Every month Mona Jones writes a check for the mortgage on her New Orleans East townhouse, even though it's gutted down to the studs. She also pays for her new kitchen appliances ruined by the flood waters and, oh yeah, she pays for the insurance to cover both. And every month she writes another check to rent the apartment where she and her husband now live in Jefferson Parish. She'd like to come home to New Orleans and rebuild, but right now she just can't afford to.

Jones' dilemma is why New Orleans nearly two years after Katrina struggles to come back.

Louisiana's Road Home program, federally funded by $7.5 billion, was started to aid people like Mona Jones. More than 138,000 have registered. So far fewer than 21,000 have received any money. New Orleans officials say at that rate it will be years before many residents can afford to return.

Today the Road Home program is under fire on Capitol Hill. No doubt a lot of anger will be vented against ICF International, the company Louisiana hired and is paying $750 million to oversee and distribute the aid. But there is an even bigger crisis looming. As I will report tonight on NBC Nightly News, the road home might be headed for a dead end.

Update: If you missed Martin's report, you can watch it here.

Even if you believed all along those three young men were innocent, yesterday's ruling by North Carolina's Attorney General was stunning. Stunning because in the real world, especially the real legal world, seldom are the outcomes so clear-cut black and white outside of a courtroom.

The charges were dropped and they were innocent -- the accuser was excused for reasons hinted at but not made clear, and the District Attorney, Mike NiFong was guilty of "a tragic rush to accuse." Professionally in his position that is inexcusable, but when it comes to the rush to judgment in this case, it was a crowded field.

Let me say plainly, I never liked this story. I always sensed something wrong. Everyone jumped to conclusions from the get-go in many directions.

I was the first NBC reporter to cover it.

It  was so early in the story that Duke University actually allowed us to go live unescorted from the campus quad. Anyone who later covered this story would find that impossible to believe now. Reporters can't get near the campus, and certainly not without a minder. 

I remember even before I left my office for North Carolina I heard people say, "It was sick what those boys did to that girl."

When I got on the Duke campus it was "that girl's only out to win a lawsuit."

Many believed those white privileged athletes did it because that's what they do. Many believed she was out for money because that's what stripper girls like her do.

It still grinds on me that on air we call her a stripper. It carries baggage and prejudgment is high. She was also a working single parent -- that two brings baggage, but in a positive way.

Race and stereotype were just as alive and not well in the Duke case as in the Imus uproar.

This one is over, but the background forces that made it are not.

Girlfriend is the name of our year-old, long-haired Chihuahua, who we adopted after she was rescued from a puppy mill. She joins our other pets, two cats named Bubby and Bella, both from animal shelters.

But girlfriend is the only one who ventures outdoors, and this spring we noticed she had problems -- wheezing and watery eyes. The verdict? She's got allergies.

And she's not alone.

As I learned for tonight's Nightly News story, it's not just humans suffering through record high pollen counts this spring.

Photo caption: Martin and Girlfriend, as seen in his standup from Monday's broadcast.

"It's just as bad for our dogs and cats, especially those with allergies, as it is for humans," says Dr. Patricia White of the Atlanta Veterinary and Skin Allergy Clinic. "When you think about it, dogs and cats are close to the ground, they walk through the grass and they accumulate that pollen on their skin and coats, so it really can be a problem especially when it's as bad as it is now."

How bad is it? An extremely high level is considered 120 pollen particles per 1 square meter of air. Last week in Atlanta the count hovered near 6,000! And according to Pollen.com most of the nation is snorting, sneezing and itching with medium high or high allergy levels. 

Animals do suffer some of the symptoms we do, but they also tend to be more scratchy and itchy. Which is why vets suggest in addition to medications that we wipe our pets off with a damp towel when they come back inside.

As for us humans, experts make these suggestions:

Take medications at least 30 minutes prior to outdoor activity.

Shut windows and turn on the AC when pollen counts are high.

Dry laundry indoors.

Shower and wash your hair before bed.

You can even consider wearing a filter mask.

My girlfriend hasn't gone that far yet.

By the way, if you want your own girlfriend, she came from the Southern Hope Humane Society.

I've been covering New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on a regular basis since Katrina. That's about 19 months. Whenever one of my stories makes Nightly, I get two very different reactions. Locally, people say "Thank you" to me and NBC for continuing to keep the city's plight before the eyes of the nation... from that nation I get, "Enough already! I am sick of hearing about New Orleans!"

Outside New Orleans the rest of the country has Katrina fatigue. Understandable, but if you think you're sick of it, then you can just imagine how the folks here are sick of living it. But there is little choice. Moving is not an option when you can't sell a house that's gone and still have to pay the bank back.

Experts here say instead of thinking of New Orleans as a national pain in the backside, Americans should realize there are great lessons to be learned, because it could happen somewhere else. If not a hurricane into a major city, how about an earthquake, or a massive terrorist attack that leaves a city and its society in ruins?

That said, tonight's lesson is health care. It's the current crisis in the Big Easy. Patients can wait up to eight hours in an emergency room to see a doctor. Ambulances sit parked at ER entrances unable to offload their latest case, and unavailable for another emergency run. In hallways and emergency rooms, patients lie on gurneys sometimes for days waiting for a hospital room to open.

What's the cause? Like most crises, it's not one big thing but the snow-balling impact of a number of little ones. Before Katrina metro New Orleans had 15 hospitals. Today only 10 have reopened. Before Katrina the city had 2,800 hospital beds. Today it has 635.

But those numbers don't tell the whole story. As Mike Hulefield, chief operating officer at Ochsner Medical Center puts it, "The biggest challenge is not physical capacity, it's human capacity."

What he means is in addition to the lack of buildings and beds, staff is bleeding away. Many are themselves fed up with the daily struggles of life in this city. New Orleans before the storm had about 4,000 doctors. Now it's down to 1,900. In even shorter supply are nurses. There is a shortage nationwide so those that were here have been lured away to other cities where the infrastructure works, the schools are better and the hospitals can afford to pay more. Recruiting people to take their place is hard, because affordable housing is in short supply, the schools are weak and many worry about crime.

So health centers here are recruiting overseas in the Philippines and India -- importing their staffs. But that is an expensive and short-term solution and money is another thing in short supply.

"In Orleans Parish prior to the storm, it was somewhere around 40 percent of our population was uninsured." says Dr. Kevin Jordan, chief medical officer at Touro Infirmary. "That percentage is at least 50-52 percent now."

Part of the reason for the rise of the uninsured is the post-Katrina economic downturn. Jobs were wiped out and with them health-care benefits. So with nowhere to go, the uninsured join the lines at the area's remaining emergency rooms, which are obligated to care for all patients. But the uninsured drain away money that hospitals need to pay for more beds, more doctors and more nurses.

We asked Dr. Jordan of Touro Infirmary what he would say to America if he could. 

"Be very careful, because what happened here could happen to any community at any given time, given any natural disaster or given any kind of interruption in what they consider their daily lives," he said. This could be your future if in fact you're not prepared for it."

New Orleans has lots to teach, as long as everyone else isn't sick of listening.

NEW ORLEANS - I found myself more emotionally moved by what I saw in the Lower Ninth Ward than I expected today. First, I didn't expect anywhere near the numbers that showed up and neither did the Red Cross. "Why come back?" we thought, "there's nothing left."

But of course I forgot the most compelling reason of all. To see for oneself. In many ways Katrina came rushing back today. Not just for the residents of the Ninth but for me as well. Just when you think all the tears have been cried post-Katrina there were plenty more as folks finally went home.

The policy is called "look and leave." The name sounds so simple and cold... as if one look could make a person want to turn their back on decades of living. You only get eight hours from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. each day. Then you have to go. Nobody can stay overnight. You can come back tomorrow but only in daylight.

Some families brought U-Haul trucks... the sad truth is most don't have near enough left to fill them. For many in this part of New Orleans, it's sad but true, they can't go home again.