Posted on 11/03/2005 2:47:11 PM PST by caryatid
Housing projects destroyed by Hurricane Katrina will be rebuilt as mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods, with $1.8 billion planned to begin work in Louisiana and Mississippi, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said Wednesday.
"Within the next two weeks, we will begin to see results," he said, without giving details.
The $1.8 billion is part of President Bush's request for $17.1 billion for long-term recovery along the Gulf of Mexico. "It will be the first of many" allocations, Jackson told reporters after meeting with four City Council members whose districts include housing projects.
He said the type of redevelopment was chosen by Mayor Ray Nagin and City Council, not by HUD: "I'm not here to dictate to the mayor and council."
The C.J. Peete development in Central City will be the first development to be redone, once health and safety inspectors deem it safe, he told reporters at the Fischer project, half of which has been torn down for new mixed-use development.
Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had 7,500 public housing apartments, about 5,100 of them occupied. Another 4,700 families used federally subsidized vouchers to rent apartments around the city.
All public housing units are currently locked and boarded; a notice on the Housing Authority of New Orleans' Web site gives phone numbers for tenants who want to collect their belongings. The locks are to be sure nobody steals residents' belongings or moves into a place that isn't safe, Jackson said.
Some buildings were only lightly damaged but don't yet have utilities; mold is also a worry, he said.
Jackson reiterated that the developments would have fewer tenants even if they were being remade as the vast tracts of high- and low-rise apartment buildings erected in the 1940s-60s.
Half of the Fischer project has been torn down, and smaller buildings are going up. One-third will be small apartment buildings to be rented at the market rate, one-third low-income apartment, and one-third single-family houses for sale.
"We will eradicate that type of development," Jackson said, pointing across the street to a building that stretched for blocks. "We don't want to isolate people because they're low-income."
He said he has visited nine shelters, asking public housing tenants at each if they wanted to return and emphasizing that HUD would do all it could to make such returns as easy as possible.
"I've talked to some 500 hundred people. Some 60 to 65 percent say they're not coming back," Jackson said.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press)
Public housing units are a big mistake. The object should be recorded home ownership, even if the gov't gives them away.
Now how mixed will a economically "mixed" housing project be in 2 years?
un-mixed and probably in serious disrepair.
Answer: It wont. I say 1 year, if that long.
Mixed income public housing? A disaster waiting to happen!
Prediction: this idea will be a mess.
So they are going to build a new ghetto? On purpose? Why?
absolutely...............HUD has long been the largest slumlord in the United States.
Make no mistake, folks, the indigents will return to weight the vote!
"after a Law Suit were required to Open a portion of the complex to low income families.
The People that paid 500k to 1m for a Loft were very upset."
Do they have to reduce the price, or just make it available?
They will, but public housing is a step towards third-world status, which is an odd thing for the most capitalist country to even think of doing.
The Section Eight people had very low rent while the people that paid a million for their loft saw their values fall.
Because it is racism not to rebuild back the slums. Nagin and others have said so loud and clear.
[1] Because of enormous political pressure; and,
[2] So that their "base" will be available to vote for them and keep them in power.
If we absolutely, positively "must" provide subsidized housing (not a legitimate government function in my opinion, but realistically we'll never get rid of it), the subsidies should be in the form of "housing stamps" or vouchers, allowing the beneficiaries to apply the vouchers toward privately developed rental units, or toward private mortgages.
Building new slums (government housing projects) is not the answer, no matter how "integrated" (in two senses of the word) they are with middle-income housing.
But, of course, it gets back to the plantation mentality, and recreating the political bases of Dem mayors, state legislators, and Congresscritters with creatively drawn districts.
That depends on the ratio of subsidized to affordable to market rate. Our community has 10%, 10% and 80%. It works well. These ratios have been in place for 10-15 years.
Probably not willingly.
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