Struggle continues as
Katrina survivors face eviction
By
Larry Hales
Published Dec 2, 2006 10:22 PM
One hundred residents of the Woodlands apartment complex in New
Orleans face eviction by a double-dealing landlord and the
property management group to which he sold the complex.
The complex was being managed by the Common Ground Collective.
The collective’s stated mission is to provide short-term
relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the Gulf Coast
region, and long-term support in rebuilding the affected
communities in the New Orleans area.
Common Ground is a community-initiated volunteer organization
offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope
to communities by working with them, providing for their
immediate needs. The emphasis is on people working together to
rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.
Common Ground Collective had taken over managing the apartment
complex known as the Woodlands. The collective wanted to provide
affordable housing, and its long-term goal was to purchase the
property to create cooperative housing, small-business
cooperatives, social programs and human-services offices. Common
Ground would maintain rents that were the lowest in the city.
Common Ground had rehabilitated more than 100 housing units in
the Woodlands complex and provided for 100 residents who signed
leases with the group.
The owner of the complex, Anthony Regenelli, who had entered into
an agreement with Common Ground to purchase the complex, sold the
Woodlands out from under the collective to the Johnson Property
Group, LLC. Both Reginelli and the new owners are trying to evict
100 residents during this holiday season.
The collective—begun after Hurricane Katrina had pass over,
and its after-effects and the criminal neglect of the poor and
Black residents were being felt—stands in the way of those
who want to gentrify the whole city.
After Hurricane Katrina, rents in New Orleans
skyrocketed—all part of a process to push out the poor and
mostly Black residents to reinvent New Orleans as a play
destination for the rich.
Before Katrina, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment was
$578 a month. After the storm the average rent shot up to $803 a
month. The city has also slated 5,000 public housing units for
demolition.
Developers, landlords and bankers in the area salivated at the
prospects, and even conspired to try to oust a mayor they had
once helped to elect because he is Black and remarked on keeping
New Orleans a “chocolate city.”
The people of New Orleans, though dispersed throughout the
country, have vociferously expressed their desire to keep their
city—by marching, protesting and re-electing Mayor Ray
Nagin. Though Nagin represents the aims of the New Orleans ruling
elite, the re-election campaign had become a matter of
self-determination for the city that was nearly 70-percent Black
before the storm.
The residents of the Woodlands are ready to fight, once again
showing that the people of New Orleans—a city where the
culture was forged during slavery and the racist repression that
followed the end of chattel slavery—will not simply let
their city be taken from them.
The residents will be in court to fight the eviction orders at 9
a.m. on Nov. 28, at the Second City Court, at the Historic
Algiers Courthouse. They have initiated a letter-writing campaign
and will be calling news conferences and protests.
Sample letters can be found at: www.commongroundrelief.org/files/woodlands1.pdf.
The group can be contacted via e-mail at [email protected].
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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