Sunday, March 05, 2006

New Orleans Public Housing Residents Set to Fight Off Developers

by Kari Lydersen, NewStandard
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2868

For local real-estate tycoons who dreamed of wrecking New Orleans housing projects and gentrifying neighborhoods long before the 2005 hurricane season, Katrina’s floodwaters brought a blessing soaked in misery.

New Orleans; Feb. 27 – "Am I glad to be home!" exclaimed Gloria Irving as she set her plate of red beans and rice on the dashboard and opened the van door to let in the cool New Orleans air after a long drive from Texas.

But she had come back only as a visitor; after fleeing Hurricane Katrina to Houston, her journey home had just begun. Like many other public housing residents, Irving is waiting for the city to decide the fate of her apartment in the long-running battle over affordable housing in New Orleans.

Even though the St. Bernard housing projects, where Irving has spent most of her 70 years, sustained what residents consider survivable damage, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) has not yet allowed residents back in.

First floor apartments like Irving's filled with water during the flood, but Dr. Marty Rowland, a civil engineer who toured the project, has told reporters all of the units could be livable again with rewiring and the restoration of utilities. Second- and third-floor apartments were hardly damaged at all, he said.

The Housing Authority has not announced what it plans to do with the approximately 1,300-unit development, but it did say it would put a fence around the site -- a move many see as a sign of impending demolition or redevelopment.

What the Housing Authority doesn't seem to understand, Irving says, is that she and her former neighbors have nowhere else to go. Even before Katrina, the number of public housing units in the city had fallen from about 14,000, sheltering about 60,000 people in the 1980s to 7,379 units.

That number could dwindle further in the coming months. Several housing developments, including the Desire and Florida projects in the Upper Ninth Ward, sustained heavy damage from Katrina's flooding and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has said they may be demolished.

The fate of three other public housing developments – LaFitte, B.W. Cooper and C.J. Peete – is less clear. Each sustained at least some storm damage, and the federal government has announced intentions to "redevelop" them. In the meantime, according to HANO, residents are slowly and "strategically" being allowed to return to select units.

But many residents and public-housing advocates are skeptical of the city's assessments, suspecting that municipal and federal officials are using the disaster as an excuse to accelerate a trend to raze or alter public housing for private development in New Orleans and throughout the nation.

History supports their fears. In 2000, the city demolished the St. Thomas housing projects – home to nearly 1,700 people – under a deal to re-develop the area for "mixed-use" homes and retail space. The plan was blessed and paid for by the federal government under the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) VI program, which was designed to rehabilitate distressed public housing into so-called "mixed-income" developments.

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