It is the debate that barely dare speak its name: should they rebuild? Should they move it?
Several US commentators and the odd brave politician are starting to ask the questions, faced with the dizzying cost of rebuilding and fears over the low-lying city's future vulnerability.
Many evacuees have said they will not return.
There may not be much evidence of people doing, as Barbara Bush put it, "very well" out of the disaster but it seems certain that many will make new lives elsewhere.
A lot of the homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina were not insured and the insurance payments for those that were could be spent anywhere.
In today's lead article on Slate, editor at large Jack Shafer argues that the city should not be rebuilt, and being careful to praise its history and people, lists its problems before Katrina hit: the old housing stock, the failing schools, the crime.
Sure there will always be the higher-lying areas and the tourist-draw of the historic French Quarter, until a "big one [new hurricane] hits", but he answers "Don't refloat", to the question of rebuilding.
Shafer cites a professor in earth and sciences who says that New Orleans "wants to be a lake" and should never have been built in the first place. There is also at least one politician who has dared to question the pledges to rebuild: speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
He said in an interview that spending billions on a city that is below sea level "doesn't make sense to me", although he rowed back on the issue in a later statement.
Other commentators have asked whether the city should be rebuilt on land less vulnerable to hurricanes and levee breaks.
A New York Times piece entitled Putting Down New Roots on More Solid Ground said the city's population had been declining anyway: down from a zenith in 1960 of some 630,000 people to around 445,000 in the last census.
It is estimated that some 250,000 of the evacuees won't come back.
