Housing: A Crisis of Courage, Compassion & Leadership

HARD TRUTH
 
Housing: A Crisis of Courage, Compassion & Leadership
 
Too bad it's not spotted owls or endangered wolves or some damned beetle.
 
There would be greater concern for preserving their habitat than New Orleans officials, HUD and the white media have shown for the residents of public housing. They have not even been allowed to retrieve their possessions since the hurricanes. Heck, you would at least let a dog get his bone. But public housing residents are less than dogs to the folks who run things here.  
 
If you said you were going to eliminate 82% of the habitat for certain animals, the government would step in and stop you. But this is not about bald eagles; it's Black people, so anything goes.  If thousands of animals had to sleep in front of City Hall or piled up under the expressways, someone would have compassion on them.
 
But when a city wants to rid itself of its Black, poor population the rules of human decency and even logic fail to apply. At a time when nearly 200 thousand displaced residents are trying to get back here and over 12,000 homeless human beings are sleeping in the cold, HUD plans to destroy 4600 units of public housing, replacing it with 744 units. They claim they want to provide better housing for low income people.  
 
Pastor Marshall Truehill, one of the few visible ministers in this situation, got it right: They tell us they want to build new mixed income communities when there's 100 acres of vacant land in Desire, about 50 acres in the Florida and 33 acres in CJ Pete. You've got 20 acres at Imperial Drive that's been cleared for 15 years.
Why does HUD want to tear down strong, habitable buildings instead of fulfilling its promise to rebuild on sites that are already cleared off? No one has an answer. Nations have been built in less time than it has taken HUD/HANO to redevelop vacant land it owns right now. Why would anyone trust them to demolish and replace these buildings in a few months? The logical thing to do is open the existing decent structures so people can return, build on the empty sites and then move people into then new structures before demolishing the old.
The only reason whites are applauding HUD's insane logic is that the result will be the continued displacement of thousands of Black people. Otherwise the stupidity, incompetence and sheer cost would cause an uproar. It’s insulting that no one wants to admit the real intent of this move. The only honest racists are the ones who spend all of their time on the pages of racist daily newspapers.
The worst part is the absence of outrage, courage or involvement of the established or old guard leaders of all stripes. The major civil rights groups and the ministers don't seem to be on the field.    Ministers should be on the front lines since the people trying to return made up their congregations. Elected officials should be on the front lines fighting for the people who put them in office. Instead our officials go overboard trying to prove they are not helping Black folks. For them no cause is worth the risk of losing the next election.
 
No one in the old guard leadership seems to want to go to bat for the working poor in New Orleans and make no mistake about it, if you are Black and working in New Orleans you are probably poor, whether you fit the federal guidelines or not. Inflated rents, scarce healthcare, soaring utilities, higher prices for everything put your meager salary in the poverty range.
 
With tourism the main industry here that means that the average Black person is working for a restaurant or hotel that pays minimum wage or less and provides no healthcare or other benefits. Most establishments won't even let employees work fulltime to avoid paying into unemployment.  It's as close to slavery as you can get. Contrary to media and political stereotypes these workers and the elderly occupied much of public housing in New Orleans. Where else can a slave afford to live?
 
No politician will demand a living wage or rent control or affordable utilities or low income housing. It's not about deadbeats or subsidizing people forever. It's about creating a city that is fair and beneficial to everyone who lives here. It's about recognizing that for displaced residents this city is HOME whether they owned property or not. You don't become less human because you lack a deed.
 
Equally useless to the returning poor is the eerily occasional mayor, C. (or is that Can't See?) Ray Nagin, who is likely to make history by becoming the first New Orleans mayor to be recalled. This would also make him the last negro mayor for a couple of decades at least. He has already sided with HUD and the developers, making bizarre statements and refusing to use the legal power and political influence of his position to make a difference. For some odd reason Ray wants to stay in office. So when you hear that the invisible occupant of City Hall has changed his name to Ray Muhammad or Abdul Kwanzaa Nagin it means that the heat is on again and he needs Black support to keep his position for just a little longer.
 
Unfortunately I don't possess the wisdom to provide a quick fix answer for the Katrina-Rita displacement crisis. As always, I'm saying we need to stop and put together our own vision and plan. Looks like everybody else brought one to the party but us. Even those processes that were supposed to include us seem to have left us marginalized. What is happening now is the result of other people carrying out plans for this city that are not in our best interests. We can't win by forever reacting.
 
We have to work on developing new leaders. This is 3 to 5 year process that will have lasting effects if done properly. We can provide actual training in the city and wherever survivors may be and gear up for a serious return. Meanwhile, we need to support folks like Monique Harden and Tracey Washington who are emerging as part of the next generation of competent, committed leaders. Kali Akuno and Malcolm Suber have been providing credible leadership in this struggle and need your support now more than ever.   
 
We need to prepare for the 2010 elections. Anyone who is not taking a stand now needs to go, and we need to be recording WHO is with us and who is AWOL. A mass voter registration drive could go a long way to making a change. Believe it or not, there is still a Black majority in the city.
 
We need to get nasty about the accountability of the current sorry crop of leaders who are pimping the Black community. It would be appropriate to treat them with the same rudeness and hostility that Jesus did with the self-serving leaders of his day. If preachers don't want to get their hands dirty dealing with issues, then the public should help them keep their hands clean. Do you know how filthy money is? Lots of germs there.
 
In a few weeks many of the self-serving cowards we call leaders will be elbowing their way to the front of the line for the Martin Luther King parade, a debacle in itself, in hopes of getting their faces in the news. For some this is the only civil rights work they do all year. In a perfect world they would be heckled openly until they left. The annual 'prestige' circus that emanates from the Lower 9 should probably be boycotted as an insult to anyone who ever really stood for something.    
 
We desperately need a People's King Day activity that really communicates the spirit and meaning of King's work and the movement he represented. Next month might be a good time to start, with housing as the first year's focus.
 
As the character of the city changes to a meaner, nastier more unfeeling persona, the charm that draws people here will be lost. The purge of Black people, if successful, will add to this loss, making New Orleans a far less desirable tourist location, and ultimately impacting the pockets of the purgers forever.
 
And that would be poetic justice.
 
Otherwise, Whatchagonna Do?