Five years since Hurricane Katrina

With a couple of floods going on now, let's pause and take a look back at one that hit US shores five years ago. Hurricane Katrina pounded New Orleans with a severe storm and a broken levee that flooded the city. Some parts of New Orleans have never recovered, as people fled never to return to their homes.

From Relevant Magazine, writer Ryan Hamm interviewed Phyllis Freeman of World Vision, on the response back then and the continuing work now.

Describe the scene of post-Katrina New Orleans.

We went into the 9th Ward first and we saw the barge that actually broke the levee. When we arrived we saw it sitting there and it was one of the most awesome sights. This huge ship broke that levee and [there was such an] intensity of seeing the size of it—the water that was coming over and just wiping out almost that entire [area and] almost no houses remained standing. That was in mid-September, 2005.
What was the condition of all the places affected by Katrina and how has that changed in the last five years?

Some of the homes in the communities where the levee broke and the waters moved into the community, [you can really see] the resilience of the homeowners in the months of October, November and December of 2005. They were repairing their homes and preparing to come back. Other places, you saw homes with “for sale” signs on them.

I just returned to the 9th Ward in the month of June of this year. Many of those homes are in the same condition they were five years ago. Which means that those families, whereever they are, haven’t been able to return home. Maybe they came home and rented something else but they are not back.

When the water came over, you saw refrigerators on top of homes and cars on top of garages and things like that. Those large items have been moved, but the vegetation has come in. So you see plants growing out of the roofs of houses because of the mud and everything else [in the flood waters].

The concern is much has been done but there’s still much to be done. Basically that’s it. A catastrophic event the size of Katrina is decades long in trying to recover. Even five or ten years from now parts of New Orleans will probably look pretty much the same. If the homes have been destroyed then it will just be land. Just because the media’s attention is not focused there, I think people must remember that it’s a devastating, long-term event, and children are still being impacted.
What has been the biggest factor in a neighborhood’s recovery?

I think the civic engagement of multiple individuals, businesses and political entities. So if there’s an activist that would like to make sure that their community is rebuilt in the right way, just being able to collaborate with all of the different aspects and families involved—[figuring out] whether or not you need permits or getting people to engage with you. Fundraising is a key aspect of that but it takes the collaborative part to make sure that your communities reemerge better than they were before.

TOMS gives away shoes in New Orleans

The company TOMS not only sells comfortable shoes, they also give them away. Last week, TOMS gave away thousands of pairs to children in New Orleans.

From this story that we found in the New Orleans Times Picayune, writer Susan Langenhennig tells us more about the unique company.

Two years ago, Blake Mycoskie came to New Orleans to sell some shoes. He came back last week to give some away.

You might not know his name, but you've probably seen his face. Mycoskie is the founder of TOMS, Shoes for Tomorrow, a company with an unusual business model: For every pair of shoes it sells, it gives away a pair to a child (or in some cases, adult) in need.

Mycoskie is the first to admit his mission is as compelling as his shoes -- a comfortable canvas slip-on modeled after the traditional Argentine alpargatas. His story is a good one: young, idealistic guy out to prove philanthropy can be fashionable and profitable. His business card lists his title as "chief shoe giver."
...

On Thursday, he arrived at Langston Hughes Elementary School in Gentilly with an entourage of 20 volunteers from around the country and one from Canada. A total of 33 volunteers paid their own travel expenses just to be part of the New Orleans TOMS "shoe drop."

In three days, the company gave away 2,000 pairs of shoes to students at Langston Hughes, Lafayette Academy, ARISE Elementary, Akili Academy and Martin Behrman Elementary schools. TOMS staff contacted local social workers and the KidSmart organization to identify schools with serious needs. ABC's "Good Morning America" was here to capture it all on camera.
...

Though he enjoyed joking around with the local kids on Thursday, Mycoskie remains committed to fighting poverty abroad, particularly in Ethiopia, where one of the company's factories is located.

"There's an illness there that people get that creates leg and foot swelling, and it's really awful and completely preventable," he said. "A doctor we're working with thinks we can eradicate this disease in 20 years."

The illness affects 15 percent of the population of southern Ethiopia. "I don't know who I'm going to marry or if I'll ever have kids," Mycoskie said. "But I do know that every year for the next 20 years, I'm going to Ethiopia."

US credit crisis threatens New Orleans' recovery

from the Associated Press via Google

By BECKY BOHRER

NEW ORLEANS — A prolonged recession and a tight credit market would cripple New Orleans' still-fragile recovery from Hurricane Katrina, delaying or eliminating road work, new construction and repairs to homes and businesses that have stood empty since 2005.

The city's infrastructure plans should stay on track, but a real estate expert calls it a "terrifying" scenario: A lack of sufficient credit would smother companies trying to start up or expand, and with them the new jobs needed to grow the area's economy. It would choke the flow of cash that developers need to build new homes and first-time homeowners need to buy them. And it would make it tough for the city to sell bonds to finance rebuilding projects on its appointed timeline.

Parking lots and buildings slated for reincarnation as gleaming high-rises might never move beyond blueprints. Small businesses, a lifeblood to the economy and neighborhood anchors, may never reopen or expand.

The road to recovery from Katrina would get even longer.

The financial meltdown "comes at a difficult time" for the city, said Janet Speyrer, an economist at the University of New Orleans.

The city's population, about 454,000 when Katrina struck in August 2005, has rebounded but seems to have leveled off around 325,000. Job growth hasn't lived up to forecasts, with major corporate investment largely staying on the sidelines and the cost of living — driven in part by skyrocketing insurance costs — remaining high.

"Even before the credit crunch, there were questions about whether we were going to get back to where we were even before Katrina," Speyrer said.

It isn't the flow of federal aid that most concerns economists. The Federal Emergency Management Agency so far has set aside $2.3 billion for rebuilding infrastructure; of that, $894 million has filtered down to the local level through state administrators, and economists believe projects with dedicated funds should be OK.

It's the commercial sector — privately funded hotels, condos and new-business development — that would be waylaid by a contraction of credit.

In the housing sector, there's no shortage of homes, and thousands more bought by the state after Katrina are expected to start coming onto the market in the coming months with price points in the $150,000 to $200,000 range. The region did not see nearly the number of foreclosures as other parts of the country, and economists believe the trickle of new building nationally could draw contractors to the city.

Still, it's a challenge for prospective first-time homeowners and those who got behind on bills or whose credit otherwise took a beating after the storm to get loans.

The next few weeks could give authorities the first glimpse of how the credit markets are affecting new housing proposals, particularly those hoping for tax credits as part of their financing to build lower-income housing.

Brenda Evans, program administrator with the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, said officials must find a way to encourage and create adequate, affordable housing. More affordable housing is seen as critical to shoring up the city's middle class and keeping working-class families here.

The city was plagued by poverty, dominated by renters and overbuilt before Katrina; blighted, derelict properties were a problem, made worse by Katrina and a decades-long slide in population. Officials see homeownership as a key to stabilizing and strengthening neighborhoods, and they're promising $50 million in federal grants to offset mortgage costs and get affordable homes constructed. The plan will help about 1,000 households directly and, ideally, attract private development dollars.

For some, it could be the key to keeping them in the city.

Nia Davis, a 33-year-old graduate student at UNO who does freelances research for nonprofits, is renting in the partially rebuilt Gentilly neighborhood and desperately wants a home of her own. She says she doesn't have the stable income that banks want to see, and says the type of subsidies the state is touting are her only clear route to homeownership.

Returning to New Orleans from Texas in 2006 was a "nonlogical decision," she said, driven by her heart, not her head. She wants to stay but isn't sure she will if she can't buy a house.

"If I own a home, I want to own a home in New Orleans," she said, "and that's more about passion and commitment, because I know I'm going to pay more for everything else."

Link to full article. May expire in future.

A Class Divided-Part I: Poverty and Violence in New Orleans Public Schools

from Red Orbit

By Maloney, Stephen

A TWO-PART SERIES LOOKING AT THE TWO MOST SIGNIFICANT FACTORS INFLUENCING

NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS: POVERTY AND VIOLENCE

When Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas was preparing to take over state-run New Orleans public schools in June 2007, the career educator sought the advice of experienced local leaders on how to approach his new job.

Having run the Chicago and Philadelphia school districts, which have many students living in poverty, Vallas expressed confidence in his ability to handle his new job with former New Orleans Mayor Maurice "Moon" Landrieu.

"I went over to his (Landrieu's) house one night and someone asked me to compare school districts and I talked about the poverty rates being comparable," Vallas said. "Moon turned to me and said, 'There's poverty and then there's Southern poverty -- deep poverty.'"

With more than three quarters of Louisiana's public school students classified as low income, the specter of poverty is casting a dark shadow across the state's educational landscape. Educational leaders say poor economic conditions severely limit student performance, creating a domino effect that can drag down a state or region's economy.

"On every major demographic and educational indicator, low- income students start behind, stay behind and fall behind," said Steve Suitts, Southern Education Foundation vice president. "As a nation, we still haven't really come to grips with this problem and what it means for education."

In the South, the number of low-income students has ballooned in the past four decades: 54 percent of the region's 50.1 million public school students are now classified as low income, according to a new SEF report, "A New Majority, Low Income Students in the South's Public Schools."

According to federal regulations, a family of two with an annual income of less than $14,000 lives below the poverty line and qualities for the free or reduced lunch program.

Low-income students are two to three times as likely to drop out of high school as more affluent students, Suitts said, wreaking havoc on the economy as unskilled dropouts hit the job market.

"There's nothing that will be more decisive in forecasting the economic health of Louisiana and the other Southern states than how well the states meet the challenge of educating this new majority," he said.

Vallas said more than 85 percent of the RSD's student population qualifies for the federal free or reduced lunch program, a major indicator of a student's economic status.

"The higher the concentrations of poverty the greater the challenges," Vallas said. "In part, it certainly puts an added burden on the school systems that do not necessarily have the means to meet that burden."

Addressing the issue of student poverty has been one of the RSD's most important tasks, Vallas said.

The key to winning the battle against poverty in the classroom is early intervention, he said.

"There's no more effective way to attack the challenges of poverty than universal early childhood education," Vallas said.

Providing low-income students with the same level of education as more affluent students has to happen early and that extra effort must be maintained throughout a student's career for the negative effects of poverty to be cancelled out, Suitts said.

One of the underlying problems preventing adequate help from getting to impoverished students is the difficulty teachers can have determining the exact needs of each student, S.J. Green Charter School principal Tony Recasner said.

Ninety-eight percent of Green Charter's 325 students qualify for free lunch, but no two students have the same set of economic challenges to overcome, Recasner said.

"A lot of what happens is a function of the parent, typically a mother," he said. "The child's behavior and achievement in school is largely related to mom's aspirations and mom's circumstances."

A single mother working more than one job to make ends meet will more often than not have difficulty getting her child to school on time every day, resulting in a gap in the student's education, Recasner said.

In addition, the same overworked mother will seldom have time to help her child with homework or with a difficult assignment, further limiting classroom achievement.

"The way we best understand a student's achievement and behavior in school is really by getting as good an understanding as we can of their mother's circumstances," Recasner said. "Socioeconomic status is probably the biggest factor in determining the school success of children."

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Renaissance Village in Baker to close, ending social experiment

from the New Orleans Times Picayune

by Sarah Carr, The Times-Picayune

At first, after hundreds of New Orleans children settled into FEMA trailers in the small town of Baker, it was a case of the 504s against the 225s.

Many of the 504s arrived at Renaissance Village trailer park angry and sad, their lives abruptly upended.

The 225s watched, sometimes warily.

Describing the children by their area codes was a way to evoke the palpable divide between the newcomers, exiled to this rural corner of Baker, and the children who had lived there all their lives. It took months, in some cases years, for the 504-225 distinctions to fade.

"Today I don't think you would really know who the kids from New Orleans are," said Sarah Henry, the principal of Progress Elementary School, which many of the Renaissance Village students still attend.

In some respects Renaissance Village, near Baton Rouge, serves as an unintentional social experiment: A captive audience of extremely poor children and families was provided an array of social services, all within walking distance: Early Head Start, Head Start, an after-school program, a teen center, counselors and health care. Most of the programs would still be available to the families if they lived outside the trailer park gates, but it would not be so easy, or obvious, to take advantage of them.

When FEMA announced that Renaissance Village would close May 31, it sent many of the families still there into a panicked frenzy to find affordable permanent housing.

"From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., you had a safe place to bring your child, which gives you the time to get skills to improve yourself," said Cynthia Vance, the program manager for kindergarteners through fifth-graders at the park. "It was free and within walking distance. I think that will be one of the reasons a lot of residents might wait until the last minute to leave."

Crucial support network

In many respects Renaissance Village represents a failed response to the 2005 storms and flooding: Hundreds of the poorest of the poor -- almost all from New Orleans -- were placed in trailers, indefinitely, as Baton Rouge-area shelters began to close down. Residents were far from relatives, friends or other support networks. No one had any real plan for getting them out of the trailers and into homes.

If there's a silver lining to Renaissance Village, many residents and educators say it can be found in the support system that has gradually emerged for the approximately 100 school-age children still living there. It's a support system rooted in row of simple buildings housing the Head Start and after-school programs and located in the back of the park.

As the families disperse, residents and workers at the park are trying to preserve some of that support network, even as the trailers themselves get forklifted away: Teachers in the after-school program regularly drive across town before dawn to pick up former trailer park children who want to continue at current schools. Parents of school-age children say they are planning to stay in the Baker-Baton Rouge area. Local leaders are talking about trying to replicate some of Renaissance Village's programs for children in the Gardere neighborhood of Baton Rouge, where many of the families are moving.

"I believe those buildings should be taken out of the trailer park and put somewhere where they could do the most good in Baker or Baton Rouge," said Sam Sammartino, disaster response director for the Diocese of Baton Rouge. "You could bring in child-advocacy groups, people who deal with families in crisis, mental health counselors. There is a spectrum of things that go on in those buildings that could help people move on with their life and out of poverty."

Wanda Galmon's family highlights that potential.

Every morning Galmon, 25, walks her two youngest children to Early Head Start and Head Start buildings on the opposite end of the trailer park. There they soak up early reading and social skills in a place where their mother can easily visit. Three of Galmon's middle children attend nearby Progress Elementary School, including Timothy, a mischievous, talkative 8-year-old who gets into less trouble at school than he did a year ago. During the months the family lived in Houston immediately after the storm, Timothy refused to speak and earned all D's and F's in school.

The oldest, Leonard, 11, attends Crestwood Middle School. Leonard, always bright, has grown into an older brother with fatherlike tendencies, who can often get his five younger siblings to sit down and read. Between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., the four older Galmon children work on homework in the after-school program and then run sack races or play dodgeball until sunset. Galmon, who has worked several fast-food jobs and is seeking another, already has strong reason to believe her children will surpass her 10th-grade education level. One afternoon Leonard returned from school with mixed feelings about a challenge posed by his teacher. She suggested the boy, an aspiring scientist, enter a science fair for Crestwood's seventh- and eighth-graders, even though he is just a sixth-grader. The boy wanted to examine airplane speed, but he worried he didn't have the time and the supplies.

That afternoon a counselor at the trailer park took Leonard to buy supplies. She stayed with him through the evening as he worked feverishly to create the display, building model airplanes and then using their size, shape and diameter to calculate velocity. He finished near midnight.

The next day, his science project won first place at Crestwood.

Making progress

Although not all children have excelled like Leonard, the principal at Progress and several trailer park workers say they have seen several of the youngsters thrive with the extra stability and support. Initially, Henry said, many of the Renaissance Village children attended only sporadically, and their grades and behavior reflected the trauma they had been through.

Now, she said, their attendance, grades and behavior are on a par with the rest of the students. "Academically, they have really kind of shocked me," she said.

Just as the new bonds strengthened, though, they are ending.

With the deadline looming and through the help of her mother, Galmon found a Baton Rouge home for her family for $865 a month. Trusting her mother, she signed a lease without seeing the place herself.

Though Galmon plans to visit family in New Orleans regularly, she has no desire to move back, worried about crime and that the city will not be the same.

"It wouldn't feel like home anymore," she said. "I've gotten used to it here."

Galmon attended Woodson Middle School and Cohen High School in New Orleans, dropping out after her sophomore year. She had Leonard when she was 13. The mother has serious health problems, including chronic asthma, but always planned to look for a job at a fast-food restaurant in preparation for when the FEMA-HUD rent subsidies for former trailer park residents end in 2009. Last week, she accepted a job as a housekeeper in a large hotel.

She cannot wait to leave the trailer, where she lacks the wiggle room even to make up the bed. But weeks before the scheduled move, Galmon said she knew little about her new neighborhood or how to get around Baton Rouge, by bus or car. She was unsure where her youngest children will attend Head Start, or where the schools her older children will attend are located.

She has few friends in Baton Rouge.

Such uncertainties frighten the staff who work with the families at Renaissance Village.

"What's the difference between May 31 and Aug. 31 if we can make sure residents are in permanent housing and they will be able to stay there?" said Arcenia Crayton, who runs the teen center.

FEMA officials have described the situation as an opportunity for flood victims to marshal self-reliance, help from caseworkers and the financial boost from the HUD-FEMA Disaster Housing Assistance Program to get on with their lives.

Many are. Every day at Renaissance Village, newly vacant trailers are towed away and children scatter along with their families.

Galmon learned in mid-April that she can move into her new home in a week.

"I'm ready to go," she said.

Though desperate to leave, she decided to sleep with her family in the trailer a little longer, through April at least, so they will not have to leave their schools mid-month.

New Orleans' homeless rate swells to 1 in 25

from USA Today

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS — The homeless population of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina has reached unprecedented levels for a U.S. city: one in 25 residents.

An estimated 12,000 homeless accounts for 4% of New Orleans' estimated population of 302,000, according to the homeless advocacy group UNITY of Greater New Orleans. The number is nearly double the pre-Katrina homeless count, the group says.

The New Orleans' rate is more than four times that of most U.S. cities, which have homeless populations of under 1%, said Michael Stoops, executive director of the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless. The cities with homeless rates closest to that of New Orleans are Atlanta (1.4%) and Washington (0.95%), he said.

A USA TODAY 2005 survey of 460 localities showed one in 400 Americans on average were homeless.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin appealed to federal lawmakers this past week to provide funds and housing vouchers to help the city's homeless problem.

The percentage of New Orleans' homeless is one of the highest recorded since U.S. housing officials began tracking homelessness in the mid-1980s, said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has studied homeless trends for more than 20 years.

"In a modern urban U.S. city, we've never seen it," he said of New Orleans' homeless rate.

Many of the homeless are Katrina evacuees who returned to unaffordable rents or who slipped through the cracks of the federal system designed to provide temporary housing after the storm, said Mike Miller, UNITY's director of supportive housing placement.

There are also out-of-state workers who came for the post-Katrina rebuilding boom but lost their jobs, and mentally ill residents in need of services and medication, he said. Many of the city's outreach homeless centers and public mental health services have been closed since Katrina.

Nagin has pledged to move the homeless from encampments around the city to more permanent shelters. Last year, the city and humanitarian groups found shelter for nearly all of the 250 people living in an encampment across from City Hall.

Nagin has suggested reinstating a city ordinance that would make it illegal to sleep in public places. Homeless advocates say the law would just crowd the jails.

After Katrina: The house that Brad built

from the Independent

Failed by their government, forgotten by the insurance industry, the people of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward finally have a hero to help rebuild their shattered lives
By Andrew Gumbel

A couple of weeks ago, residents of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward – an overwhelmingly poor, African American area of the city hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina – flocked by the hundred to a locally staged production of Waiting for Godot.

Samuel Beckett's play was the perfect metaphor for a community that has done nothing but wait in vain – for politicians, for insurance companies, for home-rebuilding loans, for anything other than the weeds that have spread with abandon over the sites of former homes swept away in the floodwaters.

Yesterday, though, Godot came at last.

Granted, it wasn't Godot exactly. It was the Hollywood megastar Brad Pitt, whose motives and commitment have come in for some understandable close scrutiny. But Pitt is doing something no government agency has yet managed to achieve, more than two years after the worst natural disaster in US history: he is rebuilding homes in the Lower 9th and giving residents – many of them scattered around Louisiana and beyond – some tentative cause for hope in the future.

A foundation set up by Pitt, specifically targeted at New Orleans and called Make It Right, has commissioned designs for an initial 150 practical, low-cost houses from 13 of the world's more prominent architectural firms and plans to break ground on the first of them by early spring. The houses will have many flood-protection features – everything from foundations that can float to roof patios for relief from the next big storm – as well as state-of-the-art recycling and energy-generating installations to cut running costs and act as a potential model for future low-cost housing schemes.

These plans have been in the works for a couple of months, but yesterday the showman in Pitt made his first big splash. He accompanied reporters on a tour of a wondrous art installation set up by Make It Right around the neighbourhood: a collection of bright pink tent houses, boxes and blocks dotted at seemingly random intervals. The idea is to encourage big-dollar donors to sponsor the symbolic pink houses for $150,000 (£72,000) each – the estimated cost of each of the new real houses. Ordinary individuals can pitch in too – sponsoring just one item like a low-flush toilet or a solar panel.

The exhibition, which also features 1,000 lightbulbs to symbolise the approximate number people who died in Katrina's aftermath, will run for the next five weeks, the height of the holiday charitable giving season. Once it is over, the tents will be cut up and the pink fabric reused to make bags and T-shirts and other merchandise that will then be sold to raise even more money.

Pitt explained that the seemingly random placement of the houses around the gaping open spaces of the Lower 9th represented the capriciousness with which the floodwaters uprooted foundations, dislocated roofs and washed out street after street. "Right now, there are scattered blocks, like they were scattered by fate's hand, symbolic of the aftermath of the storm," Pitt told New Orleans' Times-Picayune newspaper. But the placement does in fact have a special significance, which will become clear at night when the pink houses will be fully illuminated and visitors will be encouraged to take drive-by tours. They have been laid out to mirror the position of the stars in the night sky on 29 August 2005, the day Katrina hit.

That notion may sound like touchy-feely Hollywood cosmic nonsense, but the neighbourhood has already seen enough of Pitt to know he is deadly serious. At an early community meeting, a resident begged him to "make it right" – and to underline his intention to do that he used the phrase to name his foundation.

The residents also said they wanted to be fully involved in the development of the homes, so Pitt organised regular meetings at which they could comment on the evolving architectural plans. They asked for back-up electricity sources to bolster solar roof panels, and they got them. They asked for wheelchair ramps up to the upper storeys, and they got them, too.

It's still early days, but for now Pitt's reviews have been remarkably positive. Vanessa Gueringer, a community housing organiser, said she couldn't believe someone like Pitt was genuinely interested in helping a battle-scarred neighbourhood such as the Lower 9th. "You're used to being stepped on. You're used to being misused. So, at first, you are a little leery," she told the Times-Picayune.

She is very close to being won

over. "I'm 80 per cent there," she said. "I guess I'll be completely sold when I see the first house on a lot over there. But they have done everything they could to make us understand that they want to see us see our neighbourhood come back."

New Orleans is a city where wealth and social status are determined almost entirely by sea level. The best, most colourful, most heavily frequented neighbourhoods such as the French Quarter and the Garden District were high enough to escape all but superficial damage in the flooding that followed Katrina. The Lower 9th, by contrast, is at the lowest point of the giant wash basin that New Orleans became in 2005.

Flooding was always a problem. It was inundated when Hurricane Betsy struck in 1965, leading to the biggest exodus of population until Katrina. It wasn't the hurricane that did the worst damage two years ago, but rather the flooding caused by breaches in the levee system designed to protect the city which many experts had been denouncing as inadequate for years.

The Lower 9th filled with fetid water from at least three separate sources. A neighbourhood that had long been a byword for inner-city problems – poor schools and health services, poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, drugs and crime – was all but wiped off the map.

Several people, including New Orleans' Mayor, Ray Nagin, have wondered aloud if the Lower 9th should be rebuilt at all. Some have suggested converting the entire area into parkland. Those uprooted by Katrina from the neighbourhood – a surprising 60 per cent of them owners of their own destroyed homes – have always vehemently disagreed.

That's where Pitt came in. The 43-year-old actor first came to New Orleans in 1994 to shoot Neil Jordan's Interview With The Vampire, based on a best-seller by the local gothic horror author Anne Rice. At the beginning of this year, he found himself back to shoot The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, due for release next year, and loved the place so much that he and his partner, Angelina Jolie, decided to buy a house in the French Quarter.

The couple are, of course, noted philanthropists, largely thanks to Jolie's advocacy work on behalf of children and other causes. Pitt has always been fascinated by architecture, which is why he chose to devote his energies to a socially conscious construction project.

He unveiled his plans for Make It Right in September at a meeting in New York of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative. He pledged $5m of his own money, as did Steve Bing, the film producer, and secured the services of several architectural firms enthused by the idea of showcasing good design for the sorts of people who usually have no access to it.

His key partners have been an environmental design expert called William McDonough, a Los Angeles-based architecture firm called Graft, and a North Carolina investment company called Cherokee which specialises in sustainable development. The designs are based on classic New Orleans architecture – the shotgun, the creole, and the camelback cottage styles.

Everything about the project is profoundly political. Hurricane Katrina, for Pitt, "illuminated the brutal truth that there's a portion of our society that we're not looking after, that we are marginalising. And that shouldn't be." In his vision, the new home-dwellers will no longer be getting "the crap materials that give your kids asthma, increase your health bills. They're not getting the cheap appliances that are going to run up your bills and keep that burden on you. It's a respectful way to treat people."

For the moment, eight families have been chosen to occupy the first houses to be completed. Some people have expressed concern that the houses could be a target for criminals – a concern that is very hard to measure with certainty until the houses are completed, although Pitt and his associates have been open to suggestions from residents and the local police on security measures and placement of windows and other features.

Pitt, naturally, has been accentuating the positive. "I am telling you, there are going to be families returning into homes, they'll be spending Christmas here next year," he said. "They won't have to spend another Christmas away from home."

[Comment] New Orleans: The Perfect Storm

from Infoshop News

With demolition of public housing set to begin mid-December, New Orleans residents are about to loose over 5000 units of public and affordable housing, possibly forever.

by Elizabeth Cook

I told my friend this morning, I think the city is coming apart. An outbreak of robberies, some perhaps by teenagers, authorities believe; homeless population exploding; politicians looking the other way when corruption serves their purpose. I'm reminded, I tell her, of the Bugs Bunny cartoon, where he is busy, furiously, digging underground, trying to tunnel his way to paradise, or a beach, or somewhere pleasant; I can't remember exactly.

He pops his head up, in the middle of the North Pole, and says something to the effect, "I must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque".

It can feel like that sometimes. That one wrong turn and you wind up in a very cold environment.

The kind of cold environment, perhaps, where 17,000+ of our residents, citizens and neighbors are homeless. The kind of cold environment where politicians are willing to tear down viable public housing, for a "theory", and a poor one at that, that clustering the working poor together creates poverty.

The kind of cold environment where our elected "leaders" prattle on about ethics and reform in government, yet look the other way while the head of our federal agency, entrusted with creating housing for the working poor, is under criminal investigation for sweetheart deals that will demolish, viable, public housing for the working poor in New Orleans.

And if there were ever a corrupt concept, than that of destroying neighborhoods where poor people live, in order to combat poverty, particularly when there has been little effort, to date, to replace that housing before it is destroyed, well, you almost have to conclude that it is, truly, about learning to look the other way, to look away from the suffering of others.

Yes noises are being made, for example, for supportive housing vouchers, 3000 to be exact, according to City Councilwoman Stacy Head, that she has requested. We'll take the 3000 vouchers, if and when it happens. But you, Ms. Head, and the city council, are advocating for the eventual destruction of 7000 units of public housing, while you are asking for 3000 vouchers for "permanent, supportive housing". What better place to provide supportive housing, than in the housing developments, where you usually have the support structures as part of the developments?

Go figure.

Then we hear that Ms. Head is willing to have a few, supportive housing units in her district uptown. It's going to take more than a few, Ms. Head, to address this issue.

Two New Orleans East political leaders, City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard Lewis and State Senator Ann Duplesis, are opposing the construction of multi-family housing in the east. They are supported by some home owner's groups. If you look at the proposed rents for that 276 unit complex that they are opposing, it isn't like we are providing housing for the lowest wage earners in the city. Rents would range between $700 and $1300 per month, with emphasis placed on those who can "pay on their own".

Not wanting housing in the east because of the lack of resources there won't solve the lack of resources there. Usually, resources follow people, if we adequately fund those resources and insist that they get up and running again, like our public health system. Having people back in our neighborhoods in the east will increase the voices and the pressure for adequate services out there.

Factor in the Federal Emergency Managment Agency's (FEMA) decision, apparently backed by the city, to close all FEMA trailer group sites, and this is added wind pressure in this perfect storm. FEMA have been quietly closing the sites since August. This decision involves the closing of 2797 trailers, and over 5000 residents of the city. Many of the residents are questioning where they will end up.

The FEMA trailers were less than ideal, perhaps even dangerous in terms of the levels of formaldehyde found in them. But residents find themselves between a rock and a hard place: board with already stressed and over-crowded homes of relatives, or homelessness. There simply is not enough affordable housing to go around in New Orleans right now.

There is of course another alternative here: what about the federal government providing the necessary resources to rebuild our neighborhoods and infrastructure, like they should have done in the first place? What about creating a massive job works program, with living wages, funded by the federal government, to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?

Why are our city leaders lobbying for inadequate resources, rather than the adequate resources needed to rebuild?

Why has ICF earned $16.7 million off of the Louisiana Recovery Authority's Small Rental Property Program, when not a single, small rental unit has yet to be funded by that program? This is criminal. This is corruption.

But it serves the interest, at least so far, of agendas: that of reducing the numbers of affordable units for the working poor, in order to keep people from returning. What other conclusions can we draw, when we see politicans advocating for reduced numbers of units available to the working poor? Demolishing public housing, limiting the construction of multi-family housing in the east, the failure of our elected "leaders" in the rebuilding and rehabing of our rental units in the city, is all creating the perfect storm in New Orleans, a storm that is engulfing our social services and crippling our city.

We're all waking up in that middle of that storm to a very cold, very windy landscape of our fellow residents sleeping in tents, with no bathroom facilities, huddling together in an encampment on the front doorstep of City Hall, where at least they feel safe from constant police harassment and the revolving door of Orleans Parish Prison.

We hear of our friends and neighbors getting sick from stress, some dying. This is ongoing. We have residents who have been fighting the good fight for public and affordable housing, even though they are under tremendous stress in what has become the daily fight for survival in New Orleans: rising Entergy rates, through the roof, rising food prices, inadequately funded public transportation, a fractured and chronically underfunded public school system in competition with charter schools.

And there are those who have simply given up, given up on their dream to return home. And isn't that what the powers that be have wanted? For people to give up the fight to return home?

Demolishing the buildings of public housing won't make our problems go away. It will exacerbate what may become the permanent shortage of affordable housing, and chronic, catastrophic numbers of homeless people.

Will the motto then be, "get used to it"?

New Orleans symbolizes U.S. war on poverty

from USA Today

By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

NEW ORLEANS — If this is Ground Zero for the federal government's war on poverty, it's hard to find the front lines.

Since Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005, only 94 homeowners — and no tenants — have received federal aid to rebuild. The poor have been treated at walk-in health clinics while a federal-state partnership struggles to finance a new medical complex.

"I thought they would do a lot for us, but so far they haven't given us anything," says Albert Walker, 75, who's using insurance to rebuild a one-story home in the devastated Lower 9th Ward, which nearly disappeared under 11 feet of water. "Most of the people down here are waiting on the road to recovery."

Fifteen months ago, President Bush stood in Jackson Square, in this city's fashionable French Quarter, and pledged to confront poverty, racial discrimination and a "legacy of inequality."

Now, as Democrats prepare to take charge of Congress, advocates for the poor say New Orleans symbolizes the government's fits and starts in addressing poverty. They want lawmakers to increase the minimum wage, cut interest rates on college loans and expand health insurance to more poor children.

Lawmakers take on issues

Democrats say they intend to raise the profile of anti-poverty issues. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who will take over a key housing subcommittee, plans hearings here next month. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, plans to examine how poverty negatively affects economic growth, sprawl, crime, health care, even national security. "We can't afford poor folks," he says.

Any broader war on poverty will have to wait. The annual budget deficit is nearly $300 billion. "It's a reflection of the political realities," says Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., outgoing chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. "The public is fed up with these growing deficits."

Politics, too, presents a problem. Conservatives led by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., don't want to spend heavily on social programs. Even liberals such as Rangel don't want to raise taxes. Senate Republicans can block almost anything from passing. "I don't see a concentrated war on poverty by Democrats," says Jared Bernstein of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. "But you are going to see a couple of well-chosen battles."

Like many, Tracie Washington remembers the Bush speech.

"I bought it," says Washington, director of the NAACP's Gulf Coast Advocacy Center. Today, she says, "It's like that old Wendy's commercial — 'Where's the beef?' "

"There's been very little done for health care, very little done for mental health services, virtually nothing done to shore up and support the criminal justice system," says Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. "For all the president saying 'We'll do whatever it takes,' it hasn't quite happened that way."

The majority of New Orleans' poorest residents remain outside the city, unable to return because of a shortage of habitable housing and soaring prices. More than 200,000 former residents are in the nationwide diaspora that Katrina created, about 80% of them black.

Tenants have yet to receive anything from a federally financed program intended to help people get back into their homes, even though more than 50,000 units of rental housing were destroyed. The federal government plans to replace many of those with private, mixed-income developments.

Making the immediate shortage worse is the Department of Housing and Urban Development's plan to tear down more than 4,000 units of public housing. HUD says it would cost $130 million to rehabilitate the run-down projects. Low-income-housing advocates have gone to court to block the move. HUD now says it will be phased in.

It has been left to groups such as Catholic Charities USA and ACORN, which represents low-income families, to gut flooded houses. "The joke here is that we need a New Orleans Study Group," ACORN founder Wade Rathke says.

The federal government has invested billions into housing, health care and education, but red tape and a fear of fraud have slowed the flow of funds. The administration wants to change systems that were failing before Katrina struck:

•Housing. It's trying to turn renters into homeowners with jobs and rent-to-own programs. The state is readying $1.5 billion in rental aid to landlords and $1.7 billion in low-income tax credits.

•Health care. It wants to replace the old two-tiered system, in which the poor were relegated to Charity Hospital, by having the Department of Veterans Affairs join Louisiana State University in building a modern medical complex.

•Education. It's investing in charter schools, where parents play a direct role, rather than rebuilding the old public school system that was one of the nation's worst.

Donald Powell, the federal coordinator of Gulf Coast rebuilding, is frustrated with the delays. "We need to be very resourceful about finding ways to speed up the process," he says.

Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, says aid was slow to arrive and tied with red tape. "We asked for significantly more than we got in lots of categories," he says.

Despite Bush's speech on poverty Sept. 15, 2005, little has been done to address it nationally.

The need is clear: Census Bureau figures show that about 37 million Americans, or 12.6%, lived in poverty in 2005 (annual income of $19,971 or less for a family of four). The poverty rate has been rising since 2000. About 8.8 million families have severe housing-cost problems, up 33% since 2000.

New Orleans had the eighth-lowest median income in the nation among big cities in 2005 — $30,771 — before Katrina. Orleans Parish had the sixth-highest poverty rate among counties, 24.5%.

Some experts say that if disaster struck elsewhere, poor city dwellers would fare worst. "We're under-investing in our urban core," says John Powell, executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have pledged to vote early next year to raise the federal minimum wage, stagnant since 1997, to $7.25 an hour over two years from $5.15. That would have an immediate impact in states such as Louisiana that have no minimum wage laws.

Program funding sought

The leaders also will try to reduce interest rates on student loans and expand the Children's Health Insurance Program to some of the 9 million children still uninsured.

Anti-poverty advocates such as Mark Greenberg of the liberal Center for American Progress say more money is needed for programs set to expire in coming years: food stamps, child care, Head Start, job training. They want changes in the tax code that would benefit the poor, such as an expansion of the earned income tax credit.

Democratic lawmakers caution against high expectations. They point to the budget deficit, the future insolvency of Medicare and Social Security and their own promises to pay for new spending.

"The body politic does not want to mention the word 'poverty.' All you're going to hear about is the middle class," Waters says. "We've got to talk about poverty, not only in Louisiana but in America."

As the 2008 presidential campaign heats up, experts say, the issues of poverty and inequality will be given voice by Democratic candidates such as former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who plans to announce his quest in New Orleans next week. "This is going to be a reference point for the debates nationally about equality and poverty," Rathke says.