Sorry, Santa Is Coming in a Bulldozer

Okay, let me get this right. There is a horrendous affordable housing shortage in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. According to Color of Change and human rights lawyer Bill Quigley, rents in New Orleans have gone up 45 percent, over 100,000 people have not yet returned to New Orleans, half of those who want to return make less than $20,000 a year, and 12,000 New Orleanians currently have no place to live. Now, in the face of this serious affordable-housing crisis, the city of New Orleans and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are planning to demolish 4,600 public housing units in the center of New Orleans.

Well, you might think that these public housing units must have been badly damaged by the hurricane and that they are only now getting around to bulldozing them.

But you would be wrong. Most of these units are in well-built structures, barely damaged by Katrina. Many of the units above the first floor were not affected by the flood waters. In fact, architects who have been taken on tours by UUA-UUSC partner The Advancement Project have testified that it would take minimal renovation for these buildings to provide decent housing.

While thousands of families are camped out in friends' living rooms, living in cramped trailers that FEMA is repossessing, or living in other cities waiting to go home, HUD wants to tear down solid brick buildings that would actually provide people with adequate housing.

Oh, and they want to do this before Christmas, apparently to make sure that the Katrina survivors in trailers and temporary houses get the point that "home for the holidays" most assuredly doesn't include them. HUD has said for the last year and a half that housing demolition orders for public housing take 100 days to review before approval. In the case of New Orleans public housing, they managed to speed it up a little. The review and approval took one day.

On the surface, HUD's stated goal to replace the the public-housing projects with affordable -housing units in mixed income areas could be a good strategy for affordable housing until you take a closer look at the numbers, and obstacles rooted in issues of race and class facing survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The new plan will demolish 4,600 units of affordable housing and rebuild 744. Rents have gone up 45 percent in New Orleans. Many of the African-American families who could raise the extra money for rent wouldn't be able to find landlords to rent to them. According to the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Center, there has been pervasive racial discrimination in housing in New Orleans since Katrina. According to their report of April 2007, 57.5 percent of landlords discriminated against African-American renters.

The public housing residents have been fighting back for two years, trying to get the city council and HUD to come up with a better plan that would make maximum use of the resources that exist. Many UUA/UUSC Gulf Coast partners, such as People's Hurricane Relief Fund, C-3 Iberville, The Advancement Project, and the Women's Welfare Reform Project, are deeply involved in this struggle to stop the demolition of public housing. They are asking that the demolitions be halted so that a better -- and fairer -- plan can be put into place. The public housing units could be renovated easily and used as temporary housing for residents until new public-housing units are built.

Over 95 percent of the public-housing residents in New Orleans were low-income African Americans. HUD's goal should be to get low-income families back into decent housing in New Orleans as fast as possible. It's precisely low-income African-American families who face the twin obstacles of high rent and racial discrimination in the New Orleans housing market. If HUD moves forward with its plan to demolish the public-housing projects, it would be difficult not to conclude that their real goal is to keep low-income African Americans out of New Orleans.

Many groups are working hard to stop this travesty of justice as Christmas approaches. Please add your voice to theirs by clicking here to send an open letter to the New Orleans City Council.