hat tip brownfemipower and the many other bloggers who have worked to keep this story front and center. Big thanks go out to The Redstar Perspective, which provides the links in this story. (Sorry about overlooking your contribution, and thanks for the correction!)
Via Red Star
Standoff over demolition of New Orleans public housing starts
12/13/2007, 10:07 a.m. CST
By CAIN BURDEAU
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In normal times, redevelopment of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods might have gone largely unopposed. But passions are high in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, where residents are desperate for cheap housing.
Protesters stopped a demolition crew from taking down decrepit buildings at the B.W. Cooper housing site Wednesday afternoon and vowed to continue disrupting work there and at other sites around the city. But on Thursday morning, demolition of buildings at Cooper cranked up unmolested.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to demolish about 4,500 public housing units at four of the city’s largest complexes and replace them with mixed-income neighborhoods.MORE
From The Redstar Perspective:
Thanks to Brownfemipower and the group blog The North Star for linking to yesterday’s post re: the demolition of public housing in New Orleans. Wrecking balls arrived yesterday at B.W. Cooper while we were writing. Activists stepped in front of bulldozers and stalled the bulk of the day’s planned destruction. AP coverage of the direct action tactics remind us that these are not “normal times” in which we’re standing down HUD and elected leaders and developers and all those who plan to profit from this wholesale eviction of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. Funny, seems pretty status quo to me, if particularly egregious.
The National Lawyer’s Guild more accurately calls for halting the “racially motivated” demolitions. This is a good part of the equation, but not all of it. It’s race + class that’s so problematic. Let’s not forget that “the poor” are not welcome most anywhere, other than churches, soup kitchens, and the charitable like.
North Carolina activists have also joined the cause of protecting affordable housing in New Orleans, targeting Sen. Dole (R-NC) to seek her support for S.1668. Their efforts are commended and appreciated, though without flipping Vitter, who is in my Top 5 of Public Enemies and 2007 Villians, S. 1668 doesn’t stand a chance. Seems Landrieu, like me, is lying awake at night plotting her revenge against his stonewalling, though she’s likely more motivated by election ballots than me. Me, I’m just a righteous and angry person these days.
I leave you with this coverage of the estimated 12,000 homeless folks in New Orleans, living in tents across the street from City Hall and beneath the highway. It’s a perfect Dickensian Christmas in the Crescent City this year.
From the Louisiana Weekly:
One of the more sobering changes in the “Big Easy” is the number of homeless men, women and children living under bridges and in parks. An estimated 12,000 homeless people have taken up residence in tents across the street from City Hall and under the I-10. The sense of an impending housing crisis grew stronger two weeks ago with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) recent announcement that it would close all the trailer camps on varying schedules by the end of May 2008-more than 50,000 families are living in FEMA trailer parks around the region.
“There is a housing crisis that needs a response,” continued Browne-Dianis. “It boggles the mind that the federal government would allow more than 4,000 units to be destroyed in the next two weeks given the scarcity of available apartments in the city. They need to build more not tear down what exists.”
A federal court has refused to stop the demolitions. Public housing residents offered evidence showing that the buildings were structurally sound and that the local housing authority itself documented that it would cost much less to repair and retain the apartments than demolish and reconstruct a small fraction of them. The New York Times architecture critic described them as “low-scale, narrow footprint and high-quality construction.” The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that requires one-for-one replacement of any public housing demolished, but Senator David Vitter (R-La) has killed the Senate version.
Reduction of crime was supposed to be a major reason for destroying thousands of public housing apartments-yet crime in New Orleans has soared since Hurricane Katrina. HUD has approved plans to turn over acres of prime public land to private developers for 99-year leases and give hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants, tax credit subsidies and long-term contracts. This is the biggest tax-credit giveaway in years.
“The federal government might as well put an ad in the paper stating ‘Blacks not welcomed in New Orleans,'” remarked Browne-Dianis. “Those who support the demolition of public housing have come up with a myriad of reasons for their actions, but their intent is crystal clear; political and economic gain for the wealthy are the true reasons behind making tens of thousands of people homeless.”
As brownfemipower says,
PLEASE GIVE YOUR SUPPORT IN ANY WAY YOU CAN. BLOG ABOUT IT, CALL YOUR SENATORS, SEND MONEY, DO NOT LEAVE THESE PEOPLE TO CONFRONT THIS BY THEMSELVES!(click here for a list of links of organizations who are fighting and have been fighting against these demolitions. Also, click here for some more ideas)