Brad, I'm wondering what motivates you to help rebuild housing in a flood area?

I love New Orleans. It's my favorite vacation spot. I've been there 6 or 8 times, more frequently than any other non-work travel destination. But I can't help but feel like philanthropy and tax dollars are better spent on more permanent housing solutions. Isn't this making it artificially cheap to live in a place that simply isn't a good choice to live?

I know it's a provocative question, but it's an honest one. I've been wrestling with it since before Katrina even came.

It's a challenging macro question. Billions of tax payer money has already been spent on this (and much more will be) so the decision to do this has already been made. I expect that the numbers would be even higher if a major event (earthquake?) devastated the bay area.

In my case, I'm trying to help under the umbrella of a decision that's already been made. I believe this particular house is situated in an area that is not directly in the flood region (although I'll be the first to admit that I'm not sure what that means - I'm relying on the architects - who I trust.) In addition, it's a high quality house (rather than a cheap thing that'll get destroyed in a major storm.)

I've pondered this plenty and don't have a good answer to the question, other than I think this is one of the most impactful ways that I can help individual families in New Orleans.

Did you see the fellow (Carlos Reid) on American Inventor that was creating a new way to build housing out of plastics? It was quite inspiring. It would be interesting to know more about the construction of the home.

This is a great cause having seen friends displaced, animals displaced, and the damage to their emotional state, anything I can help out with is wonderful.

Are you going to update how close you are to the goals over time?

@Micah - yes.

To Dan Dunn’s comments: Brad is right in observing that the Central City neighborhood we’re building this donated home in did not flood. Not during Katrina or during Hurricane Betsy, a generation before. There was wind damage but no wholesale destruction as in the Lower Ninth, Gentilly and Lakeview. It’s a good bet that Central City, while overburdened by poverty, will be there as long as New Orleans is.

The bigger question asked, why rebuild New Orleans at all arose days after Katrina. Perhaps, on the surface it’s a fair question. But it’s a question that could be asked about Naples sitting in the shadow of Vesuvius; Venice and its ongoing problem of sinking into the Adriatic; Mexico City built on a lake bed and dropping several feet each century; cities along the Sri Lankan coast inundated by the tsunami; Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo, just to mention a few great cities that are in harm’s way because of potential earthquakes. Of course we can even add more places to this list, now that the icecaps are melting at an unprecedented rate: New York, London, the Netherlands, just to name a few. On this earth, it appears that perfect places to populate are few and far between. Fail-safe choices to live are hard to find.

But more important, upon reflection Katrina was not just a natural catastrophe. It was a human-made one. There are several reasons for this: First, we can blame the French for choosing such an inhospitable, swamp-surrounded place close to the ocean for locating their new city. Second, we can fault our government, specifically the Corp of Engineers, for not adequately building its levee system which offers protection to the well-known, predictable problem—a class 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans square on. And third, we are beginning to understand that the greatest issue at hand is global warming itself, which brings about warmer oceans, which bring about stronger hurricanes. This undoubtedly affected the misfortune of New Orleans. And it's an issue we’re all responsible for, whether we live in Beijing, Delhi, or Denver. On this intertwined planet we now inhabit, we’re all part of the problem that struck New Orleans. If we don’t own up to that larger responsibility and let a place slip away—particularly one as culturally rich and as commercially as important as New Orleans—then we have failed as a worldwide community to grasp the very problems we’ve created.