Barely getting by New Orleans still overwhelmed by storm damage.

For all the progress New Orleans has made in the 11 months since Hurricane Katrina wiped out 80 percent of its housing and scattered more than half of its residents to the four winds, some of the city's essential services remain in desperate shape.

Topping everyone's list is the devastated criminal justice system. Though the city's population remains well below pre-Katrina levels, 21 people were murdered in July, just shy of the 22 monthly murders New Orleans averaged in the 3 1/2 years before the storm.

National coverage of the killings scares away potential tourists, a mainstay of New Orleans' economy, which further hinders the city's ability to get back on its feet. Five teenagers were gunned down in a single incident in June, shattering residents' hopes that a post-Katrina New Orleans might be a safer place to live. Just this weekend, six people were shot to death in New Orleans in 24 hours.

Much of the gun violence appears to be drug related, a problem complicated by the fact that only one in three arrested drug dealers are sentenced to jail in New Orleans. In addition, there aren't enough public defenders to represent indigent defendants, prompting a Louisiana judge to threaten that he will begin releasing inmates this month unless things improve. Some 6,000 defendants still awaiting trial could be affected.

On paper, New Orleans Police Department staffing looks good by comparison to other public agencies. The police force is at 1,460 officers, down by about 200, including some who abandoned their duty during Katrina and never came back. But police face a hard-core criminal element in New Orleans emboldened by the reluctance of witnesses to come forward and a low conviction rate that some have blamed on inexperienced, underpaid assistant district attorneys.

As if headline-grabbing crime weren't enough to dampen tourism, the city also continues to struggle with a health care system that's a shadow of its pre-Katrina capabilities. Only half of the metropolitan area's hospitals are operational. In the four worst-hit parishes, two out of five hospital beds are out of circulation; in New Orleans itself, it's two out of three.

A spending package in June sent an additional $19.8 billion in aid to communities in the Gulf Coast affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, bringing the total federal aid to more than $107 billion. That may sound like an extraordinary number - $107 billion.

But don't be surprised if New Orleans makes an excellent case that it will take even more financial help to recover.

The challenges faced by a city whose infrastructure was almost wiped out by flooding - a city that lost half of its 465,000 residents and still doesn't have any housing for them if they return - are simply overwhelming. Almost one year later, it is almost impossible to grasp what has happened to New Orleans without seeing it in person.

Unfortunately, not enough people have done that, and not enough will, unless the city gets the help it needs to address critical public safety, health care and housing issues.