On the 12th day before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to unleash teams of bulldozers
to demolish thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans.
Despite Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since
the Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds
to tear down over 4600 public housing, subsidized apartments
and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units, an 82%
reduction. HUD is in charge and a one HUD employee makes all
the local housing authority decisions. HUD took over the local
housing authority years ago; all decisions are made in Washington
DC. HUD plans to build an additional 1000 market rate and tax
credit units which will still result in a net loss of 2700 apartments
to New Orleans; the remaining new apartments will cost an average
of over $400,000 each!
Affordable housing is at a critical point along the Gulf Coast.
Over 50,000 families still living in tiny FEMA trailers are being
systematically forced out. Over 90,000 homeowners in Louisiana
are still waiting to receive federal recovery funds from the
Road Home. In New Orleans, hundreds of the estimated 12,000 homeless
have taken up residence in small tents across the street from
City Hall and under the I-10.
In Mississippi, poor and working people are being displaced
along the coast to allow casinos to expand and develop shipping
and other commercial activities. Two dozen ministers criticized
the exclusion of renters and low-income homeowners from post-Katrina
assistance. Sadly, we must now bear witness to the reality that
our Recovery Effort has failed to include a place at the table
... for our poor and vulnerable.
The bulldozers have not torn down any buildings
yet and New Orleans public housing residents vow to resist. "If you
try to bulldoze our homes, we're going to fight," promised
resident Sharon Jasper. "There's going to be a war in New
Orleans." Resident resistance is being expanded by allies
from a coalition of groups who see the destruction of public
housing, without replacement, harming all renters and low-income
homeowners.
Kali Akuno, of the Coalition to Stop Demolition, explains why
many people who do not live in public housing are joining residents
in this fight.
In the past two years, New Orleans has faced a series of social
crises that have struck a blow to our collective vision for a
more just and equitable city, not simply one that is more inviting
to elites. Yet none of these crises has been as uniquely urgent
as this. What is at stake with the demolition of public housing
in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it
destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans
for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing,
thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their
human right to return.
A federal court has refused to stop the scheduled demolitions.
Residents offered evidence to show the three story garden-style
buildings were structurally sound and pointed out that the local
housing authority itself documented that it would cost much less
to repair and retain the apartments than to demolish and reconstruct
a small fraction of them. The New York Times architecture critic
described them as low scale, narrow footprint and high quality
construction. HUD promised to subject plans for demolition to
100 days of scrutiny, and yet approved demolition, with no public
input, in less than two days. The court acknowledged some questions
about the fairness of the process but concluded that if the demolitions
turn out to be illegal, residents can always recover monetary
damages later.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that requires
one for one replacement of any public housing demolished, but
Senator David Vitter (R-La) has stopped the Senate version cold.
The Institute for Southern Studies reports that the Gulf Coast
Housing Recovery Act, S. 1668, sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu
(D-La.) had the support of the entire state's delegation and
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development - until
September, when HUD and Vitter suddenly withdrew their backing.
There's been much speculation over Vitter's sudden about-face
on the measure, especially since he's been reluctant to disclose
his objections in much detail.
The Congressional Quarterly Weekly offers partisan politics
as one explanation for his actions. Political experts say the
senatorial flap is not unexpected, given Louisiana's rough-and-tumble
politics and Vitter and Landrieu's chilly relationship. Landrieu
is up for re-election next year and has emerged as the GOP's
top target among incumbent senators, in part because of the state's
rightward shift in recent elections.
"The fact that Mary Landrieu is widely identified as the
most vulnerable Democrat coming into the next election cycle,
you certainly don't want to give her big victories in helping
the state," said Kirby Goidel, a professor of political
science at Louisiana State University. "He [Vitter] probably
feels safe enough to hold it up as long as it's not too obviously
political and he has some policy-related cover. He's a pretty
hardball political player."
Republican interests are clearly not served by the return of
all African-Americans to New Orleans. Louisiana was described
before Katrina as a pink state, one that went Democratic some
times and Republican others. The tipping point for Louisiana
Democrats was the deeply Democratic, African American, City of
New Orleans. Immediately after the hurricanes struck, one political
analyst said the Democratic margin of victory in Louisiana is
sleeping in the Astrodome in Houston. Tiny turnout by African-American
voters in New Orleans in recent elections has led white Republican
interests to calculate immediate new political gains. Demolition
of thousands of low-income African American occupied apartments
only helps that political and racial dynamic.
But no one will say openly that African American renters are
not welcome. Supporters of the destruction of thousands of apartments
have come up with a series of stated reasons for their actions,
but it clearly looks as though political gain and economic enrichment
for contractors, lawyers, architects and political friends are
the real reasons.
Reduction of crime was supposed to be the main reason for getting
rid of thousands of public housing apartments, yet crime in New
Orleans has soared since Katrina, while the thousands of apartments
remain shut.
Every one of the displaced families who were living in public
housing is African-American. Most all are headed by mothers and
grandmothers working low-wage jobs or disabled or retired. Thousands
of children lived in the neighborhoods. Race and class and gender
are an unstated part of every justification for demolition, especially
the call for mixed-income housing. If the demolitions are allowed
to go forward, there will be mixed income housing, but the mix
will not include over 80 percent of the people who lived there.
This absolute lack of any realistic affordable alternative is
the main reason people want to return to their public housing
neighborhoods or be guaranteed one for one replacement of their
homes. Absent that, redevelopment will not help the residents
or people in the community, who need affordable housing.
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has his own reasons for pressing
ahead with the demolitions. HUD has approved plans to turn over
scores of acres of prime public land to private developers for
99 year leases and give hundreds of millions of dollars in direct
grants, tax credit subsidies and long-term contracts. One of
the developers described it as the biggest tax-credit giveaway
in years.
There may be crime in the projects after all, even if the residents
are gone. Consider the following examples.
Investigative reporter Edward T. Pound of the National
Journal has uncovered many questionable and several potentially
criminal actions by HUD in New Orleans. Pound reported that
HUD Secretary Jackson worked with, and is owed, over $250,000
from an Atlanta-based company, Columbia Residential. Columbia
Residential was part of a team that was awarded a $127 million
contract by HUD to develop the St. Bernard housing development.
Columbia was also awarded other earlier contracts for as yet
undisclosed amounts under still undisclosed circumstances.
Pound also discovered that a golfing buddy and social friend
of Secretary Jackson was given a no-bid $175 an hour emergency
contract with HUD, within months of Katrina. The buddy, William
Hairston, was ultimately paid more than $485,000 for working
at HANO over an 18 month period.
A review of the dozens of no-bid contracts approved by HUD in
New Orleans shows millions going to politically connected consultants,
law firms, architects, and insurance brokers.
What is scheduled to happen in New Orleans is happening across
the United States. It is just that New Orleans offers a more
condensed and graphic illustration. The federal government is
determined to get out of housing all together and let the private
market reign. A 2007 report of
the Urban Institute confirms that in the last decade, over 78,000
low-income apartments have been demolished by HUD.
That is why locals are receiving support and solidarity from
residents and housing advocates in Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles,
Minneapolis, and New York.
Destruction of housing for the working poor
is also a global scandal as corporations and governments push
entire neighborhoods
out. In India, traditional fishing villages destroyed by the
tsunami are being forcibly moved away from the coast and the
land where they lived is being converted to luxury hotels and
tourist destinations. The International Alliance of Inhabitants,
which opposes the demolitions in New Orleans, points out that
poor peoples’ neighborhoods are also being taken away in Angola,
Hungary, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
Poor and working people in New Orleans and across the globe
are living on property that has become valuable for corporations.
Accommodating governments are pushing the poor away and turning
public property to private. HUD is giving private developers
hundreds of millions of public dollars, scores of acres of valuable
land, and thousands of public apartments. Happy holidays for
them for sure.
For the poor, the holidays are scheduled to bring bulldozers.
The demolition is poised to start in New Orleans any day now.
Attempts at demolition will be met with just resistance. Whether
that resistance is successful or not will determine not only
the future of the working poor in New Orleans, but of working
poor communities nationally and globally. If the U.S. government
is allowed to demolish thousands of much-needed affordable apartments
of Katrina victims, what chance do others have?
BlackCommentator.com Columnist Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer
and law professor at Loyola University, New Orleans. He has
been an active public interest lawyer since 1977 and has
served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations
on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public
housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil
liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and
civil disobedience. He has litigated numerous cases with
the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Advancement
Project, and with the ACLU of Louisiana, for which he served
as General Counsel for over 15 years. Bill
is one of the lawyers for displaced residents. Click
here to contact Mr. Quigley.