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First Came Katrina, Then Came HUD

Activists battle to save New Orleans public housing

By Lewis Wallace

The temperature in New Orleans was uncharacteristically cold in mid-December, dipping into the 30s. As thousands of homeless people living in encampments huddled in blankets, housing activists from around the country converged on the city to protest the demolition of more than 4,500 units of public housing, once at the epicenter of New Orleans’ low-income African-American community. In late November, the… return to article

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    I’m here in New Orleans, and was at that city council meeting.  I know a lot about public housing, know former residents, know how the voucher system works, etc.  I have to say that this article is off base in many ways and takes a narrow view of an extremely complex topic.  A lot of this info is downright inaccurate.  HANO and HUD have done a miserable job, and peoples fate should not be left up to them.  These particular projects were awful and are not places where you would want your grandma to live.  There should be something better for everyone.  It’s all been handled very badly by the government.

    United States Posted by lpompa on Jan 21, 2008 at 8:18 PM

    Is it not still economically and morally better to refurbish the existing housing,rather than to waste money by destroying housing that is available now?
    I do get tired of hearing from black people that they are getting a raw deal,,,,but I do hear that big business wants to construct areas for tourist to stay and wealthier people to live,and this is wrong.The government dropped the ball in a big way.Starting with hiring a completely incompetant director of FEMA and the president dragging his heels on helping New Orleans.The incompetance goes even further back when the Corp of Engineers did not improve the levees,when they had known for decades that there was a problem.

    United States Posted by eddiemyboy1 on Jan 27, 2008 at 11:16 PM

    Economically, it’s more expensive to refurbish.  Aside from the lead paint and asbestos remediation, in most of these buildings looters have taken out every copper pipe, and knocked down the telephone poles to reach copper wire and steal it too.  The units were once heated with fireplaces, and the later boiler systems put in are unrepairable.  Obviously there was never air conditioning.  The units are tiny, have no closets and the buildings would basically be a complete gut job.  Morally speaking, I can’t say.  In the case of the New Orleans, which is not as transient as some other cities, the buildings will always bear the stigma of being “the projects.”  So, do you reopen them or start fresh???  None of these four sites are being replaced by hotels or condos.  It will be affordable rental housing, not luxury.  If you have heard anything that made you think “wealthy people” it’s probably because some of the units will be market rate.  That means they will rent for what the market will bear for the type of housing.  The idea behind this is to create a mixed income community so that the poorest aren’t segregated into low quality housing in isolated areas.  And a lot of housing is going to be coming on the market in a short span of time (waaay too long after the storm) next year, so the market rate should lower because people will have choices.  This model has been used all over the country and if you are interested do a search on HOPE VI.  We can thank our government for all of the delays, but frankly the protests didn’t help speed up getting more housing in the pipeline either.  Public housing was very dysfunctional, and I can’t see HUD doing a better job with it now.  It’s not like they suddenly hired a bunch of very competent people or reorganized everything.  They have made it clear that they want out of the housing business as it existed.  The thing that has really put a pinch on people here (and those who still want to come back) is the tens of thousands of rental apartments in houses that the owners have not repaired (for various reasons including not getting money from the road home program and not being insured).  That’s where the bulk of people live in New Orleans.  Unlike most other cities, New Orleans doesn’t have a lot of large apartment buildings.

    United States Posted by lpompa on Jan 28, 2008 at 12:11 AM
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