NEW ORLEANS — No less than a half-dozen reports on the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort are being released to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the storm — and nearly all criticize the sluggish pace of the response.

The reports document a host of problems, from the still-unfinished levees to the plight of small businesses and the city’s continuing racial divide.

“It’s a pretty bleak picture,” Minor Sinclair, who heads the American regional office of Oxfam America, a charitable organization, said.

President Bush yesterday cautioned against placing too much importance on the first anniversary of Katrina, saying a long, sustained rebuilding effort is still needed.

“It’s a time to remember that people suffered, and it’s a time to recommit ourselves to helping them,” Mr. Bush said yesterday.

Many of the Katrina reports focus on the failure of federal dollars to reach their intended targets. Oxfam’s report points out that although $17 billion has been approved by Congress to rebuild homes in Louisiana and Mississippi, not one house has been rebuilt with that money in either state.

A report from the Democratic members of the House Small Business Committee found that 80% of small businesses on the Gulf Coast have not yet received loans promised by the federal government. The Small Business Administration has approved loans in excess of $10 billion, but only $2 billion has found its way to business owners.

The report also cited massive delays at the federal agency, forcing some business owners to wait as long as 100 days for a decision on loan applications.

“These long delays have not only caused many viable small businesses to fail that would have otherwise survived but has contributed to the slow recovery of the local economy,” the report said.

An SBA spokeswoman, Anne Marie Frawley, said the agency has approved more than 156,700 loans, 52% of them to businesses. Money has been sent to more than 100,000 recipients, she said.

Ms. Frawley said it is not surprising that all the approved loans have not yet been disbursed. Thirty-two percent of approved loans remained undisbursed a year after the 2004 hurricanes in Florida, while a year after Katrina, 29% remain undisbursed, she said.

Three reports found that the lack of federal aid disproportionately affects black residents and the poor.

In Louisiana and Mississippi, blacks are more likely to be renters than whites, two reports noted, citing census data. Though renters occupied a large proportion of the dwellings destroyed by Katrina, only a fraction of the federal housing assistance has been earmarked for rental units, according to several of the studies.

A report by the Mississippi conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said the lack of rental aid would have longterm impacts on Biloxi, Miss., where 70% of renters were black, and Pascagoula, where 75% were black.

A report by the Brookings Institution in Washington argued that with rents having risen 39% in New Orleans, the need to repair affordable rental units is crucial.

Compounding the problem is the degradation of such services as public transit, which is typically used by low-income residents. A policy paper by the Washington-based Leadership Conference on Civil Rights found that only 49% of the New Orleans area bus routes have resumed. Only 17% of the buses are operational.