Eve Troeh

The New Jersey Sandy recovery service center had so few chairs that some customers had to wait while standing in long lines. The firm used software taken off the Internet and full of bugs. Homeowners were directed to make appointments through a call center, but employees were never told when they would show up.

That is what Sandy victims faced when they came to one of nine intake centers set up to distribute long-term federal aid to homeowners, David, a former employee, said. He said he and his colleagues wanted to help, but met repeated obstacles.

Saturday, October 18, the New Orleans Healing Center hosts its third annual Water Symposium, a daytime addition to the evening's Anba Dlo Halloween music, costume and arts festival.

The Water Symposium includes three panel discussions, from 12-4 p.m. at Café Istanbul. Topics include the future of Louisiana's coast, a look at the state's Master Plan and other large coastal engineering proposals, and a discussion of how to fund large coastal initiatives of any kind. The event is free and open to the public.

This week WWNO has been exploring Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard. The Central City corridor is home to new nonprofits and business ventures, after a redevelopment effort of more than a decade.

Today we wrap up coverage with a conversation just off the Boulevard, on Baronne Street. It’s the new home of Tulane City Center, a venture of the university’s School of Architecture, with a strong service learning component.

Wednesday marks the nine-year anniversary of Hurricane Rita's landfall in Texas, and the flooding of the Louisiana coast. Western parishes like Cameron, Vermilion and Iberia were hit hard. Plus, Rita added a whole new layer to the unprecedented damage of Katrina and the floods of just a few weeks prior.

As the US population ages, a disorder known as "hoarding" is becoming more of a problem. Up to 15 million Americans deal with a person in their lives who can't stop gathering stuff, and the house fills with what seems like tons of useless junk.

Matt Paxton is host of the television show "Hoarders," and he holds workshops on the subject, including one on Tuesday in New Orleans.

Paxton helps clean the extremely cluttered and dirty homes of hoarders. He says careful communication is needed to help those afflicted with the disease.

Every month, we hear from Richard Campanella about his Cityscapes column for Nola.com and The Times-Picayune.

This month Campanella explores Andrew Higgins' makeshift, pop-up factory to make a new kind of vessel for the Navy in 1941, in the 1600 block of Polymnia Street — then (as now) a residential area. In just two weeks, hundreds of workers produced and delivered 50 vessels, based on a prototype tested in Lake Pontchartrain.

Bob Marshall has covered Louisiana’s disappearing coast for decades, including his recent series with Fred Kasten, “Last Call” on WWNO. Now he has a new project, Losing Ground, a collaboration between nonprofit newsroom the Lens, where Marshall is Environment Reporter, and the news nonprofit ProPublica.

Luisa Dantas created a Hurricane Katrina-related website called Land of Opportunity, which accompanies a documentary film of the same name. It chronicles ongoing challenges of disaster recovery and resilience.

The newest feature is a timeline that compares and contrasts stories of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.