NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - In the wake of Katrina, building costs are probably heading up all across the United States.

Hundreds of thousands of homes and other buildings have been destroyed and many will have to be replaced. Shelter must be provided for evacuees in their new towns. Still viable, but damaged homes have to be made livable again.

As demand spikes for materials, costs will rise too. Still-high oil prices, not helped by supply disruptions after Katrina, will hurt too.

"Contractors use a lot of diesel fuel to power bulldozers, trucks, and other heavy equipment," said Ken Simonson, chief economist with the Associated General Contractors of America. "And many building materials industries, such as copper and steel, are energy intensive."

Also, many building materials use oil products as "feed stock," according to Simonson. There's oil in PFC pipe and polyiso insulation. Roofing materials and asphalt paving also use oil. So do all sorts of caulking and waterproffing materials.

Cement will also be more costly. It comes from an energy-intensive process of heating and grinding, and concrete is extremely heavy, bulky, and expensive to transport. An additional factor is that Katrina took out the port of New Orleans, the biggest cement import point in the nation. New Orleans, which has special facilities for unloading cement, handled about 12 percent of all cement coming into the country last year.

Galveston, Tampa, and other cities will take up some of the slack, said Michael Carliner, an economist with National Association of Home Builders, but that means that the material may have to be trucked further to its final destination -- and shipping by truck is much more expensive.

"Last year, 32 states and the District of Columbia were short of cement. Many will have worse shortages this year," said Simonson.

Among the materials most in demand for repairs will be sheet rock, roofing, plywood, and framing lumber. In the two months after Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, plywood prices shot up nearly 45 percent, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Framing lumber climbed 17 percent.

"We had been predicting home price increases would slow down. Now they won't slow as quickly," Carliner said.

Just because their own costs rise, does all this mean that contractors can pass on the increases to consumers?

"You can't assume contractors will automatically pass on higher costs," said Simonson. For one thing, they have limited ability to change prices once a contract is signed. For another, they can only charge as much as the market will bear.

Reid Ribble, president of the National Roofing Contractors and a working contractor himself, said it generally takes about a 90-day cycle before he can pass price increases along. "The homeowner will say, 'I signed a contract at this price,' and you have to live with it."

For Ribble, the biggest challenge down the road is the matter of skilled labor, "even unskilled labor," he said. "We don't know how many of the now unemployed, able-bodied evacuees will come into the work force. If they don't come into the construction industry in large numbers when reconstruction begins, there'll be a problem."

Ribble said there is already a shortfall of about 180,000 construction workers. "The typical American is not interested, even though it pays well."

Ribble says even when figuring a new contract, he'll have to make the profit margins a little lower. He will try to factor in price increases, but he can only charge what the market will bear.

Still, with virtually every factor adding to expense of construction companies turning upward, Americans have to expect to see higher renovation, repair, and building costs in their future.

Katrina will affect a wide range of prices. Click here for more.

May experts are expecting a pause in interest rate increases. See this story.

Some economists are concerned about a possible Katrina-fed inflation. For more, click here.