Locking out New Orleans' poor

June 12, 2006 | NEW ORLEANS --
Sitting under a homemade banner reading "Survivors Village" strung between two light poles, former residents of New Orleans public housing have vowed to stay camped out on a traffic median in front of the abandoned St. Bernard development until officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development offer a plan for reopening their apartments. While lawyers representing the displaced tenants plan to file a class action lawsuit against HUD later this month, the protesters, who set up their tent camp under a blazing sun the first weekend of June, say they will tear down a government-erected fence on July 4 and begin repairs themselves unless housing officials respond.

"Nobody wants to disrupt their lives by going to jail or getting hurt, but July 4 is do-or-die for us," said Endesha Juakali, a housing activist and former St. Bernard resident who ran a community center and day care at the development. "These people have leases and they have been illegally evicted from their homes. We're going in, we're prepared for dozens of people to go to jail, and there's no backing down on this." Former tenants had threatened to tear down the fence the prior weekend, prompting a public plea from HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson not to break the law or expose themselves to the dangers of mold and lead in the hurricane-damaged apartments.

The FEMA housing assistance that many hurricane evacuees have relied on to pay rent in other cities will expire on June 30. HUD officials say that former residents of public housing in New Orleans are eligible for the agency's own disaster housing assistance program to continue receiving aid. "What they don't seem to understand is that people want to come home to New Orleans," said Juakali. "They don't want to sign another lease in Houston or somewhere else."

Ten months after the Katrina, at least 80 percent of public housing in New Orleans remains closed. Six of ten of the largest public housing developments in the city are shuttered, with the other four in various states of repair. Fewer than 1,000 of the 5,100 families who lived in the older housing developments before the storm have returned, according to the Housing Authority of New Orleans. HANO, as it is popularly know, has been under the direct control of HUD since going into federal receivership in 2002. Jackson announced last month that HUD would invest $154 million in rebuilding public housing in New Orleans, and that he would work with the city to bring displaced residents home. But critics say they see mismanagement and neglect echoing the disastrous government response in the early days of the catastrophe. And some fear that government officials and business leaders are quietly planning to demolish the old projects and privatize public housing.

Former tenants and housing activists say that many apartments that received minor to moderate storm damage could be quickly repaired, such as the second- and third-floor units at the St. Bernard development. With more than 3,000 people living there before the hurricane, St. Bernard was the largest public housing project in the city.

"Alfonso Jackson was not telling the truth when he said there's lead in these apartments," said Walter Smith, a 30-year employee of HANO who has been laid off since September. "I was one of the authority's first lead inspectors and we don't have lead paint in these buildings. As for mold, that's what happens if you have a flood and don't clean out your apartments for nine months. But mold was always a problem in St. Bernard before Katrina. People here learned to live with it."

Lawyers representing displaced tenants plan to file a class action lawsuit against HUD and the housing authority, claiming that the agencies have failed in their responsibility to relieve the severe housing shortage in the city and help residents return. "Most of the people not being allowed back in had leases, and there are federal laws governing under what circumstance HUD can get people out of their homes and keep them out," said Bill Quigley, director of the public law clinic at Loyola University and one of the lawyers working on the suit. "While the purpose of HUD is to get people into housing, since Katrina they have acted to keep people out. HANO has laid off a huge portion of their maintenance staff and focused on fencing off properties."

Plagued for years by drugs and crime, and once the focus of an intense community policing program, public housing in New Orleans was far from an ideal home for the city's poor. But activists and former tenants view the fences erected around St. Bernard and other developments starting in March as a clear sign that housing officials have no plans to reopen them.

"What we're seeing is a push to privatize low-income housing in New Orleans, using Katrina as an excuse and River Garden as the model," said Jay Arena, a housing activist. River Garden, a mixed-income redevelopment begun in the late 1990s, replaced the 1,500 housing units of the St. Thomas projects with more than 1,600 new apartments. In the end, only 120 apartments were designated for public housing at River Garden, with only about 40 occupied by low-income tenants to date. Both Jackson and Mayor Ray Nagin have praised River Garden as a model of how public housing in New Orleans should be rebuilt.

"HANO and HUD are playing a delay game with displaced tenants," Arena said, "hoping that the longer they take to reopen public housing, the fewer tenants will come back."

HUD officials contend that health and safety concerns prevent reopening St. Bernard. "Our first concern is always the well-being of our tenants, and our environmental studies have found the presence of mold in 90 percent of damaged public housing units in New Orleans," said Donna White, a spokesperson with HUD's public affairs department in Washington. "We also have a problem with the state of the neighborhoods where the developments are located. People have to have stores and schools and public transportation, and a lot of those services are not back yet."

Housing activists and former HANO workers counter that HUD is overstating safety concerns. Marty Rowland, a civil engineer who volunteers for a local housing advocacy group, said he conducted an informal survey of five buildings at St. Bernard last winter and found that while the first floors had flooded, most second and third floors appeared to have little water damage. "There was flooding but no more so than other areas of Gentilly where buildings have been gutted and are being renovated," Rowland said. "If you got electricity back, people could move back in on those floors in short order."

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