Mike Holmes hits New Orleans

Fans of Mike Holmes, star of "Holmes on Homes," will be happy to hear that Mike made an appearance today at a community meeting in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and announced he and his team were there to build a home for the Brad Pitt-founded Make It Right Foundation.

Holmes is famous for his disdain for bad contractors (and who doesn't feel that?) and a story in Canada's National Post said Mike's "indignation over shoddy workmanship went into high torque when he watched the hurricane crumple houses in New Orleans in August, 2005."

Mike referenced the Three Pigs and said: "If you see houses blow down in an area that's windy, build a house that will withstand high winds. I thought everyone knew that."

And he concluded: "How can we build a home that will withstand a hurricane? The truth is, we can."

Before Mike starts disparaging craftspeople from the late 1800s for the way they built the houses in the neighborhood where he spoke today, I'd like to point out that those homes were not so much destroyed by wind but by flooding up the attics when the levees failed. If he can build homes that will withstand 8 to 10 feet of floodwater, more power to him.

I hope Mike takes time while he's in New Orleans to watch an excellent Imax movie called "Hurricane on the Bayou." That movie shows so beautifully that the miles of bayous, now disappearing at the rate of one acre every 38 minutes, are historically what have slowed the impact of storms that hit New Orleans, a city founded hundreds of years ago. There are complex and long-term factors why that wetland protection has disappeared and turned into open waters, and it will take national willpower to reverse those factors.

While I'm more aware than most people about the dangers of hiring unqualified, dishonest, nefarious or neglectful people to fix up your home, I trust that Mike won't turn his experiences in New Orleans into just another rant against contractors.

While it might be comforting to have a group of bogeymen contractors to focus our anger on, the threats to homes in New Orleans -- crumbling levees, disappearing bayous, climate change -- are much more complex than that.