Mold was a common occurrence in New Orleans homes following Hurricane Katrina.

Before Hurricane Katrina, McAboy's house on Sere Street in New Orleans was not elevated enough to escape water damage.

Everything in McAboy's house suffered water damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of articles about people who are coming back and rebuilding in New Orleans.

“He saw it as an opportunity to make it better,” Emma McAboy said, explaining Ben Franklin’s response to the loss of his home to fire. This also is how McAboy chose to see the destruction of her home in Gentilly by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.

She might have quoted Franklin’s comment that “energy and persistence conquer all things” as her motto as well, for this and her positive outlook have taken her to where she is today – about to start reconstruction of her home.

McAboy had a strict upbringing, which she said taught her “you always do it right” and always follow procedure. When she finally decided she would rebuild, she knew she would "do it right." To her, doing it "right" meant building not only a hazard-resistant house but an energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable “house of the future.” She began to see her personal project as an opportunity to reinvigorate her neighborhood and stimulate more rebuilding. She wanted to inspire others in the same situation and provide an example of sustainable homebuilding.

At the end of August 2005, when the warnings of Hurricane Katrina’s approach began to appear on the news, McAboy was not particularly worried. She had never evacuated for a hurricane before and did not plan to do so this time, either. She stocked up with what she would need, parked her car in a high-rise garage and prepared to sit through the storm with her cat, Baby. She could not travel too far from the city because she was always assigned to the recovery team at Charity Hospital. But because Baby needed regular medication and the hospital did not let pets in, she was excused from the activation team. In truth, she says, she saw the situation as a three-day holiday.

By Sunday, McAboy knew that New Orleans was in danger of a direct hit. When she saw the size of the storm, she knew they couldn’t avoid it, and that this was not going to be a three-day holiday.

McAboy has a remarkable network of friends, and her story is filled with people who have helped her in one way or another. As she puts it, “I have people!” And she does. Her two fireman friends took her to retrieve her car so she could leave the city. They also boarded her windows before she left. McAboy left the city with Baby, the cat, and began a three-month journey that would reestablish relationships with her immediate family and childhood friends. 

The contraflow took them to Tuscaloosa, Al., in the home state of McAboy's childhood. Always prepared, she had the presence of mind to bring her address book full of "her people" with her. After four days, she accepted an offer to stay at another friend’s house in Montgomery, Al. When she heard from the Red Cross that FEMA was letting people stay in hotels, though, she and Baby moved into one. Not knowing at the time how long she would be there, she changed her mailing address to her hotel in Montgomery. She was there until late November.

Changing her mailing address despite the uncertainty of her situation is another example of how doing things right and following procedure paid off for McAboy. In spite of the odds, she received a letter that had been mailed right before Katrina. It was a letter from CVS Pharmacies offering her a position as a pharmacist. Coincidentally, another of her friends, who had been on a waiting list for a condo in Denham Springs, decided to settle in Texas instead. The friend gave McAboy her space on the list. Now she had a job in Baton Rouge and a place to live closer to New Orleans. McAboy recounts how understanding CVS was of her position. “They just said to come to work when I was ready.”

McAboy had heard about the flooding of the city while she was in Tuscaloosa but did not believe it had affected her house.

“I guess I was in denial, really. I just thought – not my neighborhood,” she said.

McAboy saw her house the first day residents were allowed back. As is her nature, McAboy said she “was hopeful” when she saw the house and immediately began thinking of what she needed to do to clean up.

“What you have to do is you have to continue," she said. "Some things you can control, some things you can’t.”

A college friend of hers in Baton Rouge allowed McAboy to stay with her for two weeks. For those two weeks straight, she drove back and forth to New Orleans every day to clean out her house.

“You don’t know why things happen,” McAboy says, and she proceeds to offer another example in the form of a story. In this one, a son breaks his leg while riding a horse and a neighbor consoles the father on the terrible luck. The father says, though, "it might be good, it might be bad." A few months later war breaks out, and because his son had a broken leg, he did not have to fight.

When she first got to the city, McAboy said, “It smelled really bad.” But she parked the car and got to work. “This is the story, I will deal with it,” she said. She worked 12-hour days cleaning up her house and getting reconnected with her neighborhood. One of her fireman friends who had helped her retrieve her car to evacuate found people to gut her house after she was finished dealing with her belongings. He was also present when the insurance adjuster came to her house. The two fireman friends also drove from New Orleans to Denham Springs to set up the large pieces of her new furniture. And one of them also found a lawn service in New Orleans for her.

Throughout everything, it never occurred to McAboy to sell her house. She had put a lot of time and effort into her house, remodeling and recently installing a brand new roof. She imagined she would fix it up and rent it, but not sell it. Besides her own personal stake in her house, McAboy also knew that people in the neighborhood were not getting what their houses were worth when they sold them – another reason not to sell.

Her indecision about exactly what to do with the house lasted about six months. During this time, McAboy went back and forth on whether to rebuild and rent or rebuild to live there herself. It did not help that the newspapers were filled with negative stories of rampant crime in the city. Would she be safe moving back? Would it be a good investment?

Then she began reading about "green" houses and sustainability, and suddenly she saw this as an opportunity -- an opportunity to help bring her neighborhood back. And she began to feel what she calls "a sense of defiance."

“If anyone is going to profit from this disaster, it is going to be me,” McAboy declared. She decided she would rebuild and that she would live in the house, benefitting from her efforts. She called the Global Green organization to inquire about sustainable building, and they referred her to FutureProof, a group of local architects and consultants who specialize in sustainable building and sustainable architecture. This was the beginning.

Falling back on her upbringing and her own sense of how to do things, McAboy had purchased flood insurance – an umbrella policy costing less than $300 per year. “You take care of your investments,” McAboy asserts. She filed a request with State Farm to elevate the house, but it was initially denied. She understood that they were following initial FEMA guidelines of flood maps that did not place her in a flood zone. Her persistence and determination eventually worked in her favor, and the request was approved. After the approval, State Farm was extremely helpful and worked diligently with her to ensure that her reimbursements were received.

McAboy also began planning how she would obtain the additional finances to rebuild, looking at what resources she had and what options were available. In October 2006, she completed an online application with the Road Home program and received a letter in December 2006 stating that she was eligible for benefits. However, she chose to wait until her decision was firm and closed with the Road Home in December, 2007.

McAboy explained how receiving the funding from the Road Home affected her taxes, something many people do not consider:

"In the year of Katrina, I included the uncompensated damages as a loss for tax purposes. This year I needed to include the Road Home compensation as income, and this income placed me in a tax bracket that caused me to owe taxes. However, the Road Home compensation covered the loss that I experienced as well as the additional taxes that I owed," she said

Another friend and neighbor of McAboy's who works for the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice told her about a grant her organization had received from HUD to assist residents of her area. This grant paid for the soil remediation that was needed to rebuild. Lastly, she applied for a loan, seeing it not just as a way to help her rebuild sooner but also as a type of protection. Not knowing much about construction herself, McAboy was wary of rebuilding scams. Having the loan ensured that an inspector from the loan company would inspect every stage of construction before paying the contractor. In addition, the contractor had to provide the loan company with proof of insurance. Her advice to others -- “If you are not an expert, hire an expert and one you can trust.”

This is why she hired FutureProof to design and oversee the renovation and rebuilding of her home. While the design team makes suggestions and offers options, McAboy makes the final decision. Always prepared, she did her research and through her study of sustainability, discovered LEED certification. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Buildings, neighborhoods, towns and people can earn LEED certification. In the case of building structures, LEED certification is awarded to those buildings that have been built to a certain standard of energy efficiency, material sustainability, environmental sensitivity and healthy living. Since she was doing things right, McAboy decided to strive to obtain LEED certification in the rebuilding of her home. FutureProof helped her find a contractor who could build to these standards.

The three all-encompassing tenets of sustainable building are reduce, reuse and recycle. Because her house was 60% damaged, McAboy is required to replace her windows with high-impact resistant windows. However, she will reuse some of the old windows within the house and give others to the Habitat Restore, a retail outlet that salvages and collects good quality used and surplus building materials and sells them at a fraction of normal prices. Proceeds help local Habitat for Humanity chapters finance the building of more Habitat houses. McAboy will retain and reuse as much of her original house as she can.

Other "green" actions McAboy and her team at FutureProof are taking include:

• Using paperless gypsum for the interior walls. Paperless gypsum has no organic content to support mold growth.
• Installing a standing seam roof of galvanized metal from a local manufacturer. This roof was designed to support the solar panel package that will be installed.
• Using spray foam insulation for the attic and rigid foam in the exterior walls.
• Using all low-VOC or no-VOC cabinetry for cleaner air quality within the home. VOC stands for volatile organic compounds. These compounds are often emitted from new cabinets, carpeting, paint and upholstery and can negatively affect both air quality and human health.
• Using rapidly renewable resources for flooring: bamboo for dry areas and cork for wet areas (bathroom, kitchen). Besides their environmental benefits, both bamboo and cork flooring are durable and affordable.
• Using Bluewood-coated decking on the front and back porches. This product undergoes a process that protects the wood from mold, moisture and termite damage.
• Installing low-flush/low-flow plumbing throughout the house, and all faucets will have water filtration for safe consumption.
• Combining a ductless AC unit with ceiling fans to provide a cost-efficient, energy-saving solution to cooling the house. In addition, the house will be zoned into four areas, allowing only those areas in frequent use to be cooled, saving energy. Other areas can be cooled as needed.

McAboy also will use a rainwater collection system to irrigate her yard. The rain will be collected in a closed cistern.

Lastly, Louisiana native species will be used in the landscaping of her property.