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Dreams Turned Into Rubble in New Orleans
"Every American deserves an opportunity to achieve the American dream; New Orleans public housing residents deserve no less." U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson made this statement almost one year ago, during an online forum called "Ask the White House."Secretary Jackson is right, but his actions do not support his words.
When Hurricane Katrina struck, over 5,100 families lived in public housing in New Orleans. The storm and its aftermath caused little structural damage to the developments. With moderate repair and cleanup, the residents could have returned to their homes. But Jackson and HUD had a different agenda.
In June 2006, HUD announced its plan to demolish more than 5,000 units in four of New Orleans' public housing developments. Two weeks later, public housing residents filed a lawsuit against Jackson, HUD, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), and HANO officials to protect their right to return home. While the case moved slowly through federal court, the government rushed to raze the buildings. On September 20, 2007, HANO submitted to HUD the final pieces of its demolition application, which presented a net loss of 3,204 public housing apartments, eliminating 81% of the units in the four developments. HUD approved the plan one day later. The bulldozers were ready to roll when the residents went to state court on December 13, 2007, pointing out that the law requires the City Council to first approve demolition permits before razing can commence. One week later the Council voted to approve the demolition of all four sites. Finally, on March 24, 2008, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin signed the final demolition permit.
HUD now has begun what is the largest demolition of public housing in the history of New Orleans. At the same time, however, the city is facing an affordable housing crisis of historic proportions. Of the city's 142,000 units that were damaged or lost in New Orleans due to Katrina, 112,00-79%-were low-income housing. According to PolicyLink, Louisiana's plan for repairing rental homes damaged or destroyed will replace only one-fifth of this housing. There is nowhere for the working poor to live, which is why New Orleans' homeless population has doubled to approximately 12,000 people since Katrina. The City's response to this crisis is to propose a resolution that would make homelessness illegal.
In this desperate context, bearing witness to the demolition of habitable public housing is tantamount to visiting a crime scene. Heaping piles of bricks, pipes, and debris litter sites where communities once stood. Amongst the rubble are photographs of children and grandchildren, toys and textbooks, kitchenware and family heirlooms. When the families of these demolished homes evacuated in the wake of the worst disaster in U.S. history, they took only what they could carry-and expected to return with other New Orleanians when the mandatory evacuation order was lifted six weeks later. But public housing residents found themselves permanently shut out of their homes, and now their life possessions have been rendered trash.
It is not just the bricks that are coming down; it is not only people's property that is being destroyed. What is palpable at the demolition sites is that the hopes and dreams of close-knit communities are being shattered. The silence was eerie on the gray, chilly day we visited St. Bernard, one of the housing developments HUD currently is demolishing. There was the din of machines working through the debris, but the sound was strangely hollow, as if it was being transmitted into a vacuum. There were no sounds of birds, cars, or children. But there were a thousand stories speaking through the rubble.
If Secretary Jackson had the guts to walk through the destruction, he would have seen the quintessential symbol of the American dream of which he spoke -- a college loan application. Perhaps the application was filled out by a young man graduating high school, or maybe by a single mother trying to secure a better future for herself and her family. But the application was amongst the rubble, stained but otherwise intact -- but never sent. Jackson has no more right to talk about the dreams of New Orleans public housing residents than Barbara Bush had to say that the thousands of Katrina evacuees temporarily housed in the Houston Astrodome were better off.
The people who are better off after Katrina are those profiting from an unjust reconstruction of New Orleans. Amongst these profiteers, it seems, is Jackson and his friends. As Ed Pound has reported in the National Journal, the Secretary is under federal investigation to determine whether he improperly helped friend William Hairston win a no-bid contract to work at HANO. Hairston, a stucco contractor, was paid more than $485,000 for working at HANO for 18 months. In contrast to Jackson's sworn testimony, Harrison says that the Secretary helped him get the job. The investigation is also examining Jackson's financial ties to Columbia Residential, part of a development team that won a $127 million contract to redevelop St. Bernard. Incidentally, Columbia Residential owes Jackson between $250,000 and $500,000 for his work as a "partner/consultant."
Two and a half years after the storm, the tragedy in New Orleans continues. As the City's low-income residents are starved of resources, the pockets of Jackson and his friends fatten. As the bricks are crumbling, so are the dreams and community networks of the public housing residents who remain displaced. But the fight is far from over. The residents of public housing and their allies will continue the struggle for a just reconstruction of New Orleans. With each obstacle residents have faced, the movement for justice grows stronger and more determined. And so, although we saw dreams amidst the rubble in New Orleans, we know that these dreams will rise again. As Frederick Douglas said: "Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . . . Only as we rise . . . do we encounter opposition."
Anita Sinha and Jill Tauber are attorneys with Advancement Project, a communications and legal action organization committed to racial justice, and counsel to New Orleans public housing residents in their lawsuit against HUD and HANO. Anita can be reached at anitasinha11@gmail.com; Jill can be reached at jtaubs@gmail.com.
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15 Comments so far
Show AllIgnoring the needs of the people in the 9th Ward and other areas devastated by Katrina is a way to appropriate the property of others. Developers do it all the time. Their expectation is that the little guys-you and me- will not speak out and basically will move on and then they can take the property and develop it -I use that term losely- for supposed progress.
When I was in the 9th Ward and surrounding areas on Thanksgiving day 2006 I was amazed at what had not been repaired by public services, i.e. street signs, electical wiring, running water. i thought at the time this was an example of how the local and national governments were in bed with big business. Not only is the government in bed with big business they are beginning to plant their little offspring-pods if you will like in the movie Alien-so outsiders can take over the area. Abe Lincoln stated that we need a government "by and for the people". WEll apparently things are just as they were when Abe addressed Gettysberg, because if the experience of the victims of Katrina is any example of the practices of American government it proves that our government is by and for a FEW people. Them that has, not us down us here in the trenches trying to carve out the American Dream.
Rachel Malcolm Ensor, Ph.D.
Clearly the free market solution to rebuilding New Orleans has been as effective as the free market approach to setting loose the creative economic talents of the Iraq-Namese people.
A city government-led plan funded by the state and feds is the only approach that could possibly put things in order. It will never be the city that it was, but it could at least have houses, streetlights and schools.
And the paucity of comments shows how much the Obama-pacified white liberals care about this situation.
The paucity of comments may be the result of hope fatigue. We keep hoping that a decent person in this government will do the right thing. This presidency has indeed practiced the art of "Shock and Awe". The degree of incompetence, lies and utter disregard for the well-being of the average American overwhelms me...and I'm a progressive.
like i always said..they can;t even fix New Orleans. So what makes them think they can ''fix'' Iraq?
USAn,
If your only comment in the "paucity" is to disparage both Obama and the "white liberals", you might better have left it off. I didn't hear you proposing anything useful, and you likely won't---because you can't. Negativism at your level is fatal to thinking.
Us white liberals are trying very hard to get you some better leadership. What the heck are you doing?
I didn't hear you proposing anything useful...
You havn't?
Start with this:
1. Greatly increase staffing and funding of the HUD and EEOC in order to enforce housing and job discrimination laws. Start a new, nationwide ad campaign: "Discriminate? Go to jail."
2. Greatly increase investment in urban schools and infrastructure.
3. Revive the previously successful affirmative action programs at universities and public sector workplaces.
4. Free healthcare for all.
5. Free university education to all qualified.
6. Out of Iraq - completely and unconditionally, now.
7. Reduce, four-fold, military spending.
8. National living wage - $14 per hour, like Europeans enjoy.
Does Obama support any of these things - things many of the industrial nations take for granted?
If you support Obama, fine - but your effusive enthusiasm for him is unwarranted. You should lamenting the fact that you have to settle for someone who, at best, will only slow or suspend the US's descent, rather than lead to real progress - that is, unless we get in the streets and threated to make things intolerable. If Obama wins, Pennsylvania Avenue on Jan 20, 2009 should look just like it did on January 20, 2001.
What? You are telling people to vote for yet another DLC creation, and you think you deserve some great celebration of your 'liberalism' for that, Daniel David? Good grief!
For what it's worth, my heart goes out to all those who have been bulldozed by a corrupt DC establishment that has here put to use Naomi Klein's domestic version of "disaster capitalism." I bear witness to a truth shared by a great many sages and mystics, that whatsoever is done to the least of these, is done to Holy Spirit. There is no free pass. Those behind the decision to steal others' homes and possessions (even if dressed up by some BS law or city proposition) will somewhere, some time have IT done unto them. Justice is what happens between all of us; but naturally those elevated to positions of authority, given the power to influence many lives, have a greater responsibility to act on the side of justice, and that includes benevolence. I'd like to see a BENEVOLENCE test given to any who aspire to run for high public office.
johnnycanuck - they're not interested in "fixing" either New Orleans nor Irak. Never were. Irak was a deliberate disaster caused by a decade of "sanctions" (= softening it up till it was safe to attack it) and then a war, and New Orleans a lucky break in some levees that the developers, financiers and WH lapdogs could take advantage of. There's a lot of money to be made in a disaster like that. And it was obvious right from the start.
I don't believe Secretary Jackson has been properly informed about what the loss of low-income housing really means in New Orleans.
In spite of the many criminal charges pending against him, Secretary Jackson still has an inalienable right to be properly informed of the consequences of his (alleged) profiteering, and hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens also have an inalienable right to properly inform him.
The way the Mainstream Media neglects New Orleans should be a great, big, flashing neon sign for the American public.
People in the US are spoon-fed their news. Corporate ownership of the major media outlets has turned out to be a very bad idea for what was once a major democracy-now currently existing in a state of facism.
Oh, republican party-what have you done to America?
USAn,
You have a fine list of policy initiatives that John McCain will not support and would individually veto if Congress passed any of them. And you diss Obama? What president do you think is going to fly in from Mars?
Daniel - You might consider that the views typically expressed on this site might not be typical of most citizens. Obama is only a viable candidate because the others are so very bad. Otherwise, his socialist beliefs would not even have gotten him this far. I agree that he is the best that we have to choose from, but for different reasons. I also agree with socialist programs that get folks "just by" until they can get back on their feet, but I think that the federal government is not the place for these, and that the programs must be meager enouge that people are motivated to become productive contributors to society. I know that I am a small minority on this site, but I do not think that I am such a minority across the entire population. My point is that you may want to try to forge alliances to get some progress made, rather than standing alone in failure.
USa'n talks about the paucity of comments regarding Katrina. It's a valid point and I'll offer this: I don't like commenting on Katrina articles anymore. It's that simple. I am a Katrina victim, and when I do comment, I get mocked, especially by these "so called" progressives who read CD. So please forgive me for not commenting so much. I suffered enough and I don't need to be dissed and mocked by the people I thought would be sympathetic to the plight of my beloved city. The Bush mal-Administration's "efforts" to rebuild New Orleans are akin to Pol Pot's Year Zero program for Phnom Penh.