New houses are going up in New Orleans more slowly than in many other midsized cities even as the city struggles with the massive task of replacing thousands of houses destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Since Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005, New Orleans has bulldozed about 9,000 houses waterlogged by the hurricane. But it has approved construction of fewer than 1,400 new homes to replace them, showing that the city's rebuilding process has been unable to gather any significant momentum, a USA TODAY analysis of city permit records shows.