BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
The Fight For Affordable Housing In New Orleans
December 24th, 2007
You may have seen the video on Thursday of New Orleans residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina clashing with police at a city hall meeting.
Regular commenter to BlackPerspective.net Barbara Spraggins wrote to me that:
The protesters attempted to storm the gates of city hall and were met by tazers and tear gas by police. The protesters are angery because they know if these housing projects are torn down, they will be forced out of New Orleans. They are already being forced out of the government trailers. They have every right to be angry. They have been waiting over two years and they are witnessing this racist government actively and openly engaging in racial discrimination once again.
NOLA protesters vow to keep fighting
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 21, 8:09 AM ET
NEW ORLEANS - After violent clashes with police at City Hall, protesters vowed that the fight over a plan to demolish 218 public housing buildings for the poor was far from over, both in the courts and on the streets.
On Thursday, police used chemical spray and stun guns on protesters who tried to force their way into a City Council meeting where the members voted unanimously to allow the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to demolish 4,500 public housing units.
The vote allows demolition crews to begin tearing down the buildings within weeks unless they are blocked in the courts. Lawyers fighting the demolition say they have not exhausted their legal options.Endesha Juakali, a protest leader arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace, said the confrontation with the council was not the last breath from protesters…
Most of the units HUD plans to demolish are vacant, and many suffered heavy damage in Katrina, but those who oppose their demolition say they should be improved instead.
Critics of the plan say it will drive poor people from neighborhoods where they have lived for generations, but HUD denies that and says the plan will create an equal amount of affordable housing as existed before Katrina hit.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Barbra Spraggins commentary continues:
Iam sure you are also aware that Maxine Waters thought that she was actively working with HUD to reburbish these housing projects, just to find out a couple of weeks before the supposed demolition of these builings, that this was not HUD’s intentions from the very beginning. What are these people supposed to do?
In addition, the media is portraying the fact that these developments are drug, rat and roach infested and not fit for human habitation; which of course is true. This is in addtion to the rising crime problem which was breeding in these projects. However, my point is, that this is not the larger issue. What in the hell has HUD been doing for the last, more than two years? They knew these people were displaced. They also knew these people were mostly people of color and/or people whom placed lowest on the economic scale. This is an outrage.
My thoughts are this: I agree with Barbra that the issue is fit housing for these folks. I was in New Orleans in July, as I wrote about at the time; and toured the Magnolia and Calio projects. They’re massive, run-down projects and don’t look like a very enouraging place to live. If you listen to native rappers of these places such as those from the No Limit and Cash Money record labels; they’re highly violent places that don’t provide much hope. And if one is to study the murder rates of New Orleans over the last couple of decades they would back this notion up. N.O. is annually in the top 5 or just outside of it, for per capita murder in the country - much of this murder springing from the projects.
I came to the conclusion some years ago that all projects across the country should be torn down. They are in my estimation nothing but concentration camps which breed violences, criminality and hopeless; and victimize the children who are cursed to grow up there.
While this is the case the question remains why do the authorities want to tear down the projects? Here in Nashville TN most of the projects are in the interior of the city, and as the white masses are wanting to migrate back into the city, the projects are prime real estate that is wanted and being taken over for developers and the upwardly mobile who can afford condos being built in their stead. Tearing down projects would be great if the projects were being replaced with affordable housing opportunities and the development of mixed income housing; where those who formerly dwelled in the projects were being provided with housing opportunities in regular neighborhoods as opposed to being crammed together in concentration camps of hopelessness.
But that’s not what’s happening here, and I doubt that’s what’s going to happen in New Orleans. Here the projects are being torn down and their former residents are being forced out of the interior of the city, off the main bus lines, and the former housing is not being replaced with new offordable housing. Myself and those I work with in community activism are convinced that the plan is two things: a suburban based project model like in France, and for prision to be where these folks dwell.
I don’t have any knowledge of the New Orlean housing replacement plan, so when HUD says that “the plan will create an equal amount of affordable housing as existed before Katrina hit” I can’t dispute that; I just don’t really believe them, because I know how things have worked in every other incident of this type that I’m aware of, and it has yet to have been to the benefit of the poor. Not only that, New Orleans politicians and powerful have demonstrated for two years that they are trying to keep low working class and poor out of New Orleans other than a bear minimum to do necessary minial labor. So I don’t see why this housing thing would be any different.
Popularity: 6% [?]
posted in Politics, News & Events, Racial Injustice | | | View blog reactions | Print This Post
Related Posts:
5 Responses to “The Fight For Affordable Housing In New Orleans”
Leave a Reply
About The Blog
Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
I created this site to give new voice to socio-political issues that are in need of thoughtful consideration and redress.
Click the "More About The Blog" link for rest of this statement.
Also, if you like what you see, subscribe for a once a day email to be sent on days when we post; by entering your email address in the feed burner subscription box below.
- More About The Blog...
Subscribe via email
Buy Obama
Blogroll
Site Meter
Meta
Subscribe Via RSS
Recent Posts
- Thabo Mbeki Accused of Responsibility for 330,000 AIDS Deaths
- Preliminary Thoughts on Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Africans Who Shaped Our Faith’
- Who Is Eric Holder, Obama’s Attorney General Pick
- World AIDS Day Is Coming
- Political Satire On Obama Victory
- Watch Outfoxed Video
- Video of 60 Minutes Interview With Barack and Michelle Obama
- Hillary Clinton For Secretary of State, Why
- William Ayers Speaks Out On Good Morning America (video)
- To The Black Woman
Podcast
Podcast Commenting
Taser Abuse Awareness
to build new expensive condos for taxes
Can you say gentrification? That’s all it is.
Raw Dawg and Jheri - that pretty much seems to be the case.
Sorry to say this, but I am not advocating keeping the New Orleans Project. Growing up in the projects myself in the washington D.C. area. I despised the igoranance and low expectations that seems to swirl the projects. I have a question for all the people who are advocates/protestors for keeping the New Orleans projects? Where were you guys when the people among these projects was shooting and killing each other like dogs and causing uncessary mayheim in the projects. Did you protest and get arrested and the like to have those individuals kicked out of the new orleans projects for making them unsafe for the decent? Sometimes I think alot of people do not want to tear the projects, because they do not want them to come into middle class neighborhoods.
Like I said, I think all projects should be done away with, but I think there’s an ulterior motive here which doesn’t have to do with the saftey of the people that lived there; but to drive them out.
I wanna see the replacement affordable housing.