Infohazard: Terrorism, Housing, and Social Unrest in the Humid City
The above flyer has been posted all around downtown, from the encampments of homeless across the street from City Hall to trashcans on Poydras Street.
Dangerblond thinks those responsible should be sent to Gitmo.
Laureen at NOLA Metroblogging fills us in with a well researched post giving tons of background on the situation. She also is the first I’ve found that has picked up on the fact that crime stats have not been significantly impacted by the closure of the projects.
Michael Homan’s position mirros my own. As he eloquently puts it:
I have no doubts that the powers that be are using Katrina to do away with the large public housing projects. Many of these units never flooded and they could have reopened in October of 2005. But how do I feel about large concentrations of poverty in the projects versus mixed-income neighborhoods with subsidized rents spread throughout? I don’t really know. I do know that poor people need a place to live in New Orleans, and the increased rents have kept many from returning.
Ray In New Orleans has posted his open letter to the powers that be.
Two pictures of the flyer on Flickr have developed extensive discussions in their comments here and here. (And at least one of the photos have been filtered so that you have to agree to view objectionable content before actually seeing it.)
But the real venom comes out when you read the comments on the NOLA.com article. This is where you can see the soul sickness that has gripped our city. This is where under the veil of anonymity, the racists and the classists on both sides of the ideological divide come out in force hurling epithets thick and fast.
Last comes one from the national arena. You see, while I will not commit to support of any candidate for the Oval Office as yet, I will give John Edwards some points. He is to be congratulated for being savvy enough to actually try to use the internet effectively as outreach. The upside of this has been steady communication with his blogmaster. She was kind enough to forward this my way just as I began typing this up. So here you have it, John Edwards take on the demolition situation, straight from Chapel Hill, NC:
EDWARDS STATEMENT ON HUD PLAN TO BEGIN DEMOLISHING PUBLIC HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS THIS WEEK
Chapel Hill, North Carolina — Senator John Edwards today called on HUD to reverse its plan to begin demolishing public housing in New Orleans this week and urged the New Orleans City Council to stand strong in defending housing for city residents. Edwards said in a statement:”There is a housing crisis in New Orleans today — the result of government policies that have failed the people of the Gulf since Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Rents have doubled, families are being evicted from FEMA trailers and now the current administration is now trying to make a bad situation worse.
“I am calling on HUD to postpone its plans to destroy affordable public housing until replacement housing is ready. Knocking down historic and livable housing today that withstood the winds of Katrina with the bulldozers of Bush is counterproductive to the goal of giving residents a home to which to return.
Decentralizing poverty by encouraging new mixed-income income makes a lot of sense — I’ve proposed creating 1 million new housing vouchers to do exactly that. But eliminating housing where people could live in a city where a desperate shortage of shelter exists makes no sense at all.
“I urge the City Council to reject the demolition permits HUD needs for its plan to destroy hope for current and displaced New Orleans residents.”
Please take a moment and leave us a comment. Please let us know what your thoughts on this…..
Loki
Founder, HumidCity
December 12th, 2007 at 11:54 am
This issue has been playing around in my mind for some time now. Nobody can deny that concentrating poverty where nobody has to see it is not beneficial to those who live in said areas. Hopelessness, despair, and full belief in lack of opportunity are bred in such environments. The majority of the residents of the projects were hardworking individuals, not crackheads and criminals.
At the same time, there is a great need for affordable housing in New Orleans. The service industry is suffering from a lack of workers, because said workers can’t afford to live in the city. The projects, disregarding anything else, are extremely well-built structures that with renovation could house people who need a place to live to return.
The main thing I’m seeing is why would many of these people want to return? Yes, New Orleans is an amazing city. Yes, it’s hard to leave home. Yes, there’s a strong pull of Hiraeth, as the Welsh call it. BUT - there simply are more opportunities in most other major metropolitan areas, like the ones to which so many New Orleanians evacuated. Especially for the working poor.
And this doesn’t even touch on the problems of getting the middle class to invest in property next to subsidized housing. We’ve all seen the decline in property values in the neighborhoods surrounding the Projects over the years, many of which are lovely, historic neighborhoods with a stock of great houses with loads of gingerbread. Most home buyers aren’t going to ignore that trend, especially with the national housing market being in the state it’s in and mortgage problems. There’s a lot of NIMBY in this city.
There are too damn many issues in this, and caught in the middle are the people who don’t have any housing options in New Orleans.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
The main issue here is fundamental distrust of government on all levels. It’s rather like listening to the Republican debate and hearing the candidates talk about job elimination. They don’t call it that, they spew about tax reform and the millions of wasted dollars people pay out to accountants et al, but we are a nation of paper pushers (as evidenced by the outcry when middle management jobs were outsourced to India and other lands) and the ones who will be affected hear only the bottom line. Which is why policy never gets changed, the logic isn’t thought through beforehand and, heh, accounted for. If we want to eliminate industries - even the 13 teenage pregnancy programs - then why not eliminate gun manufacturing instead, I always say. Eliminate hobbyists before professionals.
Back to the point (more or less), the fact that one or more new housing developments could have been erected before demolishing others is the primary mistrust factor. It’s gerrymandering here in New Orleans to keep the Democrats… I mean, poor… out until after the next census. Have all of them even been allowed to retrieve personal belongings from their former homes? I always wonder about that.
I’m on neither side, personally. I just see incompetence. Where is the list of former residents and their expressed wishes to return or not return? Accommodate them first. Where is the official negotiator? The public is in an uproar because business, of which more and more these days government appears to be one, is leaving them out of the process. It used to be - with real leaders - heartfelt concern caused corrective measures to be taken before the powermongering took place. Or was that just in my LookingGlass world again?
Oh, no, it was in the Constitutional writing sessions, wasn’t it? The original ones, I mean.
December 15th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
So far the only candidate I like is John Edwards.
Regarding this whole plan to demolish the projects and replace them with $400,000 units, they are cutting their own throats.
Check out the rentals and the for sales in the Times-Picayune, and on Craigslist for New Orleans.
There are thousands, but they continue to be listed, because no one can afford them.
Most are way over the range of low or even middle-income earners.
Why do they think the ‘wealthy ‘ are going to come to New Orleans and rent or buy, when there are just not enough high-paying jobs for them to afford them?
Also I see many reducing their rental fees or giving move-in specials and they still go begging.
So where is that at?
Everybody keeps on about the ‘poor’, but middle income earners are SOL too. The jobs aren’t there and affordable housing is no longer there.
These ‘developers’ are just going to grab benefits from the govt, for grants, tax credits, etc. If they actually build, well, they will be begging too. Don’t think they’ve really done their homework.
There really isn’t a “Desperate shortage of shelter”, but there is a desperate shortage of affordable shelter, even for the middle-incomers. Rental owners have had to come up with their own financing to fix up their rentals. The FEMA program for rental owners has not paid out a cent yet. So they have HAD to raise rents on their once affordable rentals.
I think the “Elite” of New Orleans have lost their minds, along with their ’slaves.’
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:03 pm
[...] For the second year running New Orleans has shown that despite criticism it is recovering to pre-Katrina levels of murder and violent crime, by once again seizing the title of most-violent American city! This year the murder rate reached an impressive 71 murders for every 100,000 citizens up from a mere 63.5 last year. That’s a 209 murders for 2007. LINK The housing boom also continues as scheduled following recent unanimous decision to destroying public housing facilities. (image from Humid City) [...]