VIDEO re-Mix: A Small Band of Public Housing Rights Advocates gathered at the Iberville Projects and Marched down Canal Street calling for the Re-opening of habitable public housing and schools
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HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT! Public Housing Update, January 15, 2007:
SURVIVORS VILLAGE
MLK Day: St. Bernard Residents Go through Fence, Clean Out Apartments
New Orleans, LA (January 15, 2007) -With mops and buckets in hand,
displaced residents of the St. Bernard Public Housing Project will go
through the barbed wire fence surrounding their homes to clean and
rehabilitate them. On Monday, January 15, Martin Luther King Day, the
residents will rally at 12:00pm at Bynum Drugs Store, 3838 St. Bernard
Ave, and then enter the property to restore their homes at 12:30.
“Our homes are livable, and we are cleaning them out so that we can
live in them,” says Sharon Seans Jasper, a St. Bernard resident and
organizer. “We will not let the city destroy them.”
“The residents who will be cleaning their apartments have current
leases and therefore have a legal right to enter their homes,” says
rally organizer Endesha Juakali of Survivors Village. “However, the
police may not honor this right. Therefore public housing residents
will be evoking the spirit of Dr. King on this Martin Luther King
Day.”
HANO and HUD plan to demolish over 5000 units of affordable public
housing, housing that is desperately needed for families that wish to
move back to New Orleans. In a market where rents have increased
between 70 and 300 percent since Katrina, inflated rents and the lack
of subsidized housing has been a major factor in preventing evacuees
from returning to their homes. Finding private landlords that accept
housing vouchers is extremely difficult, and finding affordable
housing without subsidization is nearly impossible for public housing
recipients.
HUD’s own cost analysis reveals that their plan to demolish and
rebuild will waste taxpayers’ money. A recent motion for summary
judgment filed in a current suit to reopen the development (available
at: http://justiceforneworleans.org) cites HUD documents that show the
demolition and redevelopment of public housing “will end up costing
over $175 million more than extensively modernizing the developments,
and upwards of $450 million more than simply repairing them would
cost.” The motion also argues that the demolitions have racial
implications. “Prior to Katrina over 5,100 African-American families
lived in New Orleans’ public housing. Nearly 14 months later, only
approximately 1,000 have been allowed to return. HANO’s actions
clearly have disproportionately harmed African-Americans and have lead
to the overall decline in the city’s African American population since
Katrina.”
Despite overwhelming support for the re-opening of public housing,
HANO and HUD have consistently ignored public opinion and advocated
for its demolition. HANO has received a resounding and unquestionable
“NO!” to their plans from public housing residents at their recent
court-mandated ‘resident consultation meeting’. Angry residents
accused HANO of “ethnic cleansing,” and told them “being poor is not a
crime.”
Media contact: Endesha Juakali / survivorsvillage@gmail.com /
504.239.2907 or 504.284.6975
Stephanie Mingo / vmingo@bellsouth.net / 504.529.3171
January 15, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
VIDEO: repost: On Saturday, December 3, 2005, immediately following the Hurricanes of infamy, a band of housing rights advocates gathered at the Iberville Projects on Basin St. Saturday in support of New Orleans residents’ right to return to their homes and called for the re-opening of the city’s public schools (2 or 3 public schools are open in Orleans Parish now). With 80% of the city flooded from hurricanes Katrina & Rita, and over a million Gulf South residents dislocated from their lives, the housing shortage, rapidly rising rents, and lack of sustainable government supports faces many thousands of people who wish to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. Evictions - both illegal and legal - are epidemic in the New Orleans area and returning home or the lack of ability to return to a home, rain down further struggles on the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In particular, people who needed public assistance to meet basic needs and the right to their home find the rug pulled out from under them as the city makes plans to tear down public housing, closing even livable and marginally damaged housing with little or no dialogue with displaced residents.
Less than 20% of pre-hurricane residents actually reside in New Orleans now, which currently hosts thousands of new building contractors, laborors, developers and gaggles of various military, security and law enforcement personel now set up shop in the no-flood zones, in a former arts high school, on enormous cruise ships and in public spaces in the city centers. With 80% of the city flooded and by devastating hurricanes, evictions, both illegal and legal, happen quickly, often with little or no legal formality with as few as 5 days or no notice at all in this tumultuous housing market and with little or no regard for any notion of housing rights. Residents of the cities extensive public housing wish to return home and reclaim their lives - or at least check on their home - however there is little dialogue with the Housing Aughority of New Orleans and information that HANO housing will be closed and bulldozed circulates fear and anger from displaced survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Despite the fact that most New Orleans residents are out of town, a few dozen marchers gathered in front of the Iberville Public Housing projects just outside of the French Quarter to show support for the city’s poor and working people and marched freely down Canal Street to the Federal encampment by the Mississippi Riverwalk. The marchers called for the re-opening of habitable public housing and public schools, dialogue and the right of residents to return home. The Coalition to Save Iberville, New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NO HEAT), the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, and Common Ground Eviction Defense represented at the march and can be contacted for support of Housing Rights.
Housing Is A Human Right.
Related Links ::: Common Ground Collective, Loyola Law Clinic Katrina Help Site, People’s Hurricane Relief Fund & Oversight Coalition