Urban Development or Depopulation? HUD's Christmas Plans for the New Orleans Projects

"I left because my life had been devastated by the storm and its aftermath. Up until that time, for 57 years I had stayed in the city I love -- and I love it no matter what -- I love its people and it is where the bones of my mother and father lie. It is home."

--Cyril Neville, December 13, 2007

Cyril Neville lost his home in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans in August 2005 when the levees broke and hurricane Katrina's flood waters drowned lives, destroyed dreams, and shattered hopes for hundreds of thousands. Power lines still dangle from utility poles overgrown with vines and kudzu in Gentilly, and black and blue plastic tarps snap smartly in breezes that blow through empty neighborhoods, abandoned homes, broken windows and the mean streets of 2007.

Neville told us that he has been "informally back" and trying to fix his home since October of 2005. Like many other returning residents whom we interviewed, Neville was "ripped off" by contractors, "to the tune of $19,000" in his case, and he has had all of the copper wiring stolen -- twice. It is important to Neville that people understand that he hasn't exactly been "gone" from New Orleans for the last two years.

"I left because my life had been devastated by the storm and its aftermath. Up until that time, for 57 years I had stayed in the city I love -- and I love it no matter what -- I love its people and it is where the bones of my mother and father lie. It is home," Neville wrote in an early morning email to us. "Home" was capitalized and underscored.

Cyril Neville is part of the "heartbeat" of New Orleans, but his own heart is heavy. He knows the despair and vulnerability experienced by the displaced. Neville is one of 200,000 people who have not returned full-time to New Orleans, and wants to show his solidarity with those still besieged with uncertainty, indecision, and fear. Neville may have resettled in Austin, Texas, but he misses the old neighborhood, the ability to get up in the middle of the night and drive to the market for a Hubig's Pie, and the convenience of walking a few blocks to visit family and friends. Quite simply, Cyril Neville misses the neighborhood.

Anyone who has followed New Orleans politics since Katrina understands why

Neville has been hesitant to come forward about recent public housing controversies and conflicts. Comments he made in interviews and in print about the way local, state and federal governments failed to respond to the needs of the displaced drew fire from many quarters, and Neville has been reluctant to take a public stand since. However, truth prevails with time, and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have issued statements that vindicate Neville and indict rescue and reconstruction efforts in New Orleans as being too little and too late -- slow at best -- and wrought with malfeasance and racism at worst.

"I think it's important that the people involved in this struggle know that I stand with them and that the song I speak of here is a rallying song for this monumental movement. After all, I am a charity hospital baby from the Calliope projects, born and bred in the bricks," Neville said in a statement.

The song Cyril Neville wants the world to hear is called The Projects. He insisted that we link to it here.

"Born and bred in the bricks...we played with toys, not guns, and there wasn't much dope."

The lyric reminisces about growing up in "the bricks," watching his brothers play music, and enjoying their youth. It is the recollection of a grown man facing today's grim realities of life in New Orleans.

I love New Orleans, I love my culture, and I love my country," Neville told us pensively.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has underscored the "struggle" Neville speaks of with plans to demolish the four largest public housing projects in New Orleans on Saturday. If officials at (HUD) have their way, bulldozers will rumble through Lafitte, St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper (Calliope) -- drowning the sounds of bullhorns and protesters that are sure to greet them. Gentrification will destroy the heart and soul of New Orleans; Neville knows it, and wants to say so publicly.

Despite the fact that 200,000 residents, of all colors, are still displaced, HUD is authorized to spend $762 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to tear down 4600 public housing apartments and replace then with 744 units. The math is easy. Where are the rest of the families supposed to go who occupied the 84 percent of the housing units that will not be rebuilt? Neville is convinced that the loss, through depopulation, of the "gumbo" of New Orleans will leave an empty, soul-less shell of "urban development" -- a city designed and planned for the wealthy.

Where will the displaced poor live? No one seems to have answered that question, but they will not be in New Orleans, since the 1,000 "market rate" apartments that are slated for construction will cost $400,000 each.

Calliope was home to 1,400 working class African-American households before the floods of August 2005. Many -- perhaps a majority -- were headed by women. The brick project sprawls over almost 60 acres and contains 1,546 individual dwellings. Calliope is noteworthy for its status as the largest tenant run housing development in the United States. It is also infamous for violence, murder and drugs in recent years.

The story of Calliope has played out over the other projects slated for demolition and it is no wonder there is a sense among the displaced that the City of New Orleans is using the "shock doctrine" of disaster capitalism to depopulate low income housing, thereby making room for new development. After Katrina's floods scattered the poor throughout the country as so many seeds in the wind, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) posted paper notices saying residents were not allowed to move back. In a twist of linguistic irony, HANO hired the Las Vegas firm "Access Denied," to install 16 gauge steel plates over windows and doors at Cooper and other projects. The excuse for this largesse was "protection" from looters and thieves. Reports in the Times-Picayune and other local publications quoted residents who said robberies occurred with key access and that thefts happened AFTER Mayor Ray Nagin urged people to return.

Jill Soffiyah Elijah, the deputy Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, went far beyond condemning gentrification. "It is our view that the U.S. Government has committed crimes against humanity, particularly in relation to its failure to maintain functional levees that should have protected the City of New Orleans," Elijah said in summary statements after hearing 30 hours of testimony given by hurricane survivors and experts in August 2007.

Racial discrimination, vigilantism, and violations of human rights involving the rights to adequate housing and education were the most egregious findings of the international tribunal. Among others, the ACLU of New York, the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition, and the National Lawyers Guild joined representatives from nine countries at the hearings.

Affordable housing, jobs that pay a living wage and quality healthcare and education are constant hot-button issues post-Katrina. Amnesty International southern regional director Jared Fuer has gone so far as to state that "To demolish affordable housing without sufficient remaining low-income housing stock is not only irresponsible, but a violation of international human rights standards."

Kali Akuno of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund charges studies prove that flood survivors with home insurance have not received compensation or aid. Rents and utilities have increased, while wages remain the same. Rentals once priced at $600 to $700 have increased on average to about $1,600. Restoration of the infrastructure in hard-hit neighborhoods such as the Ninth Ward, Gentilly and Gretna is lagging and in some places non-existent. Many homes are facing winter without water or gas service.

Cyril Neville quotes from the book, The Second Battle of New Orleans by Liva Baker, and lists A.P. Tureaud as one of his heroes. Tureaud was a black Creole lawyer who peacefully but relentlessly fought for civil rights and integration in Louisiana. The subtext of the iconic reference to the 100-year effort to integrate Louisiana's schools as the "Second Battle of New Orleans," can certainly be applied to the current reconstruction crisis. The Second Battle of New Orleans is being waged this week and Cyril Neville thinks that heroes like A.P. Tureaud "are what New Orleans needs today."

To drive the point deeper, Neville quoted James A. Colaico's book, Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July Oration, "When the happiness of some is pursued to the detriment of others, the general welfare standard of the Preamble (of the Constitution) is violated."

On the twelfth day before Christmas the Constitution will be tested, and New Orleans will face a decidedly different future if bulldozers roll through the projects as scheduled.

Follow Georgianne Nienaber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nienaber

Comments

[70119]

There are several things that are important to know about this issue.
The residents of at least one of these projects voted to replace them with new mixed-income housing. These buildings have asbestos, lead paint and mold in them. The former residents have vouchers that pay their rent (in almost every case in a safer environment). They are not being asked to pay their own way (God forbid). If the old projects are not torn down and replaced, the HUD funding will be lost.

[cloudy]

Let's be clear - what's going on in N.O. today has NOTHING to do with technical issues or bona fide concerns about economic efficiency (smaller slice of a bigger pie being a bigger slice etc). This is about using the storm, as wealthy Orleanians quoted in Sept 2005 in THE WALL ST JOURNAL) & the Congressperson who gaffed that God did what policy was obstructed in doing, to remake the City over in the image of the desires of a white have-more elite. It's the "bleaching the Big Easy".

Yes, political correctness can and does often go overboard -- from 'Ebonics' as a second language to Cleopatra supposedly being black (she was actually ethnically Macedonian!), etc,some suspiciously seeming like they originate other than from authentic progressives.

But what is going on in NOLA is an ELEMENTAL struggle over what Amnesty Internat'l has described as the fundamental right to housing. Some, in the face of a very limited range of media coverage may feel this issue is distant or questionable or may assume that it must be more 'complex' (indeed it is, & more invidious too)than progressive activists suggest.

But it isn't. This is in effect FORCIBLE diaspora, the systematic evisceration of one of America's great cities, & should be a topic constantly focused on, by investigative writers & researchers, IN DEPTH, in progressive & liberal venues, including Huffpo. There needs to be MUCH more regular quality reporting in this venue as in many others -- and a national movement supporting this basic struggle.

This article, on the whole, is a summary of broad themes that have been known for years. Particular recent issues like HUD trying to extort the Council of New Orleans, who recently voted to oppose the destruction of one of the four projects so slated this Xmas season,by threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in funds earmarked for housing in the City are urgent.

The diaspora's already playing a big role in GOP political calculations in LA, with Landrieu's seat being the most threatened Democratic Senate seat for 08, DUE TO THE MAJOR DECLINE IN BLACK POPULATION IN THE NOLA REGION.

[AnneOnymous]

Thanks for the information, Georgianne. Even taking into account the sort of problems in public housing that the previous poster mentions, the problem could be addressed by requiring all developers (including the NO Housing Authority itself, or firms with which it contracts) to provide an equivalent number of affordable units within the city to replace any destroyed units, or low-income units replaced with unaffordable ones.

The problems you describe are occurring in other areas as well, although NO is clearly far harder hit. Our country generally has been experiencing a massive increase in income disparity which, left unchecked, will ultimately undermine our democracy. The sort of social darwinism expressed in the previous post will only lead to more problems. Especially since transportation costs are rising so rapidly, making the ability of the low-income person to access employment and services in the city ever more problematical, the idea of forcing low-income workers (and the disabled and homeless) out of the cities is simply inhumane. And it's doubtful that the suburbs, which are more inclined to NIMBY attitudes, are going to want to take them in anyway. Just where are all those pesky low-income people supposed to go?

Neville's situation is heartbreaking. One can only hope that the powers-that-be in NO will reconsider and begin to develop policies that benefit all the former residents of New Orleans. At the very least, with such a significant dearth of any housing in New Orleans, a delay of the demolition until suitable replacement housing can be found for residents is the only sensible and humane approach.

[khsnow]

hello

What is a "successful" city? Washington DC -- where the slave holding pens were covered over with the Washington memorial?

Is Boston a successful city? What about Northampton MAssachusetts -- where the bombmakers proliferate and Coca Cola consumes 1,000,000 gallons of fresh water from teh public aqifer annualys, and the "students" are indoctrinated to call for the bombing of Sudan (SAVE DARFUR!)and the collges crank out prodcution line warmaking engineers and fascist doctors to work, with all their humanity and goodness, for Doctors Without Borders or Save the Children children, maimed by the local warmakers' landmines shipped through the warfare without borders economy you call "success".

What is a "successful" city? Around teh corner is sure to be some nuclear plant dumping waste on the distant native americans forced into some reservation ghetto, or the inner city you decry where the CIA dumps its crack cocaine, and HUD denies the basic housing, and "affirmative (re) action" insures that people cannot get a job.

What is success? Who decides? Surely not the people most deeply disenfranchised by the "American way" so perfectly and neatly summed up as you have done above.

White supremacy rears its ugly head in the comment above, that those displaced from New Orleans are "nostaligic" for their own homes. This is white supremacy. Look closely at it. See if you can resist posting in reaction. Think.

Please. Try pointing your finger at the true culprits, the true criminals.

In your utopia -- which certainly is not mine -- the pollution flows just as readily, the crime exists in white collared offices, the corruption and predation are extreme, and you call this "success", and you want to spread it like the toxic effluent that it is.

But your version of success is pèredicated on mass murder, genocide, a permanent warfare economy, and a white privielge that assumes and projects its innocence in the global malaise peddled by the American way. As if your hands are clean, as if such cities are. Thats the supreme arrogance and injustice that we see and hear everywhere as if it were truth.

keith harmon snow

[LizM]

'RESTORE OR RETREAT!'

Unfortunately, none of this may matter much, anyway.

Unless there is a demonstration of leadership by the federal government, and all levels of government, to begin a serious effort to implement a comprehensive plan of action to restore the coastal wetlands and barrier islands of southern Louisiana, any attempt to rebuild the city, especially its more vulnerable areas, can only be called a criminal and reckless disregard for human life.

Without coastal restoration - NOW! - New Orleans is destined to die a very watery death as it becomes completely devoured by the Gulf of Mexico.

The most outrageous aspect of all of this is that the scientists and engineers know what needs to be done and the costs are not even exorbitant, relatively speaking, and yet there is seemingly no political will or leadership to make it happen.

[NABNYC]

This is a big issue across the country, although of more urgency for the people of New Orleans. In Europe, decades ago, when the people of the U.S. were abandoning their cities for suburban life, the Europeans were doing the opposite: the wealthier and the professionals lived in the inner city, and the "workers" lived in concentric circles out from the city. the poorer you were, the longer the commute.

Now that European style of development came to the U.S. in the form of what we call gentrification. And it has happened in all of the major cities that have been financially successful. It may be a prerequisite for a city to be a success.

You want business to locate in your city? Young professionals to be lured there to work in business, law, government, tech? You need housing for them, which will probably be rental units, very expensive. Along with some kind of transportation so they don't all need cars, and restaurants, culture, and a night life. The poorer people will live outside the city.

If your inner city is filled with public housing dumping grounds as they are traditionally composed, with unemployed, alcohol, drug, crime problems, then you will not likely be able to lure the business that the city wants to make it a successful city.

Of course the better solution would be to have mixed residential -- upscale, moderate, lower all mixed in together in some amount. But that's unusual.

But if you look at the successful cities in this country, they all moved the public housing projects out. And the cities that have gone down the toilet have not. It's a tough reality, but there you go. New Orleans before Katrina had a lot of problems. Some now get nostalgic because to them it was "home." But they may be ignoring the murder, weapons, drugs, poverty, and corruption that kept many of its citizens locked into a dead-end life.