It looks like New Orleans was spared the worst, though the bad is still pretty bad. The flooding I've seen images of doesn't seem much higher than what I experienced when I was there in 1995. One of the most badly hit neighborhoods is the very poor Ninth Ward (an area that linguistically smacks more of Bayonne than the Deep South, as in "da Nint' Ward"); one report I saw described it as "economically devasted" before the storm had hit. If anything good comes from Katrina, it might be federal money to rebuild the Ninth Ward as a decent place to live.