WASHINGTON — Blighted and vacant homes continue to plague Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts in New Orleans, new U.S. Census Bureau data released Monday show.

More than 65,000 homes that the 2005 storm damaged were still unfit for habitation in 2009, according to the bureau’s 2009 American Housing Survey for the New Orleans Metropolitan Area.

About two-thirds of these units were headed for condemnation or demolition, but that legal process is slow, leaving the city littered with tens of thousands of unsafe, unsanitary dwellings.

Fortunately, the number of blighted buildings is decreasing steadily as homeowners get federal money to rebuild or rehabilitate their properties, said Allison Plyer, chief demographer at the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, a research organization.

Only about 44,000 blighted homes or lots were found in a data center report from October 2010. While the 2010 census counted nearly 48,000 vacant homes in the New Orleans area, Plyer said 41,000 of them were thought to be blighted and uninhabitable.

Despite the progress, the vacancy rate in the New Orleans metro area is 25 percent, one of the highest in the nation and up from 12 percent in 2000.

After peaking at nearly 628,000 residents in 1960, New Orleans has steadily lost population […]