Report: Flint, Detroit more blighted than hurricane-ravaged New Orleans
The article is based on a study from the Greater New Orleans Data Center, which has been tracking blight in six cities notorious for urban decline.
New Orleans held the unwanted "most blighted" among the six cities -- which also include Cleveland, Baltimore and Youngstown, Ohio -- for five years until the report for 2011, the most recent data available to the Center.
About 21 percent of all New Orleans properties were blighted in 2011, compared with 27 percent in Flint and 24 percent in Detroit, the report says.
The percentage of blight was based on the number of blighted addresses or empty lots plus vacant but habitable homes according to data kept by the U.S. Postal Service.
The study notes that measuring blight can be a challenge because "each municipality defines blight differently, and some don’t track blight at all."
The 2011 data for New Orleans is also the first year of the study that includes estimates by the study authors and a larger margin of error because of a change in how the USPS recorded data, according to the study.
Click here to view the report.