WASHINGTON — President Bush says the American government has committed more than $110 billion to the recovery of the Gulf Coast, declaring last month that “we’ve got a plan” for the hurricane-battered region.

Almost a year after Hurricane Katrina struck, progress on that plan is hard to discern in New Orleans.

Fewer than half the city’s hospitals are open. Thousands of homes stand deserted within miles of the Marriott hotel where Mr. Bush’s Health and Human Services secretary, Michael Leavitt, last month pledged to help build a health-care system as a “light to the world.” More than 85 million gallons of drinking water are leaking into the ground each day. Mangled cars, mounds of debris and broken traffic lights mar the half-populated city.

“Everybody that goes down there says the same thing: ‘My God, it’s just so empty, so devastating,”‘ Senator Landrieu, a Democrat of Louisiana, said in an interview. “The most important thing the federal government could have done is to just come to terms with how bad it was, to come to terms more quickly with the magnitude of it, and respond appropriately.”

Less than half the $110 billion in federal money that Mr. Bush touted has been spent, and much of it went to immediate relief efforts after three hurricanes hammered five states last year. The rest has been subject to bureaucratic delays, political wrangling, and, in some cases, mismanagement and fraud.

Congressional investigators found that funds earmarked for needs such as food and clothing were spent at establishments including Cat Tattoo, Elliot’s Gun Shop, and Condoms to Go. Manufactured homes purchased by the government last year cannot be sent into the worst-hit areas of Louisiana and Mississippi — because of rules that do not allow their use in flood plains.

“It’s hand-to-hand combat to try and convince people and get the money flowing,” Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans said in an interview.The first major American grants for the most basic need — rebuilding houses — will not trickle down to city residents until late September at the earliest. Congress did not approve the final funds until June, and Louisiana then hired a contractor.

Local leaders have had their own problems. The congressman for New Orleans, eight-term Democrat William Jefferson, is facing a federal bribery probe.

“We probably haven’t had in the past the most courageous and astute political leadership at all levels,” Tulane University’s president, Scott Cowen, 60, said. Mr. Cowen helped draft a plan to rebuild the city’s public schools. “There are no easy answers or silver bullets, but you would have hoped that things would have moved at a faster pace.”

In the Lower Ninth Ward on the east side, few signs of life can be seen. The streets serve as a graveyard for crumpled cars tossed around by floodwaters after the nearby levee broke. Signs offering house-gutting services dot the main road through the ward. Off the avenue are abandoned houses, which Mrs. Landrieu says are increasingly being taken over by gangs and drug dealers.

In the Lakeview and New Orleans East neighborhoods, and in nearby St. Bernard Parish, a few people are living in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers. While some have rebuilt, public services are sporadic; debris remains in the streets and inside the windowless houses still covered with flood grime. On one, the now-departed residents have written a message to neighbors left behind: “Best of Luck.”

“What recovery?” Derek Guth, 46, said. Mr. Guth is a city native who is living in a FEMA trailer parked outside his home in New Orleans East. “The streets speak for themselves. It’s a year later. They don’t even have the traffic lights fixed.”

At Tulane, few signs of the devastation that consumed much of the rest of the city are apparent. Flowers bloom, and even in the summer, the campus coffee shop is open for business.Yet Mr. Cowen is facing a shortfall of 400 students in his incoming class because accepted applicants are worried about the city’s future.

“Hindsight is always very beneficial,” Bush’s reconstruction czar, Donald Powell, 65, said. “The recovery is progressing. The port is open. Energy is back. Schools are opening as we speak. Taking into consideration the amount of devastation, I think it’s pretty remarkable where we find ourselves today. I wish it would go much faster, but some of this just takes time.”

America has paid out national flood-insurance claims of $17.6 billion for hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Congress in June approved $19.8 billion more for home rebuilding and other needs, including $4.2 billion in grants for Louisiana. Everyone agrees the homebuilding funds will be critical for the recovery.

That’s “the area where people will see the most effect in their lives,” Mr. Bush said yesterday during a news conference in Washington. “We’ve appropriated the money, and now we’ll work with the states to get the money out.”

Even so, many people in New Orleans are fighting with private insurers and are uncertain about future coverage. And homeowners do not know whether their neighbors will come back, utilities will work consistently, or even what types of buildings will be allowed in their area. After his re-election in May, Mr. Nagin, 50, said decisions about individual neighborhoods would be “the community’s call.”

Terry Davis, a spokesman for the mayor, said the whole city will be rebuilt, “some of it in a different way.” A lawyer who ran against Mr. Nagin and is now working with him on the recovery, Rob Couhig, said the idea is to let the market decide. The municipal services will follow neighborhoods, he said.

With only about half the 2000 population of 485,000 back and services stretched, officials should start by focusing resources on a few areas even if every neighborhood eventually is rebuilt, a housing expert working with the city, Mike Kozlak, said. “It’s still kind of in a floundering atmosphere,” he added.

Only 17% of buses in New Orleans are in use, and gas service is reaching just 41% of the pre-Katrina customer base, according to a scholar at Washington’s Brookings Institution, Amy Liu.

The water and sewage system is in desperate shape. With more than two-thirds of the water pumped into the pipes leaking into the ground, sinkholes are becoming more common.

“Katrina tore back the facade of the Mardi Gras look of the city and exposed the fact that we had been allowing the city to deteriorate for years,” a government critic and consultant, C. B. Forgotston, 61, said. Mr. Forgotston moved to Hammond, La., after selling his ruined Lakeview home.

Crime has gotten worse in recent months, and the city is reeling from a reduced police force and legal facilities. Mr. Nagin has called in National Guard troops and asked for help from neighboring communities. Mrs. Landrieu asked the U.S. Justice Department to step in after a rash of murders.

Ms. Liu found that while the unemployment rate in New Orleans is rising, it is going down in Mississippi, which has gotten just under a third of the FEMA relief funds and is drawing tourists with new casinos. Mississippi may have had an easier path than New Orleans because buildings there were obliterated instead of standing in water for two months, causing delays and complicating damage, Mr. Powell said.

In New Orleans, 70% of the debris has been picked up since Katrina, Mr. Powell said. About half of the schools will be open for the new school year, which should be enough to handle the city’s dwindled population, Mr. Cowen said.

The chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, Norman Francis, said the magnitude of the Katrina floods was unlike anything anyone has ever handled in America. “When you say we’re behind, compared to what?” asks Mr. Francis, who lost his home. “When else did this happen?”

Of the $110 billion allocated by Congress and the administration to help victims of last year’s three hurricanes, $86 billion has been “obligated” in signed contracts or sent to the states, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. At least $44 billion has been spent.

The spent funds were mainly split between flood-insurance payments and the FEMA disaster-relief fund, which has doled out more than $21 billion. FEMA faced the toughest early challenge in the disaster in providing housing and money for thousands of displaced people. The results were riddled with mismanagement, the Government Accountability Office said in a June report.

Of an initial $6.3 billion spent by FEMA as of mid-February, as much as $1.4 billion was wasted, including through fraudulent registrations for emergency funds, according to the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress. A July House Government Reform Committee report also blamed FEMA for paying Carnival Cruise Lines to house evacuees at a rate the company would have earned from casino operations and on-shore excursions, without taking into account its savings on expenses from not sailing.

A FEMA spokesman in Washington, Aaron Walker, said the agency has new systems to try to address fraudulent registrations and is moving to get more trailers in place.

The agency’s accomplishments are underappreciated, Mr. Walker said. “Many of the people don’t realize or recognize the amount of work that FEMA has poured into New Orleans,” he said. “We have debris crews working seven days a week, 12- to 16-hour days on debris removal from the lower Ninth Ward alone.”

About $18.3 billion from the FEMA disaster-relief fund has gone to help victims of Katrina, according to a report released by congressional Democrats. Louisiana got $11.9 billion.

With the start of the new hurricane season, all eyes are on the levee system.

Louisiana got $3.7 billion from Congress in June to fix the levees, in addition to the $2 billion the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had received as of May. No one is sure the structures will hold. The Corps said its repairs have brought the system up to a pre-Katrina level of protection, according to a report to Congress last month. It is working to make them stronger.

“I have no doubt that New Orleans will recover as a better city than it was pre-Katrina,” Mr. Cowen of Tulane said. “I just think the process is probably going to take longer and be more painful than it probably should have been.”