More than two years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans thousands of the city’s working-class residents are facing another disaster of great magnitude—an affordable housing crisis.
The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), controlled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
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Before Katrina, thousands of families lived in these units. Now, nearly all are vacant, although they are structurally sound and can be fixed. All the units’ former residents are African American.
New Orleans pre-Katrina had 7,000 public housing units in all with 5,100 occupied, around 1,900 unoccupied and a waiting list of 6,000 people.
HANO-HUD aims to spend $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down the units and replace them with 744 mixed-income single-family homes—an 82 percent reduction. The housing authorities plan to build another 1,000 units in different locations, all at “market rate.” The new apartments will cost, on average, over $400,000 each.
The last time a New Orleans public housing project was torn down, a Wal-Mart superstore was built on its ruins, displacing all the former residents.
Affordable housing needed
The HANO-HUD strategy is part of the general racist, anti-worker makeover of New Orleans post-Katrina. Rampant gentrification, coupled with closed hospitals and schools, have made life hard for New Orleans residents, especially for working-class African Americans.
This is the reality for people who have stayed in the city or returned. The tens of thousands still-displaced who want to return are finding it virtually impossible to do so. There are few jobs, and no real social infrastructure exists.
Affordable housing is hard to come by. Over 100,000 homeowners are still waiting federal assistance. Public housing is on the chopping block. And, in a city where over half the population rents housing, rents have doubled or even quadrupled. Apartments that used to rent for $400 or $500 now cost $1,400—a boon for landlords, but a catastrophe for workers living paycheck to paycheck.
Nearly 12,000 people are homeless in New Orleans, up from 6,000 before Katrina.
The numbers may swell soon. Over 50,000 families are still living in small FEMA trailers along the Gulf Coast. In November, FEMA began giving eviction notices to families in trailer parks near New Orleans. The federal agency is kicking out every family in its trailers by the end of May.
“It’s the next step in the recovery,” FEMA spokesperson Ronnie Simpson told the Dec. 3 New York Times. “It’s the individual’s responsibility to go out and find what’s suitable for them.” So much for federal assistance.
The government’s lofty pronouncements about “individual responsibility” apply to workers, but not to the capitalist parasites that collectively benefit from Gulf Coast reconstruction.
Capitalists get all the help they need from the government—endless bailouts, tax breaks and handouts are forthcoming no matter what harm they cause. They are only responsible to their corporate bottom line.
Currently, the government is doling out no-bid contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to build casinos and expand shipping and other profit-making enterprises. HUD and other federal and state agencies are directing this work.
“They don’t want this city to be for the poor, working-class people,” said former public housing resident and activist Sharon Sears Jasper. (New York Times, Dec. 14)
The capitalist state is doing what it is supposed to do—develop greater revenue streams for the capitalist owners. Everyone else gets left behind.
Fighting back
In the face of the government-private onslaught, New Orleans’ residents and housing advocates are fighting back. With
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HANO-HUD approved the demolition of the targeted housing in late November. (Some B.W. Cooper buildings were slated for destruction in 2003. Since Katrina, more were added to the list.)
The authorities promised to allow 100 days of scrutiny for demolition plans, but they quickly reneged and approved demolition without public input two days later. Dec. 15 became the date that capitalist bulldozers would roll on people’s homes.
A Congressional bill had passed the House, requiring one-for-one replacement of any public housing destroyed, but it stalled before getting to the Senate floor.
Immediately after the housing authority’s recent announcement, a group called Coalition to Stop Demolition stepped up action against the plan with two demands: (1) no demolition until one-for-one replacement is guaranteed; and (2) resident participation in any redevelopment planning. Over 50 local organizations endorsed the coalition’s demands.
On Dec. 6, the coalition protested at a New Orleans City Council meeting. Police barred them from entering the Council chambers, arresting the coalition’s attorney, Bill Quigley. “We live in a system where if you cheer or chant in a city council, you get arrested,” Quigley told the media. “But you can demolish 4,500 people’s apartments and everybody seems to go along with that. That’s not going to happen.”
Protest activity since then has intensified. Residents and supporters marched on Mayor Ray Nagin’s house on Dec. 9, pouring coal on his lawn.
The next day, over 100 people attended a city housing conservation committee meeting, forcing the committee to deny the HANO-HUD demolition application for the Lafitte development. The remaining applications were approved.
Despite the Lafitte denial, HANO-HUD contractors began taking doors and windows off the protected units. The Coalition to Stop Demolition converged at Lafitte and refused to allow the private contractors to continue.
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson threatened to yank $137 million in funding and 900 housing vouchers from the city if Lafitte is not bulldozed. (New Orleans Times-Picayune, Dec. 13)
On Dec. 12, dozens of protesters physically blocked bulldozers from entering the B.W. Cooper housing project, stopping crews from demolishing buildings. A court later allowed the buildings to be razed, but activists have persevered.
Over 150 people protested outside City Hall and then blocked the entrance to the federal courthouse on Dec. 13, chanting “Stop the demolitions now!”
The barrage of activism made sections of the bourgeois political establishment take note. Democratic Party presidential candidate John Edwards publicly urged the government to build replacement housing before bulldozing the projects.
The AFL-CIO labor federation filed a joint suit with residents of St. Bernard development. The lawsuit proposed a housing plan that would guarantee that every resident could return to the same type of subsidized unit.
But the mobilization’s strength has come from the working-class people of New Orleans.
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Just one day before the scheduled demolitions, HANO-HUD relented under pressure and agreed in court not to demolish the C.J. Peete, Lafitte or St. Bernard public housing developments without City Council approval.
The agreement is not final. HANO-HUD can return to court to argue for the demolition. They certainly will pressure the pro-business New Orleans City Council to approve the demolition permits. More funding and voucher termination threats will come.
The struggle is far from over. But the experience gained in the battle against HANO-HUD is invaluable to the movement for affordable housing and social justice in New Orleans and beyond. Similar battles can be waged in cities across the country.
The system must go
The capitalist system has no interest in creating affordable housing or making living conditions better for workers. It only wants to provide the essential necessities to sustain a cheap labor force.
Everyone displaced or made homeless by Katrina should get subsidized housing. Unemployed workers should be put to work to rebuild the city without predatory capitalist owners reaping profits for individual gain. All the money being funneled into the imperialist Iraq war should go toward reconstructing New Orleans and the greater Gulf Coast.
These proposals make sense. They can be achieved through mass working-class struggle. Rebuilding New Orleans must be part of the overall movement to reorganize society to benefit the working class. Let’s leave the tiny capitalist class behind.
