Despite some lingering problems, “we’ve made a lot of progress here in New Orleans, depending on where you live,” Montana-LeBlanc said.

The city still doesn’t have a hospital in eastern New Orleans where she lives, she complained. And Nicholas — the 13-year-old son of her sister, Catherine Montana-Gordon — still can’t return to New Orleans “because the schools here are turning away special needs children.” But the progress in New Orleans is “indisputable,” Montana-LeBlanc said.