Gots to preserve dat hood, right, Tyrone?
Busta Capp
July 06, 2006
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Even before Hurricane Katrina hit, the city's public
housing projects were sinkholes of crime and despair.
Federal housing officials now plan to tear down four flooded-out projects
but some residents are suing and staging marches, saying the plan to
demolish their homes is discriminatory.
It will take up to three years before the housing is rebuilt as mixed-income
units, and those being displaced will have to look for private property
rentals with housing vouchers. For some, it evokes the feelings of
abandonment that they had after Katrina hit.
"Basically, you're telling low-income families, 'You cannot come back here.
You have nowhere to come home to,'" said Cherlynn Gaynor, 42, who lived in a
housing project now slated for demolition and is now staying in Texas.
"Where are we going to go? We're citizens of New Orleans."
Before Katrina, New Orleans had 5,100 families living in public housing.
Roughly 88 percent were headed by women, and almost all were black. Some
worked, but many were paying no rent, earning too little to be required to
do so under the public housing formula.
Only about 1,100 public housing apartments have been reopened since the
hurricane hit last August. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, which took over the city's public housing in 2002 after a local
board was accused of mismanagement, has announced that another 1,000 will be
open by summer's end.
"This is never a painless thing," HUD Assistant Secretary Orlando Cabrera
said. "We understand there are people who are going to disagree with us and
that's OK. We're committed to the idea of restoring New Orleans to the city
it was. That's what we're determined to do. It's going to take time and
effort."
Katrina - which emptied the projects, crippled bus service and shuttered
health care and other services for the poor - offers a chance to accelerate
redevelopment into mixed-income developments, Cabrera said.
But Loyola University law professor Bill Quigley said the problem with
redeveloping public housing is it rarely serves the poor, instead aiding
developers who get prime pieces of real estate and tax breaks while the poor
are shut out.
"'Mixed-income housing' is a euphemism for 'We're going to destroy
low-income housing,'" said Quigley, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of
residents seeking to block the demolition. "The residents feel that what is
objectionable about public housing isn't the housing. It's the people who
live there."
He and other local activists note that redevelopment of the St. Thomas
housing project, which already was undergoing development before Katrina,
mostly benefits wealthier residents. Public housing residents were given
vouchers or moved to other housing projects before demolition.
Before redevelopment, there were more than 1,500 public housing apartments
there. But of the less than 1,200 units eventually expected on the site,
only about 180 are currently set aside for public housing residents.
Critics of the plan to demolish the four public housing projects have staged
marches and set up a tent city to protest the decision to demolish the
complexes.
Under United Nations laws, the plaintiffs say, the United States must
"recognize the human right of displaced people to return home." The law also
says "internally displaced people" must be given a say in the planning of
their return, the suit contends.
James A.R. Nafziger, chairman of the executive committee of the
International Law Association's American Branch, said the law concerning
"internally displaced people" is a new area of international law.
"It's not law that is binding on any nation," said Nafziger, who said it
will be up to a trial judge, and appellate judges, to determine whether the
U.N. law applies.
Still, some neighbors say they're glad to see the old complexes go. Coma
Lewis, a 68-year-old retired social worker, has lived in a home facing the
now-shuttered St. Bernard housing project for 32 years.
Lewis said the redevelopment will give public housing residents a chance to
restart their lives away from a place that exposed children to violence and
became home to generations of poor New Orleanians.
"Unless they do something, it's not going to change," Lewis said. "You can
pour all the money you want into this type of situation. It's like pouring
water into a pail with no bottom."
Pamela Mahogany, who was a lifelong resident of St. Bernard, said the cost
of living has jumped dramatically since Katrina. Charity Hospital, the
city's main health care provider for the poor, is still closed too, she
said.
"They don't open public housing. They don't open up Charity Hospital. They
don't open up things for poor people, so what does that say?" Mahogany said.
Lewis, the neighbor across the street, isn't buying that argument.
"This has just gone on too long," she said, gesturing toward the decaying
brick St. Bernard complex. "I'm African-American. I'm back here. No one has
told me not to come back here because I own that home."
STEVE GOODSON
Since when does United Nations law govern New Orleans?
The public housing developments are cesspools. The sooner we get rid of
them, the better. Everyone, including the law abiding residents of the
projects, will be better off when they are gone.
--
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