NEW ORLEANS -- Soft-spoken, shy smile, a lot of staring at his shoes.

Patrick Schexnayder comes across as one of those types. Half the time, I'm just nodding along, as the N'awlins accent coupled with the quiet demeanor makes for a good bit lost in translation.

The other half of the time, I'm left slackjawed with general disbelief and inadequacy. At age 16, the kid has lived enough to be twice my senior.

Patrick's house was gutted last September. Now, he sits on the stoop, caught rather poignantly between the empty framework of the house that he grew up in and the FEMA trailer about five feet away that he, his aunt, his uncle and their two daughters now call home.

Sam, the family shitzu, comes bouncing over after entertaining my Tyvex-suited gutting crew, on lunch break after a morning spent ripping apart the house next door. I came down with two friends from Pittsburgh to volunteer my almost-150 pound frame to the relief effort, and I never imagined my triceps could hurt this much from one morning of work.

"That all used to be houses," Patrick says, pointing in the distance to a barren stretch of land, positioned behind where the levee broke.

A year and a half since Hurricane Katrina wreaked the most vicious of her indelible havoc here, Patrick's oft-described yet hardly fathomed Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood is still very much a disaster area. But of more concern these days are the other names now used to depict it, tags like "war zone" and "ghost town."

Patrick's cousin Kendall, the cute toddler that has become a momentary movie star among the girls on my crew, now waddles over, having deftly grabbed one of the many cameras being shoved in his face.

His shirt bears an airbrushed memoriam to Austin "Tut" Anderson, he and Patrick's uncle, who was shot 11 times on Oct. 2 -- one of four relatives Patrick counts that he has lost in the past year.

"Gangs would never work in New Orleans," Patrick says, shifting his gaze across the street. "Too many people out for self." It's a sobering thought, that in a city so desperate for unity and solidarity, even its criminals are not organized.

After eight murders rang in the first 10 days of the new year in horrifying fashion, the media came calling, bringing much-needed attention back to the Big Easy.

CNN's Anderson Cooper reported from the scene as New Orleans activists joined together for a "Stop the Violence" march, which served as a public lambasting of Mayor Ray Nagin -- who stood awkwardly behind the podium without speaking, taking his licks from a city outraged.

Nine days after the storm hit, Barbara Bush caught her share of flack when she declared from inside the emergency shelter of Houston's Astrodome that the underprivileged New Orleans evacuees' situation was "working out very well for them," adding another cringe-worthy soundbyte to the pile amassed by those related to the U.S. government.

The former first lady's comment was perceived by most as a crude and inaccurate way to address the devastation felt by those who had lost their homes, family members and livelihoods during the hurricane. Her other remarks at the time, however, in which she predicted Houston's hospitality would create a tendency for many displaced New Orleanians to stay put, do not seem quite as off the mark.

"All my brother keeps talking about is soccer. Every time I call him, he's worn out another pair of shoes from kicking so much," Patrick says.

Patrick's brother is set to return to the Crescent City along with his mother and grandmother next month -- when work will hopefully begin to rebuild their house -- but in his time in Houston, it seems he's found a new sport.

"I was kind of glad Katrina happened," Patrick continues. "I got to see how other people lived, you know?"

Much has been said about the vivacious and singular nature of New Orleans and the love its residents have for their hometown culture.

But for a number of people I've talked to down here, generally lower-income residents, it appears their displacement was in some ways a respite from a city that was already inundated with problems that were finally exposed once Katrina hit. And for others, the longing for familiar settings is not enough to justify moving back here --resulting in a current population less than half its original size.

"The fissures were already in place in terms of a very old infrastructure, and a very tourist-based economy, which was risky at best," said Dana Eness, the coordinator of the New Orleans' Urban Conservancy's Stay Local program, which promotes a local-business economy. "There were a lot of these problems that were already here, and since Katrina they have been exacerbated."

Fewer neighbors, rent that in some cases has nearly doubled and even more crime are all factors that many residents now have to take into account when moving back here. The notoriously poor school system and the state of local government and law enforcement are also detractors.

"Those are clearly factors that are influencing people's decisions to come back," Greg Rigamer of firm GCR & Associates, Inc., said. "But housing is the key."

Rigamer's statistics on the city's current population have been endorsed by Mayor Nagin. The New York Times gave credence to a Louisiana Recovery Authority study from November that shows a low population total of 191,000, but Rigamer claims it is currently about 230,000. A Census survey reported the pre-storm population level at around 444,000.

"What underpins our assumptions is that there's a primary desire to recover economic assets," Rigamer said of his optimistic outlook. With 108,000 houses lost to the storm across the city, Rigamer cites high rent as evidence that the demand to move back is there, but the available housing and utilities are not.

While housing and population predictions are figures that can be disputed endlessly, the recent body count since the start of the year can only be taken at face value.

One of the steps Mayor Nagin is planning to take to cut down on the emergent crime epidemic is the institution of late-night checkpoints. But even local newspaper columnists, citing the police department's unsavory reputation in many parts of the city, openly decried this as aggravating a fear-based relationship between the community and its law enforcement.

"People are saying, 'We'll take the fox, but leave the wolf off me'," said Robert King Wilkerson, in reference to residents having to deal with either more crime or more police. "In a democratic society, people shouldn't have to choose between two evil choices."

Wilkerson was a member of the Angola 3, three black men who were controversially sentenced in the early 1970s to solitary confinement in Louisiana. Wilkerson was freed in 2001.

"The Houston government showed more humanity and concern after Katrina," he continues. The day after I spoke with Wilkerson, Mayor Nagin hired former Houston mayor Lee P. Brown as a special consultant to the New Orleans Police Department. NOPD spokeswoman Bambi Hall said there was no connection between Houston's post-Katrina response and Brown's hiring.

In the midst of all this, there are some good stories to write home about from New Orleans.

Smack in the middle of the Upper Ninth Ward, a block of crisp, pastel-colored houses gleams in the mid-day sun, an oasis of hope in a community still reeling from the storm. On the street, jazz stars Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. are shooting a commercial to show off their brainchild -- the Musicians' Village, a Habitat for Humanity community about 70 houses strong and growing, designed to house musicians returning to the city.

Marsalis says 34 of the houses -- made affordable through low-interest loans and "sweat equity" -- have been taken so far but acknowledges that repopulating a neighborhood like this one is not an easy process, especially for those with family members to care for.

"Anytime there's uncertainty, people are going to be hesitant to move back," the New Orleans native says.

Common Ground Collective, a hurricane relief organization set up in the first week following the storm, has helped 120,000 people in direct services and reached 400,000 in indirect services, made possible by $1.8 million in donations, according to founder Malik Rahim.

On Sept. 5, a week after the storm hit, Rahim was sitting with two friends at the kitchen table in his wind-damaged Algiers home when they decided something had to be done.

Attempts to work with city government were unsuccessful and Rahim said his history as a former Black Panther did not help matters.

Initially a tent city, Common Ground currently operates out of St. Mary's School of the Angels in the Ninth Ward, providing hands-on labor, such as house gutting, along with health clinics and legal assistance, all free of charge.

Inside St. Mary's -- which has been converted into a bare bones commune with a decidedly pro-vegan, socially-conscious bent -- cots and mattresses have taken the place of school desks and a poster in the gymnasium ominously boasts "1st in the Nation, 1st in Louisiana...For the Future!" Over vacation break, an influx of college-aged workers has filled the school to near capacity and Ivy League girls mingle with local Ninth Ward residents in the dinner line.

While it has been an effective organization at doing the dirty work in ravaged communities and plugging the holes that local government has not filled, an entirely independent organization like Common Ground remains on the fringe of the New Orleans political spectrum.

The week that I stopped by, Rahim said three Common Ground Collective volunteers were arrested on charges of trespassing as they attempted to help residents move out to meet the eviction deadline at the Woodlands apartment complex, which the organization said was inhabited by about 100 families following the storm.

In another example of the tension between Common Ground and local government, the organization recently set up another health clinic on St. Claude Street, but it has not yet been granted a permit to open, Rahim said. Consistent attempts to contact multiple facets of New Orleans city government over a two-week period were unsuccessful in obtaining a response to this and other allegations.

Most of the work done by the college-aged kids is of the gutting variety, as able-bodied kids armed with sledgehammers and crowbars strip abandoned houses to their framework. But once the houses have been gutted, there's no certainty as to what their former residents will do with them.

"All we know is if we gut it, they can come back," Rahim said.

On the shuttle back to the airport, I watch the city go by, speechless as the town transforms from nearly third-world living conditions to the first-rate fun of the French Quarter. The freeway overlooks the Superdome where the Saints will take one more step towards destiny with a win against the Eagles later that day.

Somewhere behind me, a 16 year-old kid is sitting on his stoop, staring at his FEMA trailer with his shitzu by his side.

"I've traveled to four continents and fifteen countries. And everywhere I go, it seems people are deluded about America -- they think it's heaven," says Wilkerson. "But even in heaven, some people are catching hell."