HEre is an interview. I like her. At least she sounds like she has got ideas
In District B, incumbent Renee Gill-Pratt faces a tight run-off against lawyer, Uptown resident, and political newcomer Stacy Head. Gill-Pratt and Head finished nearly even in April voting and no clear leader has emerged as May 20th draws closer. Like the future of New Orleans, the City Council seat for District B remains up for grabs. I met Ms. Head at her Prytania Street campaign headquarters to discuss both of these things.
A Louisiana native and long-time New Orleans resident, Head stated her decision to run was motivated by “anger, frustration, and hope; the same things everyone else is feeling.” She feels the city “has been heading in the wrong direction for a long time” and is ignoring, even after the storm, the “tremendous untapped potential” of District B. When asked for examples of this potential, Head quickly ticked off a list of assets already in place: universities (Tulane, Loyola, Xavier), hospitals, the riverfront and ports, the Warehouse District, and the CBD.
Interestingly, she also named blighted housing and abandoned businesses as assets. The potential for housing and business development in District B make it “the most important district in the city,” Head states. A successful District B functions as an economic engine for the entire city, Head believes, lessening New Orleans’ dependence on the now-questionable tourism industry.
“Housing trumps everything,” she said. We discussed the current stock of city-owned blighted homes. I asked for numbers. Head expressed her desire for the same information. “You can’t get those numbers anymore,” she said. “You used to be able to but now I can’t find them and no one will give them to me.” According to older estimates, Head stated the city now owns at least 10,000 blighted homes.
I blinked at the number. If half were lost in the flood, I thought, that left 5,000 potential homes sitting around collecting dust, or worse. “Theoretically,” I said, “the city could put thousands of homes on the market tomorrow.” Head stated that it’s not quite that simple, but, “yes, theoretically, it’s possible to return a large number of homes to the market quickly.”
Head, in fact, has been through the process herself. She has purchased and “returned to commerce” nine formerly blighted homes in Uptown. She said her experience taught her that “private investment in the housing market through the city is needlessly difficult,” and that although there are aid programs for investors as well as home-buyers, those programs are “so badly disorganized they discourage investment.” The investors are out there. “There are a lot of people on the outside (of the city) who are bullish” about New Orleans’ future, Head insists. “I’d like to bring some of that optimism to the city,” she said.
As Head expounded on her housing plan (tax incentives, insurance and mortgage assistance) I realized that in addition to her experience, she is a relentless researcher, and (though maybe I’m not fit to judge) she seems to know everything about buying, fixing, and selling a house. “I don’t know everything,” she said, “but I’m a quick learner, and I can make myself an expert on what I need to know.” I believed her. But I also struggled to get a read on what she really had in mind for the future, selling off the city to outside money and turning us into Atlanta or Houston, or truly addressing the absurdity of thousands of homes rotting away while thousands of New Orleanians wait to come home. So I decided to ask.
That’s where the city government comes in, she stated. It’s not the city’s job to “play landlord,” she said, but to simultaneously aid and regulate the market. “You can’t have people getting priced out of their own neighborhoods,” she said, citing the Magazine corridor and the Irish Channel as danger zones for that situation. She mentioned again the numerous city, state, and federal home-owner programs designed to help the working poor and lower-middle class that, due to mismanagement, are ineffectual.
“So,” I said, “I’m living in Atlanta and I want to buy a city-owned house, fix it up and move home. How do I find out about what help I can get?”
“You can’t,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
Head also named “the working-almost poor, the cop, the teacher with a stay at home spouse and a kid” as an “almost completely neglected” part of the constituency. “There are mechanisms in place to help people,” she said, “but the mechanisms don’t function.”
Her housing plan, according to Head, is a way to generate investment in the city while addressing the housing crisis. In addition, returning homes to the market is an effective way to combat crime. “Blighted houses are comfortable spots for drug dealers,” she said, “and because of this, blighted housing is the number one problem for Sixth District police officers.” When I asked how she knew this, she replied it’s what cops in the Sixth District have told her. She pointed out that while crime discourages home ownership, the reverse is also true. “The first thing you work on,” she said, “is housing.”
The second thing, for Head, would be business investment in neglected commercial corridors such as Claiborne Avenue. “It’s a high traffic area that connects three universities and a lot of neighborhoods, plus it has access to the interstate,” she said. Though wary of the term “big box,” Head insisted there is a place, and a need, for Target and the Gap on Claiborne Avenue.
I mentioned that she might meet some resistance to turning Claiborne Avenue into Veterans Boulevard. “People who hate the big box,” she said, “still, even if they won’t admit it, shop at those places.” She encouraged me to take a drive along the avenue. “All the boxes are there already,” she said, “we need to put something in them.” There are too few places in the district, she said, for people with families to shop and so those people, and their money, head for Vets. “All those tax dollars that go to Jefferson Parish right now, I want them for us,” she said.
Investment from national businesses, she added, would come with mandatory community involvement, such as the development of retiree-friendly neighborhoods with affordable housing and ready access to public transportation and medical facilities.
Demanding community service from huge corporate retailers sounded very familiar to me, but Head got to the Uptown Wal-Mart question before I did. It was a good idea that went wrong, she said. The city extracted promises from Wal-Mart and then “let them do whatever the hell they wanted.” To the threat of that happening again, she said, “there are ways to defend against that.”
One of the best ways to defend against repeating past mistakes and to prevent retarding future progress, according to Head, is to get Renee Gill-Pratt out of office. Head insists she will bring a “level of professionalism” to the office that is currently lacking. When asked for an example, Head said “for one, (Gill-Pratt’s) campaign literature has false statements.” To back up the charge, she produced a Gill-Pratt campaign mailer listing numerous endorsements. Several of the named parties, Head told me, had not endorsed Gill-Pratt at all. Head had spoken to two of them personally (one an executive from quasi-public utility Bell South, another a prominent local shipping magnate) and both said they had nothing against Gill-Pratt but that they never publicly endorsed her re-election.
On the subject of Gill-Pratt’s long-standing relationship with embattled congressman Bill Jefferson, Head was more demure. “I think,” she said, “the company you keep says a lot about you.”
Head mentioned Gill-Pratt has accused her of being a “criticizing outsider,” a charge Head readily accepts. Her time as a business lawyer, Head states, has provided her a vast knowledge of tax, insurance, investment, and zoning laws that will be essential in the rebuilding. This knowledge, she says, is more valuable than “a decade and a half of politics.” Head sees her outsider status as an advantage when it comes to dealing with the mayor, be it Landrieu or Nagin. “I have no real relationship with either of them. I shook hands with Mitch twice and sat next to Ray in church once.” Citing the often contentious dealings between the mayor’s office and the City Council, Head prides herself on “bringing no baggage” to the relationship.
Our interview ended when she announced she had to prepare, thoroughly, I’m sure, for a candidates forum. I noticed then how little actual baggage she carried: car keys and a cell phone. During the interview she consulted no notes, looked nothing up. I was, in fact, embarrassed when several times she had to stop talking so I could catch up on my note-taking and consult my questions. I’d hate to face her across the negotiating table, and soon enough we’ll know whether Stacy Head makes her next informed, impassioned argument in the boardroom or as a member of the City Council.
Bill Loehfelm is a regular correspondent for NOLAFugees.com.