WHOSE HOUSES ARE THESE?

The Battle For Public Housing In New Orleans

By Seth Tobocman (http://worldwar3illustrated.org)

[August 2007] It's almost two years since the streets of New Orleans were flooded by hurricane Katrina. It's almost two years since residents evacuated the city. Almost two years since many who could not escape drowned. The hot streets of New Orleans are now dry.

The tourist district is buzzing with activity. There are traffic jams at rush hour. And yet, thousands of New Orleans public housing residents have not been allowed to return home. 

Many of New Orleans' public housing projects, made of brick and steel, survived the storm better than private houses made of wood. Yet, most of these buildings have not been re-opened and many are slated for demolition.

"It withstood the rain, the wind," says Sam Jackson, a carpenter and electrician who has lived in the projects for many years "Me, myself, I think it's better. I think it should come back. These are well-structured buildings."

John Fernandez, Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT, has inspected 140 of these apartments and agrees with Mr. Jackson. "No structural or non-structural damage was found that could reasonably warrant any cost-effective building demolition," says Fernandez. Even so, thousands of apartments are being kept closed, some of them behind metal fences and steel doors, to prevent residents from returning.

Housing project residents were never legally evicted, but once forced out by the disaster, they have been kept out by the authorities. Many of them are stuck in provisional living situations in other cities, such as a massive trailer park in the town of Baker, but some have been able to use emergency housing vouchers to pay for apartments in other parts of New Orleans.

So, if there is no structural problem with the buildings, why can't people come home? Perhaps the government is blocking their return because of a belief popular among neo-liberal urban planners that public housing is obsolete. They claim that New Orleans' low income housing developments were the cause of that city's high crime rate. But the facts belie this hypothesis. Demographer Mark Van Landingham, a professor at Tulane University, estimates that New Orleans' per capita murder rate was higher in 2006 than it had been in 2005.This is in spite of the fact that most of the projects have been closed. So it would seem that the real motivation for closing the projects is one familiar to most New Yorkers: gentrification. That is, social engineering to make New Orleans a richer,
whiter city.

Bobby Jennings, a former resident of the C.J. Peete housing development, is now paying her rent with housing vouchers across the river from New Orleans in Algiers. Many would look at her new residence, with its suburban style lawn, and think it was an improvement. But this is not how Jennings feels. "This is not my neighborhood." she says. "I don't know these people here. .... I miss C.J. Peete. I want to go back to C.J. Peete. There's nothing wrong with C.J. Peete."

"I still wanna live in New Orleans because this is my home," says Stephanie Mingo, who, prior to Katrina, lived in the Saint Bernard housing development. "When I was in Texas [where she was sent to live after Hurricane Katrina–Ed.] I had a twelve foot garage, four bedrooms, but I wasn't happy.
I was stressin' in that house because I wasn't happy. Not that I can't live somewhere else. If I live in New Orleans, even if I don't live in Saint Bernard, I'm very comfortable. I can go uptown, I know people. I can go downtown, I know people. But if I move out, you gonna have to learn that neighborhood. You don't know one stranger from the next. It would be hard to learn all those people. I wouldn't know which one's a murderer, killer, robber, raper, jacker, but in New Orleans, I know everybody. And when you live like that, you can be comfortable. You can walk out your house one, two, three in the morning. You see a person, you know that person. You don't know that person, you know somebody in their family. And this is where I wanna be, where I wanna raise my family. ...."

Actions taken by former project residents over the last year would lead one to believe that there are a significant number who share such feelings. In January of 2007, members of MayDay NOLA (www.nola.com), an anarchist housing group, cut through the fences surrounding the Saint Bernard Housing development, and re-occupied the New Day community center, which sits at the heart of the complex of buildings. They had been invited by Endesha Jukali, who holds the lease on the community center and they had the support of Saint Bernard tenants. Throughout the three week occupation, former residents provided food and logistical support to the activists. On weekends, tenants, with the help of volunteers from Common Ground (www.commongroundrelief.org) came in and began repairs on the flood-damaged apartments.

Having no legal grounds on which to stop an insurrection conducted by tenants who still held active leases to their apartments, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HIUD) went to federal court seeking an injunction against anyone involved in the occupation. (Public housing in New Orleans is administered by HANO, the Housing Authority of New Orleans, which is under the control of HUD.) The HUD injunction was sought not only against MayDay NOLA, but against Endesha Jukali, her fellow tenants, and even their lawyer. Anyone who crossed through the broken fences. The legal process took weeks.

Meanwhile, the occupation got a lot of positive press coverage. An exhibition of photographs in a local art gallery showed the public that the projects were sturdy and in good shape. Congresswoman Maxine Waters visited Saint Bernard with HUD Director Alphonse Jackson. A video taken by Mayday Nola shows Ms. Waters scolding Mr. Jackson.

After three weeks of continuous occupation by the tenants, heavily armed police raided the Saint Bernard projects in the middle of the night, removing two members of MayDay NOLA at gunpoint and arresting them. The court had not granted HUD the injunction they asked for. The next day, the request was finally rejected. But by this time, work crews had begun demolishing parts of the New Day community center.

Inspired by the actions at Saint Bernard, tenants of the C.J. Peete housing project moved back into their homes in February. This was an action done entirely by residents, with no outside activists involved. This occupation was done openly, with a street fair and a traditional New Orleans brass band. Unfortunately, the units at C.J. Peete no longer had electricity heat or running water, and many of the tenants were seniors in fragile health. HUD threatened to terminate housing vouchers for those involved in the occupation. This would have meant that they would have no place to live but the cold, lightless flats they were occupying. The C.J. Peete tenants decided to end the occupation under this pressure.

But the struggle has continued by other means. Maxine Waters and other members of Congress toured the closed projects in the wake of these protests. According to Bobby Jennings, HANO officials tried to show the Congress members only the most damaged units, but residents interrupted the tour to show them units that were in good shape.

Housing project tenants have since filed a federal civil rights suite against HUD, charging that the closure of public housing is an act of racial discrimination, and the House of Representatives has passed a bill, H.R.1227, which provides assistance to home owners and re-opens public housing in New Orleans.

"Because of the hurricanes, many public housing residents are displaced with no reasonable housing option," said Maxine Waters, "This bill would provide a means to return for the greater of 3,000 or those who respond to the survey who are former New Orleans public housing residents. It also establishes the one-for-one replacement principle by requiring a plan to be approved by HUD and the residents prior to any wholesale demolition or redevelopment efforts of public housing units."

The bill now must pass the Senate. It has the support of many senators, but lacks the crucial endorsement of New Orleans Senator Mary Landeau. She supports the home-owner part of the bill, but not the section relevant to public housing tenants. Members of the public wishing to make known their desire that she support H.R. 1227 can contact Senator Landreau at: 724 Hart Senate Building, United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510. (Voice: 202-224-5824, Fax: 202-224-9735, E-mail:http://landrieu.senate.gov/ contact/index.cfm).

New Yorkers might also want to pressure Senator Hillary Clinton to support this bill: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 780 Third Avenue, Suite 2601, New York, NY 10017 (Phone: 212-688-6262, Fax: 212-688-7444).

Members of MayDay NOLA say that if the bill fails, they will keep fighting to bring people home anyway.

The struggle in New Orleans is the same struggle we have fought for many years in Lower Manhattan. It is the "Total War For Living Space" in the cities. Cities which are the generators of culture. We should not allow these cities to be entirely under the control of a wealthy elite.