Sarah Silliman and Shannon Hayes, both staff members of GROOTS International and the Huairou Commission and students pursuing their Master of Arts in International Affairs at the New School, along with another New School student-Stefan Barbic-are currently in New Orleans, assessing the state of the city and the organizing that is taking place in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and as the city and its communities rebuild. The effort is taking place as the first stage of an initiative of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women, which hopes to identify women organizing in New Orleans and to provide them with national and international linkages and leadership support training in order to support and strengthen their work.
The immediate task we face this week is to map the situation of New
Orleans from a grassroots perspective, to discover what organizations are
doing and hopefully to make contact with women leaders. We also hope to
document some of the stories of survival we hear from women in New
Orleans. At the end of the week Katie Meyer, a Huairou intern and student
at the New School Milano Graduate program and Rachel Schier, a
journalist who currently resides in the Brooklyn Living Learning Center, will
join us and stay on for another week in order to collect more interviews
and build on the work we are doing now.
This morning we began our trip by visiting Hope House-a Catholic
organization, founded in 1969 where the People's Hurricane Relief Fund is
currently locally headquartered. There, we spoke with Brother Don and
Sister Lillian who have been working with homeless people and public
housing residents in the area since 1983. They gave us a good overview of
what was happening with public housing in New Orleans before Hurricane
Katrina, as well as what has been happening since.
St. Thomas was a public housing unit that was located adjacent to the
Hope House until it was torn down in July/August 2001 to be replaced by
Hope 6 housing, which is a mixed-income model. The people who were
displaced were given one of three options for relocation: 1) Additional
Public Housing 2) Section 8 voucher, or 3) Opt out of the system. Most
of the people who were relocated from the St. Thomas houses were moved
to areas that ended up flooded and evacuated during Hurricane Katrina.
What is now called the "River Garden" was built in place of St. Thomas
and opened in October of 2004. What used to be housing for 1500
families now provides housing for 80 (we were told that the
Developer/Management of the housing, HRI, are planning to establish housing for up to
220 families). According to the New Orleans Housing Authority, this
model of public housing (80% private, 20% public), developed and managed by
private contractors, will now be the model for all public housing in
New Orleans. Don and Lillian told us that the poor residents of "River
Garden" are subject to almost constant harassment by the management for
reasons as trivial as decorating their houses for Christmas, and as
serious as for taking in relatives after Katrina. The harassment seems to
be aimed at getting them to move out of the housing, and has increased
since Katrina. The residents are currently trying to organize in order
to respond to the harassment with a collective voice.
When Katrina struck the city, there were 7000 people on waiting lists
for public housing in the city. All of the public housing projects have
now been evacuated, although many have said that there was no extreme
damage done to the units. According to those we have spoken to, the
city (HUD) has spent a lot of money to lock up these units and keep the
residents out, and is only allowing people to go back to their homes with
official escorts to retrieve their belongings. There is much
speculation as to what will happen to these lands, and if these housing units
are all modeled after the "River Garden" 80% of the city's public housing
will be lost. The only project that remains open is Fisher, across the
Mississippi river. One currently empty housing project near the French
Quarter, Iborville is a particularly contentious place, as it
apparently suffered very little damage, yet its residents are not being
permitted back in. We hope to meet this week with an organization calle
d Common Ground, which is advocating through a "Hands off of
Iborville" campaign to allow residents to return.
One of the reasons that has been given for not allowing people to come
back to their homes is, "to make sure that the neighborhoods are safe"
yet the people we spoke to today expressed skepticism that this is the
real reason, implying that there was never real concern about the
safety of the neighborhood prior to the Hurricane.
Hope House was able to reopen the first week in October following the
hurricane. They provided transitional housing to families, using the
housing they had access to which was livable (8 of 10 units). Many
people received 18-month hurricane vouchers to relocate, but there was no
place to use them.
In the afternoon, we drove through the Gentilly neighborhood, which was
badly damaged by Katrina. We saw piles of debris outside of blocks and
blocks of damaged houses, all of which were scarred by water damage
lines. We then went to the local office of ACORN, and met with Tanya
Harris, an ACORN organizer (and former lower 9th ward resident) and Scott,
the ACORN contractor who is helping the organization repair and rebuild
1000 homes throughout the city. ACORN seems to be one of the only
organizations working on the ground to help those who remained in the city
and those who are returning to rebuild their homes and lives by
providing information about what resources are available to them, what is
happening at the city, state and federal levels, and by garnering resources
to actually rebuild their homes.
We then drove through the Lower 9th Ward to see the worst of the damage
first hand. There we saw an approximately 2 miles square neighborhood
that has been almost completely destroyed and emptied of its residents.
Near to the lake, entire houses were washed off of their foundations or
completely flattened. Cars were up on fences; debris and mud lined the
streets. It was hard for us to imagine the force that could cause such
damage, and also felt how difficult the process of rebuilding and
repopulating the city will be.
From our conversations with organizers as well as conversations on the
street, there seems to be a real lack of transparency and information
for those that are wanting to come back to rebuild as well as those that
are still here in New Orleans. This need for organization from the
community is clear, particularly because there is a lot of mistrust and
lack of confidence in the local, state and national government.
Today we will be contacting more community leaders and working with
ACORN to get a better idea what they are doing on the ground to restore
and rebuild people's homes.
Stay Tuned,
Sarah, Shannon and Stefan
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