Posted on 08/24/2010 6:28:46 AM PDT by TSgt
NEW ORLEANS (WALA) - THE BIG EASY'S BIG DILEMMA
Some say you can never go home. Sadly in the five years since Hurricane Katrina that saying has been true for more than 100,000 people in New Orleans. Affordable housing continues to be one of the most contentious issues facing the Big Easy.
Even in the days after Katrina, as people were plucked from roofs, there was little doubt that it would take many years to rebuild New Orleans. But the reality of five years later is that many people haven't been able to return.
They've been left behind as the Big Easy transitions into a post-Katrina future, but they are trying to be heard. There probably aren't many cities in the U.S. where a meeting of the housing authority is packed. But this is New Orleans, a city facing a housing crisis like no other, pitting developers against the communities they're rebuilding. Reverend Lionel Davis Sr. is fighting for the people of his community.
"Many of the communities are going to suffer major changes as far as being identified as a traditional neighborhood that you grew up in," Davis said.
TOO FEW AND TOO EXPENSIVE
Reverend Davis says developers are building mixed use, mixed income properties on the sites of the old developments destroyed by Katrina and they are pricing out thousands of people who want to return. The reverend calls it nothing short of a land grab.
The new communities that are being built, like Columbia Parc in St. Bernard parish, are quite nice, but what folks are saying is they're not building enough. Columbia Parc, will eventually house 700 families. It replaces housing units where 1,500 families once lived. Resident Cantrelle Pichon says the lack of affordable housing has scattered nearly everyone she knows.
"It's a really sad story that people can't come back to their community that they were born," Pichon said. "Where their children were born."
AFFORDABLE HOUSING NEEDED FOR RECOVERY
Reverend Davis says for people to return they need the subsidized housing to get back on their feet, especially since there are few jobs, but what he's seeing is lower-income African-Americans being priced out of the communities where they grew up.
"Without a lot of community activist involvement, it's going to be a depression in the mindset of the people who are going to feel as though it was only an opportunity to deal with de-gentrification of a population of people," Davis said.
Reverend Davis says with community involvement and time, the situation can be improved
"The projections are it's going to get better. The question is how long will the people have to wait? To have something they can afford and have neighborhoods they want to come back to," Davis said.
Currently, more than 5,000 families are on the waiting list for traditional public housing. Another 30,000 families are on the list for housing vouchers.
Oh' wait! Reverend Davis means FREE housing!
The sense of entitlement is appalling especially after their Katrina FEMA handout.
Let them live in a tent city, I'm tired of paying for the parasites.
Haiti on the Big Muddy.
what happens when the people rely upon government to solve their problems...
Sounds like fantastic news for New Orleans. Fewer leeches is good for everyone all around.
Stay in school, learn some skills, stay out of gangs, don’t do drugs, marry the woman before you get her pregnant and then you will be able to find “affordable housing.”
Then buy yourself a piece of land and build all the houses you want to build!!!!!
Katrina was a failure of the governed as much as it was a failure of the government...
“Sounds like fantastic news for New Orleans. Fewer leeches is good for everyone all around.”
Bad news for other Southern cities where the leeches from NO are now permanently attatched to our tax dollars and birthing ever increasing litters.
Terrible news for Houston.
Housing you can't afford and no job.... Productive members of society would not consider moving to such a location.
Actually, the “leeches” didn’t all stay in N’awlins’-—Because of them, the crime rate has gone way up in cities like Houston and Austin.
I don't know if it would work, but I propose fire-bombing New Orleans.
Not for us in Houston. Many leeches came here and stayed. We STILL have people living in FEMA trailers. Talk about ridiculous !
New Orleans can have 'em back as far as I'm concerned. But I sure can't see why WE pay for it.
This sums up Katrina. I am so sick of hearing about Katrina I could, well never mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XivNwQ76mCs
“Katrina was a failure of the governed as much as it was a failure of the government...”
####
Indeed, but I would say that it was actually MUCH more of the former than the latter.
We should have never rebuilt the City of New Orleans. The Port of New Orleans is an absolute necessity. The City of New Orleans is an absurdity and needs to go.
It's the same old story. Voters are presented with a quite reasonable proposal to have government take over some troubled aspect of life. The proposal is couched in the most inoffensive and non-intrusive terms. But the ballot wording of the initiative only barely resembles what the voters were told in an effort to garner support for it.
Those who speak out against the proposal are painted by the supporters as cruel, insensitive people who have no compassion for the less fortunate.
The initiative passes and the saga begins. All sorts of things were included that no one realized were there, or the bureaucrats responsible for the program just do what they want, knowing full well it's not in what the citizens consented to, but also knowing they probably won't figure it out. And even if they do, what are they going to do about it. By the time anyone realizes they're being robbed blind so many of the less fortunate are wholly dependent on the government largess that it's impossible to cut the benefits.
I could go on and on with the roots that spread from the initial proposal to what it becomes in 10 years or so.
At some point it becomes “too big to end.”
Couldn't happen to a better pair of liberal h***holes.
>Stay in school, learn some skills, stay out of gangs, don’t do drugs, marry the woman before you get her pregnant and then you will be able to find “affordable housing.”<
Man, that is such a boring, deadbeat life! Who would want to live like that. Not us.
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