I went down to New Orleans as part of a group of college students to volunteer in the cleanup effort. Before going, I assumed we would mainly be helping families to rebuild their homes – instead, our job was to help tear the homes down so that hopefully, one day down the road, new properties could be constructed and residents could jump start their lives again.

Five years later, there is no doubt that the situation in New Orleans has improved significantly. More than 100,000 grants have been issued to help residents rebuild their homes and many of those who were displaced to other cities from the storm have since returned. Yet, the population of New Orleans today is still about 100,000 fewer than it was before Katrina. Even more striking is the fact that the number of homeless in the city have more than doubled since the storm, and hundreds if not thousands of families, including Charles and Rosalind King, still live in FEMA trailers, essentially stuck in limbo. For this piece, I spoke with families, government agencies and some of the non-profit groups on the ground to find out the reasons why so many residents have slipped through the cracks of the recovery effort. The King family undoubtedly made mistakes before the storm, most notably by not having the proper insurance on their home. Yet, in the years since Katrina, they, like many families, have largely done everything right only to fall victim to bureaucracy.