New Orleans, LA December 16, 2007— A week after arriving in New Orleans to cover the events William Quigley described in his call to action that laid out the details of the severe housing crisis still affecting New Orleans, 2-1/2 years after the city was struck by Hurricane Katrina, many irregularities remain surrounding the Mayor Ray Nagin’s policies on the homeless, the displaced and the disenfranchised.
Having stayed in a number of places that would probably scare most white people (we can say this because it scared us a little, being a couple middle class white boys) there is the sense of unfamiliarity and uneasiness at being out of one’s element, but it is larger and much more foreboding than than. We were struck by the eerie and palpably obscene juxtaposition of people in expensive suits coming and going to City Hall in downtown New Orleans, while literally across the street was a scene directly out of the Grapes of Wrath with people living in tents, under blankets, cardboard and in some cases, even less than that. We ourselves stayed with the homeless overnight, sleeping on cardboard, in the rain, in Duncan Square Plaza. It’s a little park directly across the street from the mayor’s office in city hall. What we saw and smelled and heard would disgust most people, especially those who live there. Almost unbelievably, many of these people hold full time jobs, have always held jobs and have never asked for a handout but, because of the severe housing shortage and skyrocketing rent, can no longer afford housing. We watched them returning from work in clean white shirts and neat pants and clean shoes only to hole up inside their tent after dark.
We also stayed with a man who would frighten some people because, a) he is a black man, b) he lives in a small, landlord neglected first floor apartment in the hood and c) he is HIV positive. He isn’t just any black man, having run for mayor in 2006. He served as a corrections officer, he’s a veteran and he is an activist. But these are not what make him exceptional. It isn’t even that he was locked inside a cell in downtown New Orleans during Katrina. There were thousands of other inmates, many who were being held on trivial offenses and, while they were never charged, they were nevertheless left there to drown in the foul, poisonous, sewage and chemically contaminated waters of Katrina by prison guards who left them locked inside flooding cells without so much as a parting insult before the guards headed for home and safety. Most of the inmates here are African Americans. So it is not his ethnicity that makes him stand out. What makes him exceptional is that he had absolutely no business being arrested in the first place.
In instance after instance we have encountered local people who tell us that police violence, discrimination and brutality are rampant here. We have heard allegations of corruption at every level of governance. We have heard that there is cronyism at its ugliest in the administering of no bid contracts to developers who have much to gain in acquiring the property that Mayor Nagin proposes to demolish. So after a week of after sitting with Katrina survivors and listening to their stories about what happened during the storm and the man-made battering they have endured for over 2 years since, we are organizing a roundtable discussion to be held in New Orleans on Tuesday night in an effort to present an open airing of the many interests who are working toward a just disposition of the dispossessed here. First and foremost, of course, is a question that, even if rhetorical, is critical to understanding the Housing Crisis in New Orleans—Who owned the property before Katrina and who will own it after the proposed demolition of 83% of the available low income housing in New Orleans? Beyond this, we have compiled a list of questions we have yet to find satisfying answers to.
