Made
Homeless By Katrina,
Now Gov't Bulldozers
By
Abra Pollock
08 December,
2007
Inter
Press Service
WASHINGTON,
Dec 7 (IPS) - Low-income residents of New Orleans are frantically
struggling to secure the right to return to their homes before the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) begins demolishing
thousands of public housing units next week.
Current redevelopment
plans call for replacing 4,000 units at five major public housing projects
with mixed-income developments, and setting aside a varying percentage
of the apartments for affordable housing.
This overhaul
would eliminate 82 percent of the city's public housing, thereby excluding
3,800 families, according to the Peoples' Hurricane Relief Fund and
Oversight Coalition, which coordinates research and grassroots organising
efforts to support the needs of Hurricane Katrina survivors.
This news
came as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced last
week that it would begin dismantling the trailer parks it set up for
those made homeless by the storm in August 2005, many of whom are former
residents of public housing.
Displaced
residents of public housing and their activist supporters have raised
an outcry about the housing demolition, which many fear will result
in a widespread reconfiguration of the city's demographic makeup.
"This
is massive-scale, en masse gentrification," said Rev. Jeff Connor,
a United Methodist minister whose New Orleans East Cooperative Parish
encompasses many of the neighbourhoods hardest hit by the hurricane.
"What's
at stake is the very essence of New Orleans. Jazz music came out of
[New Orleans'] black community -- their way of living life, their way
of celebrating life. Louis Armstrong was a part of the community that
is now being made homeless by this destruction," Connor said.
Indeed, New
Orleans' homeless population has now skyrocketed to 12,000 -- more than
double it was prior to the storm, social service groups say.
Sam Jackson
is a resident of the B.W. Cooper public housing development in the city's
Uptown neighbourhood. While he was able to move back to his home, he
described the experience of friends who had returned to other developments
after the storm, only to find fences erected around the perimetres and
"No Trespassing" signs posted, which prevented them from entering
their apartments to gather their belongings.
"When
you come back to your home, you find you've been locked out. Where are
you going to go from there?" Jackson asked. "These are disabled
folks, old folks."
Among the
reasons offered by HUD and HANO, the Housing Authority of New Orleans,
for the destruction of public housing developments is that these complexes
encourage a problematic "concentration of poverty". But some
experts question this reasoning, and point out that most of the units
were untouched by the storm and didn't suffer any significant damage.
"Is
the problem that we have concentrations of poverty? Or is the problem
that these neighbourhoods don't have the services that they need in
order to flourish and grow?" asked Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeever, director
of the research, public policy and information centre at the National
Council of Negro Women.
Community
groups and other organisations have been scrambling to appeal to all
levels of government in order to stop the demolitions.
On Thursday,
a multiracial group of public housing residents, former public housing
residents, housing advocates and supporters gathered on the steps of
the New Orleans City Hall to demand that their council members oppose
the demolition and recognise the "right of return for all New Orleanians".
Council members
offered only lukewarm support, however, with two of the five city officials
responding that they would "work on it", while the other three
remained silent.
Connor's
group, Churches Supporting Churches (CSC), represents 36 congregations
across New Orleans that have been working in partnership with other
religious groups around the country to help advocate for affordable
housing and the rebuilding of congregations' facilities.
One CSC member,
Rev. Charles Duplessis of the Mt. Nebo Baptist Church, organised a petition
that gathered 130,000 signatures asking the state's Republican Senator
David Vitter to reverse his opposition to Senate bill 1668, the Gulf
Coast Housing Recovery Act, which would provide for a "one-to-one"
replacement of public housing units in New Orleans so that low-income
residents could afford to return.
The bill
otherwise has the support of the entire Louisiana delegation.
As reported
by Loyola University New Orleans law professor Bill Quigley, some analysts
believe Vitter is withholding his support from the bill for political
reasons -- to prevent its Democratic sponsor, Sen. Mary Landrieu, from
winning a big legislative victory prior to the 2008 elections, and possibly
to influence the voting patterns of New Orleans, whose black population
overwhelmingly votes democratic.
Activists
and public housing residents aren't the only ones who have been working
to stop the demolitions. Also involved is the AFL-CIO, the United States'
largest federation of trade unions, with 54 unions representing 10 million
members.
AFL-CIO Gulf
Coast Recovery Programme director Tom O'Malley has steered a months-long
partnership between the New Orleans office of his organisation's Housing
Investment Trust and the residents of the St. Bernard public housing
complex, which served as a home to 866 residents prior to the storm
and is now scheduled for demolition.
Through this
partnership, residents were able to form their own St. Bernard Housing
Recovery and Development Corporation, O'Malley told IPS prior to leaving
for a meeting with the St. Bernard residents.
The AFL-CIO's
plan would also rebuild 1,045 units of affordable housing on the site.
But O'Malley is not optimistic that organising at the local or national
government levels would save St. Bernard or any of the other public
housing complexes.
"Whatever
development happens, it certainly will not be in the interest of the
working poor," he said.
If the working
poor cannot afford to return to New Orleans, not only will the city's
demographics and character be altered, but its economic and social fabric
will be deeply impacted, experts say.
According
Jones-DeWeever, the vital social networks that sustained the city's
poorest residents will never be reconstructed unless communities are
allowed to return to their neighbourhoods and housing developments.
"There
is no population that is more deeply affected than low-income, single
mothers," Jones-DeWeever said. "These women didn't have a
lot before Katrina. The way these communities were able to survive was
through the network of extended family."
Economically
speaking, while there may be new jobs available in New Orleans for working
people, a public housing shortage could prevent these workers from finding
affordable housing to live in the city.
Both O'Malley
and Vincent Sylvain, a New Orleans small businessman, agreed that demolishing
public housing could disrupt the city's labour force.
"There
simply won't be places for working people to live," said Sylvain,
who also serves as the director and convener of the Louisiana Coalition
on Black Civic Participation. "Ship them in, drive them in, bus
them in, is that what we're going to turn to?"
Sylvain spoke
to IPS while helping a family move in to one of the residences he manages,
after they had been evicted from their FEMA-sponsored trailer park.
Prior to living in the trailer, the family had lived in New Orleans
public housing.
Yet if the
demolition plans move forward as planned, not all New Orleans families
may be as lucky. As FEMA vouchers for displaced residents currently
living in Houston, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere run out, these people
will look to return to New Orleans, Connor explained.
"They're
going to come back home. And when they get back home, they will not
have houses. And we will have a problem of even more homeless people.
And we will have created it because we didn't stop this demolition,"
he said.
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