HUD Draws Noose Tighter Around New Orleans Poor

[nosmokes]

I know this country has problems w/ an top heavy bureaucracy and I know that sometimes red tape can fowl things up. But I aldo know that you cannot reach this level of ineptitude w/o striving for it. This is no mere mistake or even simply a case of horse show dilettantes initially being overwhelmed by conditions. The fact that we haven't mobilised and actually fixed NOLA is, to me, concrete proof that the corporate powers saw an opportunity to make a few billion of this tragedy on the backs of poor blacks and no one was really gonna raise a stink. And so far they're right.
--###--

original-progressive populist

HUD Draws Noose Tighter Around New Orleans Poor

By Bill Quigley

Odessa Lewis is 62 years old. When I last saw her, she was crying because she is being evicted. A long-time resident of the Lafitte public housing apartments in New Orleans, since Katrina she has been locked out of her apartment and forced to live in a 240-square-foot FEMA trailer. Ms. Lewis has asked repeatedly to be allowed to return to her apartment to clean and fix it up so she can move back in. She even offered to do all the work herself and with friends at no cost. The government continually refused to allow her to return. Now she is being evicted from her trailer and fears she will become homeless because there is no place for working people, especially African-American working and poor people, to live in New Orleans. Ms. Lewis is a strong woman who has worked her whole life. But the stress of being locked out of her apartment, living in a FEMA trailer and the possibility of being homeless brought out the tears. Thousands of other mothers and grandmothers are in the same situation.

Renting is so hard in part because there is a noose closing around the housing opportunities of New Orleans African American renters displaced by Katrina. They have been openly and directly targeted by public and private actions designed to keep them away. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just added their weight to the attack by approving the demolition of 4,500 apartments in New Orleans.

Despite telling a federal judge for the last year and a half that approvals of public housing demolition applications take about 100 working days to evaluate, HUD approved the plan to demolish public housing units one day after the complete application was filed.



HUD's actions are consistent with other governmental attacks on African American renters. After Katrina, St. Bernard Parish, a 93% white adjoining suburb, enacted a law prohibiting home owners from renting their property to anyone who is not a blood relative. Jefferson Parish, another majority-white adjoining suburb, unanimously passed an ordinance prohibiting the construction of any subsidized housing. The sponsoring legislator condemned poor people as "lazy," "ignorant" and "leeches on society" -- specifically hoping to guard against former residents of New Orleans public housing. Across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans, the chief law enforcement officer of St. Tammany Parish, Sheriff Jack Strain, complained openly about the post-Katrina presence of "thugs and trash from New Orleans" and announced that people with dreadlocks or "chee wee hairstyles" could "expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff's deputy."

~snip~
.
.
.
complete article here

[MedleyMisty]

1. You know, I think I'm making progress on not giving up on the species

and then I read stuff like this.

I hate short and stupid responses to important posts, but I'm too angry to write more right now. Fuck humans. Okay - I guess it would be more fair to say fuck humans who are comfortably situated and socially advantaged and in power.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. I believe that was the plan from the beginning and that is why there was so little effort made to

prevent the disaster that followed Katrina.
They knew EXACTLY what they were doing.
The plan is the Disneyification of New Orleans..and that means everyone who lived there before..OUT!!!

[Spiffarino]

4. Yup.

Game. Set. Match.

Whitey wins.

[Devlzown]

3. They want it that way.

I live about 80 miles from New Orleans and have been there several times since the storm -- last time was three weeks ago. I visited the Quarter and it was so quiet it was almost spooky. I talked to a few locals and asked how things were. They bitched about the expensive rents and all. I said well, it would be good if they would build back some of those apartment buildings, rents would go down. They would look back at you for a second, then look away, get distracted, and then say absently that they would fill up so quickly that it wouldn't matter anyway and besides, the quiet is kind of nice after all.

[muntrv]

5. That would also explain why blackwater was in the 9th ward, chasing away

the residents trying to return home.

[bobbolink]

6. What is being done about this?

Really, is there ANY congressional support for these poor NOLA people??

I sure haven't heard much.

Thanks for posting this... I can't even begin to imagine how our humanity got so wasted.

:cry:

[bobbolink]

7. kick for a very worthy post...

Comeon, DUers, this is IMPORTANT!

:kick:

[ceile]

8. Kick n/t

[KamaAina]

9. The Lafitte projects are just across from the French Quarter

AND just off Canal St. (Iberville, also under the demolition gun, is even closer.) Gentrification, in the form of building conversions such as the "Storyville" condos (a former department store), has been creeping up Canal for some time now. Great big projects like Lafitte, full of mean scary black people :sarcasm: , tend to harsh the developers' mellow. Never mind that many of the people who cook and serve the food, play the music, etc., that make the Quarter what it is live(d) in Lafitte: "Hit the road, Jack!" :grr:

Also note Quigley's deliberate choice of the word "noose", evoking images of what is happening in Jena, 170 miles to the northwest.