Flyers Threatening Homes Owned by Whites Fuel Furor Over Razing of Public Housing Units

Date: Thursday, December 13, 2007
By: BlackAmericaWeb.com and Associated Press

The redevelopment plan has grown more emotional since it was unveiled in mid-2006 as tens of thousands of former residents and other poor residents found themselves unable to find housing in New Orleans because of a housing shortage and inflated rents.

Critics of the effort say the redevelopment plan will drive poor people from neighborhoods where they have lived for generations, but HUD denies that and says the plan will create an equal amount of affordable housing as existed before Katrina hit.

Several black activists say New Orleans could experience some type of civil unrest this summer.

Mike McQueen, New Orleans Bureau Chief for the Associated Press, said the heated issue of public housing is yet another topic that presents a huge challenge for journalists.

"On the surface, it is a Katrina-related story about people who want to return to their homes in New Orleans," McQueen told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "But anyone who knows the story of New Orleans -- and particularly the recent history of a post-Katrina New Orleans -- knows the real issue at play here is race.

"The public housing residents are mostly poor and black," McQueen said. "The people making the decision may or may not be black, but they're not poor. And many middle-class blacks have a strong emotional -- in some cases, family -- attachment to the idea of the projects in New Orleans as a site of positive black culture -- in particular, music."

"AP journalists have to wade into this story of conflicting narratives and come up with journalism that provides the undisputed facts," McQueen said, speaking on the many people trying to return home to New Orleans, "but puts those facts in context  for a national audience while avoiding the temptation to use words that can be read as advocating one point of view over the other."

New Orleans now has more white residents than before the Katrina struck over two years ago.

Some current and former public housing residents and their supporters claim the redevelopment plan is an effort to rid the city of its poorest residents. But hundreds of other New Orleans residents have expressed their opposing views about the flyers and the public housing issue on radio, television and online, particularly on www.nola.com.

A sampling:

• "People are saying, "Where are they supposed to live?" The answer is in another city."
• "Is this what Martin Luther King taught them?"
• "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you can't afford to live in New Orleans, go to the library (ever been there?), do some research, and hop a bus to a city you can afford. I am a homeowner, and I don't take kindly to threats. If I were the powers that be, I would move to knock down all of the projects before Mardi Gras."
• "Time for this city to CHANGE, and become better than ever. All subsidies should be suspended in a city that is getting America's tax money to rebuild. No section 8. No subsidized housing. No food stamps. No welfare. Let the strong survive."
• "If Katrina did us one favor, it was that she cleared out public housing in New Orleans."
• "Don't be naive. The black politicians are behind this. Their jobs depend on large masses of uneducated, government-reliant fools. That's how they get into office."

Last week, protesters angry about the pending demolition of dozens of public housing buildings stormed a City Council meeting in a confrontation that ended with a prominent civil rights lawyer being hauled off in handcuffs.

The protesters gathered at the City Council chambers to demand the council's members stop the demolitions. But when the council took no action, the protesters broke into chants and shouts and forced Arnie Fielkow, the council president, to call the session into recess.

In the ensuing chaos, a civil sheriff's deputy grabbed and shoved civil rights lawyer Bill Quigley up against the wall where he was handcuffed. Quigley has led a legal fight against the demolitions. The deputy's report said Quigley allegedly refused to leave the premises and shouted "I'm not going anywhere."

Quigley said he saw no reason for being detained and taken to a sheriff's trailer on the grounds of City Hall. He was released shortly afterward and cited with a charge of disturbing the peace.

"We live in a system where if you cheer or chant in the City Council you get arrested but you can demolish 4,500 people's apartments and everybody's supposed to go along with that? That's not going to happen," Quigley said. "There's going to be a lot more disturbing the peace before this is all over, I'm afraid."

James Borders, writer, actor, activist and New Orleans native, said in a recent essay that the Big Easy could be headed for civil unrest, a repeat of the 1960's race riots.

"This is a crossroads in our destiny," Borders wrote. "By the time summer arrives, the city will be either one incident away from a full-scale race war or one indictment/election from voluntarily surrendering all our power back to white folks and assuming the Darky Position once again."

"Many local power brokers are working diligently to make the latter option become reality, but conditions will certainly be ripe for the former scenario to be played out, too," according to Borders. "Large numbers of poor, uneducated black folk will no longer be penned up in public housing projects, which have traditionally given many of them a false sense of well-being and security."

"Unemployment and underemployment will continue to make it difficult, if not impossible, for lower-income blacks to support their families," he added. "Latino immigrants and whites will continue to grab most of the construction and service-industry jobs."

According to the Times-Picayune, "Quigley said the $760 million citywide project breaks down to the government spending $400,000 per each new apartment -- most of which developers aren't required to deliver until July 2009. But HUD said it is saving at least $150 million by erasing the aging sites instead of trying to make them all habitable."

Public housing residents and advocates went to Mayor Ray Nagin's house last week to protest the planned demolition of four public housing developments. But they never got to see him.

There are few road blocks left to stop wrecking crews from taking down the public housing buildings. A federal judge has refused to stop the demolitions as have Congress and city officials. Demolitions could start as early as Saturday.

The demolitions are part of a plan Alphonso Jackson, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, pushed for after Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. HUD's goal is a wholesale redevelopment of the city's public housing by tearing down the old barracks-style buildings and replacing them with mixed-income neighborhoods.