Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Katrina evacuees want city to reopen housing
Rutland Herald ^ | June 6, 2006 | Susan Saulny (NYT)

Posted on 06/11/2006 11:45:52 PM PDT by rightwinggoth

NEW ORLEANS — Hundreds of displaced public housing residents returned here for the first time since Hurricane Katrina over the last several days, armed with little more than cleaning supplies and frustration, in an attempt to force the city to reopen their storm-damaged apartments. The city, saying the projects are not ready, has refused.

And so, outside the largest public housing complex, the St. Bernard Housing Development in the 7th Ward, tenant groups have organized evacuees into a tent city called "Survivors Village." Uptown, at the C.J. Peete Development, elderly residents, mostly women, broke into their old homes and carted away plastic bags of refuse and ruined furniture.

And at the Florida Housing complex in the drowned 9th Ward, residents cut through fences topped with razor-wire to reach their old units. They piled up heaps of debris that lined Bartholomew Street in the shadow of Interstate 10.

In bone-baking heat under a cloudless sky, evacuees coming from Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Houston, and elsewhere fumed at the city and federal housing officials who have opened fewer than 1,000 of more than 8,000 public housing units in a city that is suffering from both a housing crisis and a shortage of workers.

They vowed on Sunday to take matters into their own hands, to gut and rebuild their own units, and said they planned to be back permanently — with or without the city's permission — as soon as their work is done.

(Excerpt) Read more at rutlandherald.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; US: Louisiana
KEYWORDS: katrina; neworleans; projects
The signs say "Survivors Village" which is a complete joke. In my opinion, a survivor is a person that picks up the pieces and moves on. A survivor is someone who would take all of the money that FEMA has alloted to them and find a new place to live and becoming self-sufficient.

On the contrary, they are acting like victims. They are acting as though they have been wronged. HANO is not under obligation to house these people for the rest of their lives, just like private landlords were not responsible for providing a place to stay to their renters after said housing was ruined.

1 posted on 06/11/2006 11:45:54 PM PDT by rightwinggoth
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: rightwinggoth

If they are so all fired about fixing their housing situation, how about getting jobs rebuilding the city, and paying for their own?


2 posted on 06/11/2006 11:52:59 PM PDT by jeremiah (How much did we get for that rope?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jeremiah
Two Words:

Refrigerator Boxes
3 posted on 06/11/2006 11:56:23 PM PDT by Mongeaux (''I would sooner be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone directory," W.F. Buckley)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: jeremiah

Have they really been waiting for the public to supply them with a home for 10 months? I love to be crass but.....get a job, use the funds to supply yourselves with what you need, or return to the "mud" from whence you came. If I softened those remarks by stating that it is directed towards those that CAN work, the excuses for the majority would pile up. My back hurts, I have a heart condition, my piles are too bad..........wah wah wah. I guess that I am just an a hole, because if the voluntary charities can't support them, or their families, too bad too sad. These people exist so that politicians can get re-elected.


4 posted on 06/12/2006 12:02:03 AM PDT by jeremiah (How much did we get for that rope?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: jeremiah
"Naggin' Nagin wanted them back and I guess he's gonna get them. I just hope he's prepared for all the associated problems! Of course, no place else really wants them either.
5 posted on 06/12/2006 1:14:05 AM PDT by singfreedom ("Victory at all costs,.......for without victory there is no survival."--Churchill--that's "Winston")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: rightwinggoth

6 posted on 06/12/2006 3:25:45 AM PDT by SkyPilot
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rightwinggoth
This smells. Why did these people wait until the beginning of hurricane season to return? How did they get to NO, armed with only "cleaning supplies?" (LOL!) Who's organizing this?

The scent, as always, leads to something green:

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which took control of the bankrupt local housing authority years ago, says it is still in the process of assessing the storm's damage to the buildings....

He (Orlando Cabrera, the department's assistant secretary) said there are considerable federal funds available to allow private builders to redevelop public housing in situations like this — funds for which the local housing authority has begun to apply.

Mo' money!

And if they don't get everything their victimhood desires, it's Bush's fault.

7 posted on 06/12/2006 3:26:04 AM PDT by browardchad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rightwinggoth

If these people have really been sitting around all these months waiting for someone to provide them with a place to live, I'm delighted that he ones who were doing so in my state have gone back to NO-we don't need any more lazy deadbeats with no initiative or ambition to better themselves than we have already.


8 posted on 06/12/2006 3:40:54 AM PDT by Texan5 (You've got to saddle up your boys, you've got to draw a hard line..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rightwinggoth
in a city that is suffering from both a housing crisis and a shortage of workers.

How come none of these "evacuees" are helping to alleviate this shortage??

9 posted on 06/12/2006 3:57:51 AM PDT by Sometimes A River (Nations who do not know their national identity will become the prey of other nations - Atatürk)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sometimes A River
How come none of these "evacuees" are helping to alleviate this shortage??

They can't compete with illegal alien wages.

10 posted on 06/12/2006 4:48:27 AM PDT by Graybeard58 (Remember and pray for Sgt. Matt Maupin - MIA/POW- Iraq since 04/09/04)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: rightwinggoth

This is what happens when you have three and four generations of institutionalized, nanny-stated people. This has been their life experience...the government is SUPPOSED to take care of them in their world view, because this is what they know, what their mammas knew, and what their grandmothers knew.

Suspect they came back because other parts of the nation didn't honor that obligation in the ways that felt right to them...

I am reminded of the Bible verse about a dog returning to its own vomit...


11 posted on 06/12/2006 4:56:39 AM PDT by Knitting A Conundrum (Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly With God Micah 6:8)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sometimes A River

One reason is that they don't have much worth ethic...my dad used to hire inner city people to do oil spill cleanup back in the late 70s and 80s...even though the money was good, as a group, people from that type of background made flakey workers.

I imagine things haven't changed much...might even be worse...


12 posted on 06/12/2006 5:02:18 AM PDT by Knitting A Conundrum (Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly With God Micah 6:8)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Graybeard58
Yep! In their case, no wages is better than low wages. At least you have to admire the work ethic of the average immigrant worker. Something that is quickly dieing in the American workforce.
13 posted on 06/12/2006 5:04:26 AM PDT by REPANDPROUDOFIT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Knitting A Conundrum
Sounds like we are on the same wavelength. Oh for the days when good service really meant something. I get so tired of sitting in a restaurant and having the waiter/waitress (staff) tell me how rough he/she has it. Makes me feel guilty for being there. And the counter help that is talking on the phone - I'm seeing red!
14 posted on 06/12/2006 5:08:38 AM PDT by REPANDPROUDOFIT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: rightwinggoth

If they want to invest their own sweat equity and work to rebuild these homes themselves then more power to them. I admire that.


15 posted on 06/12/2006 5:13:29 AM PDT by joebuck
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: browardchad
'This smells. Why did these people wait until the beginning of hurricane season to return? How did they get to NO, armed with only "cleaning supplies?" (LOL!) Who's organizing this?
The scent, as always, leads to something green:'

You are right. Also this renta-mob displays all the worst examples of dysfunctionality that the urban black underclass in NOLA was so throughly infected with. Displaced working class blacks have already gotten jobs in the cities they ended up in. Since they have little capital and where they lived is pretty much wrecked they are not likely to return. These people are denizens of the squalid and decaying public housing of NOLA. St Bernard Parish doesn't want the fed public housing rebuilt. The feds have been trying to gradually close down the huge rotting PH developments. My guess is that HUD will try and get virtually of the PH in NOLA condemned using storm damage as the mechanism. Thats is what this clamor is about. The PH projects were great sources of large pool of controlled and frequently fake voters for the city council types and Rep Jefferson. The mass closing of PH projects and the dispersal of the inhabitants blows away a big chunk of the reliably corrupt voter base for these crooks.
16 posted on 06/12/2006 5:44:52 AM PDT by robowombat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: joebuck

Oh, do you really? Seems to me that public housing should be a temporary thing, but these people have a proprietary attitude such that I think Bush was talking about selling them mortgages. There are only waiting lists for people who get in a jam. I did see an article about evacuees in Atlanta who were all waiting until their unemployment ran out to look for work. They needed a rest, you know.


17 posted on 06/12/2006 5:52:44 AM PDT by ClaireSolt (.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Graybeard58

Bullcrapola.

Katrina workers make $500 bucks a week, plus $35 a day food allowance, plus free hotel.

Are the evacuees too good for that?

Quit making excuses for them.


18 posted on 06/12/2006 3:12:00 PM PDT by Sometimes A River (Nations who do not know their national identity will become the prey of other nations - Atatürk)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Sometimes A River
Are the evacuees too good for that?

I guess you caught me, they are too good for that.

19 posted on 06/12/2006 3:15:08 PM PDT by Graybeard58 (Remember and pray for Sgt. Matt Maupin - MIA/POW- Iraq since 04/09/04)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson