Demolition of New Orleans housing to take place Dec. 15

The Housing Authority of New Orleans announced at its Nov. 29 public meeting that, in conjunction with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, it has rescheduled the demolition of five public housing projects in New Orleans. The demolition will now begin on Dec. 15.

The projects are St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete, Fisher and B.W. Cooper.

Originally, some of this demolition was to take place earlier in November. Nationwide demonstrations protesting the demolition, including one in New Orleans, took place on Nov. 13.

Ignoring the outcry of residents from the working-class neighborhood of Algiers, HANO officials stated their approval of $30 million in contracts with demolition companies to bulldoze these projects, which are generally still in good condition. The plan is to replace these public-housing units with “mixed income” neighborhoods—meaning a mixture of low-income and luxury housing, at least on paper.

According to the Nov. 29 Times-Picayune, the breakdown of the demolition contracts include: “$9 million for the demolition of 132 buildings at the vacant St. Bernard development, in agreement to St. Bernard Redevelopment; $6 million for demolition of vacant buildings at the B.W. Cooper, in agreement with Keith B. Key Enterprises; an additional $955,000 to Keith B. Key for ‘certain predevelopment expenses’; $5.8 million for the demolition of 55 buildings at the vacant C.J. Peete, in an agreement with Central City Partners; $2.5 million for the demolition of 70 vacant buildings at the Lafitte, awarded to D.H. Griffon of Texas, Inc.; $6.3 million for the demolition of buildings and the construction of streets, lighting and other utility infrastructure at the Fischer, to support new home construction, awarded to Boh Brothers Construction.”

Once the demolition concludes, the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency has reserved $35 million in tax credits for HANO to “rehabilitate” these buildings, affecting 1,949 units.

If housing officials truly represented the interests of poor and working people, the combined amounts of the $30 million in contracts for demolition and $35 million in tax credits for “rehabilitation” could be used for expanding public housing, not tearing it down.

Housing activists in New Orleans and elsewhere have exposed this plan to destroy public housing as nothing more than racist gentrification as a means to discourage poor residents from moving back to New Orleans since being displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A disproportionately high percentage of these displaced people are African American. HANO and HUD are in cahoots with the big real-estate and private developers in transforming New Orleans into a city to attract mainly white, affluent people and businesses.

Combine the impending destruction of public housing with the devastation of the lower Ninth Ward, where massive flooding took place during Katrina due to breeched levees, and you can see a concerted effort to deny the vast majority of African Americans—tens of thousands of people—the right to return to New Orleans where generations lived before them.

What’s happening in New Orleans might remind some people of what has been happening in Iraq during nearly five years of a racist military occupation. In Iraq there has been the systematic destruction of an entire country. Iraq’s so-called rehabilitation is carried out with multi-billion-dollar contracts provided by the U.S. government to Halliburton, KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root) and other corporate interests, which have collected the money but still fail to provide sufficient water and electricity to Iraq.

The New Orleans-based Coalition to Stop Demolition stated on Nov. 30: “What is at stake with the demolition of public housing in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing, thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their human right to return.

“Although this situation is unique and urgent in the city of New Orleans, it does not occur in isolation. The plans for redevelopment here are part of a national assault on public housing, in which tens of thousands of homes have been demolished in the past decade.

“In coming to New Orleans, you are helping us to draw this line in the sand. You are taking part in a critical piece of the ongoing fight against neo-liberal incursions into our cities. Here in New Orleans, as the bulldozers arrive to destroy any hope for the right of return for thousands of families, you can help us push back this agenda, and stand fast with us to promote a more people-focused reconstruction: one that is based on a vision of justice and rights for all people, and not profits for corporations and the desires of those with power.”