New Orleans Housing Policy: Racism & History

Housing Policy Report Intro to Housing Professor Braconi Columbia University Bernard Asagai ba2209@columbia.edu 12/2102007

How Federal, State, and Local Government Housing Policies Have Turned A Natural Disaster Into A Human Disaster: Poor Residents Affected By Hurricane Katrina In New Orleans The Structure of New Orleans’ Housing History To understand the current housing dilemma that displaced New Orleans citizens are facing, one must have some understanding of the cities complex history in regards to policy, economics, natural resource acquisitions, and the deeply rooted racism that has plagued the city since the Louisiana Purchase.

Before the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the city of New Orleans enjoyed a very vibrant society. Unlike all other regions within the United States during this time where slavery, racism, and Jim Crow laws and policies laid the foundation of social order and political policies, New Orleans under the French embellished a society that was founded upon French Assimilation. These policies of the French provided for a much more vibrant and desirable society of which to reside. These policies were received as being very positive, even if one were an African who was brought to the territory as slave as was the reality for thousands.

During the establishment of the city by the French, its leaders and residents had to endure a host of challenges. The city was constantly on the brink of disaster from such tribulations as recurrent yearly food shortages, challenges to the territory from the Native Americans, as well as tactful and efficient Westward advancing Americans. Though the French were very strategic and forward thinking in their acquisition of the territory, the advancing Americans saw the land, and more importantly, the Mississippi river and dock infrastructures as a means of [then] present and future economic prosperity. The region having the potential of providing continued economic prosperity was responsible for the continued American advancement within this territory. This [then] present and future prospecting of natural resources within the region lead to what would ultimately end the French presence in the region. The Louisiana Purchase was signed in 1807 that not only bought the region under American Control, but also brought to the region a host of new

laws such as those based on Jim Crow. The injection of these American laws into a society that had historically included all as residents, so long as they assimilated into the ways and customs of the French, was a major policy shift for the region, and a major barrier if you were Black, as the new American policies institutionally blocked one from interacting within a society above the level of menial labor. The new American laws also stratified not only labor, but class stratification through color and marriage as well. These policies not only redrew social interactions but housing as well. There effects dramatically restricted previous integrated living within the city, to a new physical infrastructure plan forced non-whites into locations below historic flood lines. As such, policies in effect forced non-whites into areas within the worst land choices which eventually would lead to housing that would disproportionately force non-whites to endure continuous land-value depreciations as well as natural storm and flood exposure through forced segregated housing location options.

The American advancements to acquire the regions natural resources are important in the understanding of the current displacement of residents after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the current policies which have elevated the importance of land-value over the importance of providing housing for the displaced. The American acquisition of the territory has always been about resource acquisition. Such policies are operating; the same policies that are causing continued human capital displacement. This brief introduction to the historical root to the current dilemma is needed to understand the cities current housing challenges.

How Policies of The Past Are At The Root of Current Public Housing Policy The event of Hurricane Katrina was a major natural disaster. The event had catastrophic ramifications not simply within the areas where the storm engulfed the region, but also within every single State in the U.S. including Puerto Rico and Alaska. The massive displacement of individuals and families has received a tremendous response from the federal government. The economic response, which currently stands at $20 billion, (and may plateau to a high of as much as $50 billion) has been a massive response from the federal government. However, it’s response instead of providing the foundation necessary

for the displaced residents to re-occupy their homes acts as a buffer to insure that not on will be difficult to take place, but that those that may miraculously return, will do so to a city where their housing units no longer exist. This has been no more apparent than in the sector of the cities public housing.

According to HUD, “Despite millions of dollars appropriated for extensive rehabilitation and modernization, only 5,000 of the 7,000 public housing units were habitable prior to Hurricane Katrina. Of those 5,000 units, many needed extensive work just to bring them up to an acceptable living standard”.1At first glance such statements may sound genuine, but when the federal government has committed “$110 billion” to assist the entire region in recovering from the effects of the storm, the prospects of public housing’s survival within a region that has a tattered past become oblique. Such can be evidenced through policies that have restricted residents from reoccupying their homes that are within public housing structures in the City. One public housing structure is called St. Bernard. The city has slated the demolition of the complex but supporters for the housing complex stated that there was no reason for such action. The supporters convinced a group of MIT architects to visit the public housing structures, after which they studied the structural damage and physical building injuries. This group stated that the housing, though minor repairs were necessary, exhibited no evidence for the physical structures to be demolished. As stated by one of the MIT architects of who thoroughly studied the projects damage,“The public housing development is in good shape. It was solid concrete walls. Even though it was flooded, it was architecturally sound, according to MIT architects. And there’s no reason for HANO to decide to hassle people who are just trying to reopen public housing in and even have them arrested, when they should be concentrating on getting housing back for families that need it”.2Such polices of public housing removal have not only been concentrated within this particular housing complex that has roughly 5000 units, but within three other of the cities public housing complexes as well. When the other three public housing complexes of Laffiete which has more than 4000 units, C.J. Peete’s 5000 units, and B.W. Cooper 1546 units are tallied, they amount 1 2

http://www.hud.gov/offices/cir/test022207b.cfm Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/31/as_police_arrest_public_housing_activists

to roughly sixteen thousand housing units. In focusing on demographic information of the area, one will notice that the demolition of such housing amounts to a new form of federally funded racial steering, differing from the typical form only in that these displaced residents will not be lead any by an agent, but by federal housing policies that place public funds within the hands of state and local governments who may not act within the best interest of the tax-payer whose funds in turn could be used against him or her. In the example above “HANO”, the Housing Authority of New Orleans is the implementer of how and where the federal funds will be disseminated with regard to housing. This would not be an issue if the funds were to be genuinely used to insure that housing was restored to all citizens from the region, within the same locations where in which they were displaced, but this has not been the case in the city of New Orleans, and it calls into question not only the motives of the state and local governments within the region, but the federal government as well. The cities racial problems are widely known and for the federal government to disperse such funding in this manner has functioned to continue form of severe displacement through inappropriate housing decisions. HANO and HUD’s actions should they succeed or not, are likened to the exact logic that saw the institutionalized displacement of black residents into lands within the city that were prone to higher risks of natural disasters after it’s purchase of the region by the Americans. Just as the previous segregationist housing policies were based on racist foundations that repositioned individuals and families that it deemed of a lower class and inferior level of humanity, the current housing policies appear to be founded upon the same principles.

The public housing policies could be thought of as measures to blight the areas where the poor and vastly African-American have historically lived. By continuing a policy that restricts residents from reoccupying their homes, policies act to make permanent the hardship of displacement through pubic housing policies. Such policies are compounded by laws, which in effect, make residents that reoccupy, and in the face of such policies, no longer able to receive housing benefits. Such residents are not only locked-out of their complexes, but are being locked-out of their communities and homes through state and federal policy. Such policies act to restrict the home, the bedrock of what makes America the country that it is, within only the hands of the non-poor, and in this case, non-black.

These polices are compounded further when one sees who is truly benefiting from the

housing proceeds from those displaced from their homes. For example, “The Mississippi Development Authority has proposed taking the money from the $2.25 billion remaining in Gov. Haley Barbour’s Homeowners Assistance Grant Program, which is funded by federal block grants. Part of that program is dedicated to low-income and working poor homeowners. “It’s just unfair,” Reilly Morse of the Mississippi Center for Justice said Wednesday. “We’ve been told affordable housing was supposed to be a priority. Don’t rob the displaced to build a port.” Agency officials said there would be enough money in the housing fund to cover about 30,000 homeowners applying for grants to restore or rebuild property destroyed by the storm.”3The example above illustrates a very key shortfall in the Bush Administrations responses to the displaced that have been made homeless by the storm. The federal governments housing strategies for assisting the displaced principally only helps homeowners. If everyone was a homeowner then such policies would make much sense, but in a city such as New Orleans where approximately 65% of those severely effected were renters, such policies act to not only provide 0% housing assistance, but alienate the effected from the reoccupation of there homes. A proper and comprehensive response to such a tragedy of this magnitude should have been the provision of not only grants to the homeowners, but grants to renters as well. This is even more the case when one understands that it was through the actions of the city, state, and federal government history that created the current housing disparity for the poor and disadvantaged of the city. Because of this history, the President should have used the tragedy of Katrina to comprehensively change the structure of the city and that of housing as well. The current policies have acted fortify the status quo, and remove the poor and undesirable from their home and communities. If housing is truly the bedrock of what it is to be American, then federal policies have un-Americanized these displaced.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/13/3820/

The statistics above provide a compelling demographic insight into the region before the event of Katrina. The Lower 9th Ward as well as the majority of New Orleans was predominately African-American. Ever since the American purchase of the region, Housing and settlement policies for Blacks had been concentrated to areas near the city’s levees. When Katrina unleashed its wrath upon the region, the housing that was

positioned near its unmaintained levees endured the brunt of Hurricane Katrina’s force.

The GIS map below visually illustrate what demographic particularly affected within this area, and the photos below show some of the damages that the storm inflicted to residents homes.

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http://911review.org/Hurricane_Katrina/photos/

In Conclusion The housing crisis that the Gulf Region endured and continues to experience is due to natural and unnatural causes reminiscent of the riot disorders of the 1960’s. During that time, President Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to provide insight into the causes, as well as recommendations that would act to end such outcries from taking place again. Within the housing sector, the committee found that adequate housing was virtually non-existent at every level where African-Americans had lived5. It found that due to many policy decisions that had taken place after World War II, the federal government grossly underfunded many housing programs within the communities where large concentrations of African-Americans had resided. The committee found that the imbalances in housing funding, as well as within the type of housing projects that were funded by the federal government after WWII had laid the foundation for a divided society which was greatly aggravated by the construction of U.S. suburbs. This structural division not only concentrated adequate housing units within areas that were restricted to citizens of non-white backgrounds but also acted to confine African-Americans as well as other non-white citizens to areas where the quality housing options were minimal and housing rental cost were disproportionately high. This revelation of the past that was magnified through the Kerner Commission is clearly the case with New Orleans. The housing “Mitch-Match� that was described by Kerner in the Report was still the reality before the storm, and after it as well. The racially divided past and present is why any housing policy from the federal government which seeks to comprehensively assist the displaced with housing, housing grants, or grants that assist renters (which make up the majority of the displaced residents of New Orleans) must come from and be disseminated by the federal government. The current policy structure that is said to have been put in place as a benefit to the needy is missing those that have the greatest housing needs.

Current housing policies should not only assist owners, but renters as well. The understanding of the history of this region deserves the very least.

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National Advisory Commission: The Kerner Report