Merry Christmas, Poor People
HCDRC Meeting by Eli Ackerman.
Some time last week, Karen Gadbios of Squandered Heritage fame sent me a link to the Bloomberg article U.S. to Destroy New Orleans Housing While Poor Sleep in Tents.
In New Orleans, public housing doesn’t mean bleak high-rise towers. The city has thousands of units with Georgian brickwork and lacy ironwork porches that came through Hurricane Katrina barely scathed.
Yet the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, last week approved $31 million worth of contracts to demolish 4,500 public housing units of such high quality that some are on the National Register of Historic Places.
Karen read this article into the record at City Council last week, at the behest of Bill Quigley. The article tells about the quality of public housing in New Orleans. The plans are to destroy these 4,500 units and rebuild, leaving the people who once lived in these units homeless and probably still out of the city.
There was a hearing at the (Historic Conservation District Review Committee) HCDRC this Monday. It was surreal. They moved the meeting out of the usual tiny room that seats ten, into a larger room that was packed. There were activists and residents. Prayers were said.
I ran into Tracie Washington and spoke to her for the first time since YearlyKos.
There were two bloggers there, Leigh and Eli. Here are their accounts of the HCDRC meeting. You will want to read them because they know more about this issue than I.
- Never Been to a Protest Before by Leigh.
- Mobilization Tactics Thwarted by Crazy by Eli Ackerman.
The upshot of the meeting is that the Lafitte housing project was denied a demolition permit, while the C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper projects were approved. HANO (Housing Authority of New Orleans) must now go to City Council to appeal for the demolition of Lafitte.
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It’s bad enough that perfectly solid buildings ~ ones whose structural integrity and strength could not be duplicated today at any price ~ are being demoloshed. (This is not true for all areas of all the developments under discussion, but is definitely true of the significantly large pre-WWII sections.)
What’s truly criminal is that residents of these apartments never were given the opportunity to retrieve their personal possessions, their family photos and heirlooms, etc.
Think about that. I’m sure that many local folks reading this post have very intense memories of returning to their flooded homes and perhaps finding it possible to save some little shred of their former lives. Be thankful you’re as affluent as you are. If you were poor enough to qualify for a place in the projects, your stuff, your family history, would be deemed insignificant by the powers-that-be, and you’d have been locked out of your home, and away from all your possessions, forever.
It’s true enough that public housing residents don’t own the buildings, or even their individual units, but no matter how poor they might be, they certainly should be allowed to claim ownership of a home’s *contents,* for crying out loud. But if you’re poor enough and black enough, you apparently have forfeited all rights to your kids’ baby pictures, your mama’s good china, etc., and indeed everything else you ever owned.
Also, let’s everyone please remember that at least half the units in those HANO developments did not flood at all. Those buildings are all two or three stories high, and few if any of them took water above the first floor. But the entire buildings were slammed shut and all former residents turned away.
What the historic preservationists seem to disregard is that the issue here is not really whether the buildings are solid, it is that it is infinitely clear to anyone who actually lived in this City pre-K, that public housing in New Orleans was a failure. Who cares if Katrina is being used as an excuse to get rid of it and build better communities? It needed to be torn down long ago. I am so tired of hearing about the model project resident, the one ging to school, working, struggling to raise their family. We all know that these people are just a tiny fraction of those that lived in the projects.
Even more importantly, why do public housing tenants have more rights than other New Orleanians? Why aren’t people protesting in the streets for the right of those who owned property or paid market rent, who haven’t been able to return????
The projects may indeed have been a breeding ground for social pathology, but even to the extent that this is true, it is equally true of other poverty-ridden areas where the housing is not government-sponsored. Nobody proposes confiscating or destroying the property of private-sector slumlords, now, do they?
“I am so tired of hearing about the model project resident, the one ging to school, working, struggling to raise their family. We all know that these people are just a tiny fraction of those that lived in the projects.”
Who are “we,” who “all know” the comparative ratio of thugs vs decent citizens living in the projects? Colleen, I would venture a guess that you have NEVER visited an apartment in any HANO development, never known a resident personally, and probably make it your business to studiously avoid the inner city, as well as anyone who might possibly live there. But you’re pretty goddam certain about the population that you disdain so heartily.
It’s a well-worn cliche that one rotten apple will spoil a whole barrel, and when even a relatively small percentage of a community’s members are criminals, there’s gonna be crime. In fact, I am as certain as you are that the exact opposite of your contention is true ~ only a small percentage of project residents, past and present, are responsible for the rampant murders and other crimes. Most of the folks are victims, their most unlawful trait being their very understandable reluctance to come forward as witnesses against the thugs they know only too well, and from whom the police have been demonstrably unable to protect them.
Replacing the projects with something better is an admirable goal, certainly. Turning thousands of people out into the cold with no alternative, for years, especially while denying them access to the personal property they left behind, is despicable.
One last point: No one is preventing homeowners, or “market-rate-paying” renters, from returning to the city. Certainly, every one of us in these categories has had ample opportunity to enter his/her (former) home at least temporarily , to see if there’s anything worth saving, and to salvage as much as possible. Those who “can’t” return are not being prevented by law. For some, the reason for staying away might be lack of sufficient insurance; for others, loss of a local job, or the availability of a better job elsewhere, or better schools, or whatever. The only people facing law-enforcers barring the doors to their homes are the former public housing residents.
*I would venture a guess that you have NEVER visited an apartment in any HANO development, never known a resident personally, and probably make it your business to studiously avoid the inner city, as well as anyone who might possibly live there.*
And you would be wrong.
Nobody is being turned out. They are already out.
I was not commenting on their access to their former apartments to retrieve their belongings. However, given the events of the last few weeks, I can understand why they are being denied access, given the threats of those who represent the former residents. The fact is that these people do not own their former apartments. The are asking for the government to rebuild/refurbish their apartments and then let them live there for free or nearly free. I would like for the government to come refurbish my flooded house and then pay my mortgage and my astronomical insurance which has gone up more than $5,000.00 since the hurricane.
And actually, I would like to see all of the slumlord housing wrested from the control of the slum lords, especially that which is blighted. I would like to see the city enforce the anti blight statute and create some affordable housing that people can buy, thus creating in them a sense of responsibility and community. Something that *the projects* certainly do not do.
The projects were not a symptom of poverty in New Orleans. They were a CAUSE. They were the very definition of a ghetto designed to socially and economically isolate the residents from anyone who could improve their situation, a particularly bad thing in a city where so much of job opportunity is in personal relationships.
The scale of the projects dominated the surrounding neighborhoods and the blight and disinvestment spread out in at least 6 blocks in all directions and in the areas between them. Central City, hemmed in on all sides by housing projects, took it particularly hard as project based gang turf wars played out in their streets and investment in the area dried up. It was only with the redevelopment of St. Thomas and the removing of that faction from the battles did the lower garden district start to revive. And now streets like St. Andrew and St. Mary and Felicity, where previously houses were falling down there is renovation on every block.
These projects have almost destroyed historic neighborhoods. They have led to the decline of our city. Recent arrivals might not understand this but long term natives do.
We need a new social contract with those receiving a public housing benefit; that as community we expect you to:
- participate in the recovery of this city by obtaining and maintaining employment,
- seeing to it that your children are in school and receiving and education and participating in your child’s education,
- making a commitment to the community that your need for a housing subsidy is a temporary need and not a chronic condition.
- do what you can, within your power, to make your life better and the city of New Orleans better.
If we do this we will not need near the numbers of public housing units that we currently have. And this will be a very good thing both for the residents and for the city.
Tom, I don’t know where you have been but I have seen people make appointments to get things out of the Lafitte all the time. HANO had, and probably still has a tenant outreach number, to make arrangements to collect personal belongings. But the tenant has to make the arrangements. This is there one little part of personal responsibility. There isn’t a landlord in the city of New Orleans or the ENTIRE WORLD, where you could leave your stuff for 2 years and then expect it to be there. The personal belongings issue is grasping at straws.
If project residents have indeed been given *reasonable* opportunities to access their stuff, I was not aware of it and apologize.
What appeared to me (and to many others) as denial of access to personal belongings could certainly be seen as symptomatic of the dehumanizing attitude of the authorities; while it may not have been as “central” an issue as the demoltion itself, it certainly seemed to provide a very relevant insight into the dynamics of this whole controversy.
It’s still difficult for me to imagine how former residents might have gotten past those $7,000-apiece metal barricades installed on every doorway in the Lafitte development and probaly other projects as well.
I don’t disagree with the vision of replacing the old system of projects with something new and better. But people still places to live in the meanwhile.
Those who saw the destructive impact of the post-Katrina flooding as an opportunity to accelerate the demolition/replacement process (which, as we all know, was already in the planning stages before the flooding) could have included provision of temporary housing as an integral part of the process, and indeed as the first step. If they had regarded project residents as fellow human beings, they would certainly have done so.
A period of crisis during which ALL housing is in short supply is the WORST time to deny thousands of citizens access to their “former” homes ~ regardless of who foots the bill, and regardless of anyone’s opinion of said citizens’ relative value as human beings.
Sadly, this critical period is seen by many of those wielding power in this arena as a GOOD time to shut down entire developments ~ including the high-and-dry upper-floor units that comprise the majority of project apartments ~ and to turn out the residents for YEARS, until a new plan is slowly and methodically put into place.
What has become evident now is that the folks currently in charge of HUD (and thus by extention, HANO) see the residents ~ their clients! ~ as a sociological phenomemon, a problem to be addressed at one’s earliest convenience, but not as human souls who need places to live NOW and during the next three years, while the promised next-generation housing is built.
Alonzo Whatsisname and his cronies stand to make some pretty good money on those demolition and rebuilding contracts. Because they’ll probably make more dollars the longer the process takes, we can be reasonably sure that there will be unforseen delays while thousands continue to live out in the open in our public spaces.
If the poor people of New Orleans, for whom this entire process is supposedly intended, could be kept in cryonic suspension for a few years (like the head of Ted Williams), then yes, the current plans would make sense and be completely reasonable. Otherwise, no.
So a better plan would be to move people into damaged buildings with lead and asbestos and mold and THEN move them out to demolish to projects for something better. The folks from the projects are living somewhere now. They have housing vouchers. It may not be where they want it to be but this is the price you pay when someone else foots the bills for your living space. If someone else is paying for you to have a roof over your head you pretty much have to live where they say you do. And it is very likely we would already have new housing if the lawsuits trying to stop the demolition hadn’t happened. HUD and HANO isn’t delaying anything. They have the bulldozers ready. The people who want to put the residents back in projects that failed spectacularly have delayed new housing in New Orleans.