New Orleans’ Public Housing Slowly Evolving

August 29, 2010

 When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans five many years ago, more than 5,000 families lived in the city’s community housing advancements. Now, only a third of them are back again in public real estate. Numerous have found homes elsewhere.

Some former residents think the storm gave the city an excuse to get rid of some of its poorest citizens. Housing officials say, about the contrary, it was a chance to enhance their lives.

Nearly a year after the storm, then-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced that the government would demolish flood-damaged public real estate projects and replace them with new, mixed-income developments. He said it would bring a “renaissance” to city neighborhoods.

Many who evacuated from community real estate fought those plans. They argued that developments slated for demolition could be repaired. But, eventually, the government won.

‘I Don’t Like My Lifestyle’

Today, Bobbie Jennings, 64, is among the first few dozen families to move back again into one of the new advancements. It is called Harmony Oaks and is on the site from the previous C.J. Peete real estate project, where Jennings lived for more than 30 many years before the storm.

But she’s not happy.

“In their eyesight it may be better, but in my eyesight it is not,” says Jennings, a retired nursing assistant. Don’t get her wrong, she states, the new units are lovely. Jennings has a two-story townhouse, with 2 1/2 baths and a modern kitchen, which she shares with her daughter and two grandchildren. But Jennings says she’s just not comfortable living there.

“People close to here do not know me. They don’t know my grandchildren,” Jennings says. “I really seldom sit outside. [There] is nobody to talk to now.”

Many of her former neighbors haven’t returned, and they couldn’t even if they wanted to. Only one-third of the units in the new complex are devoted to public housing. The rest will go to residents with greater incomes. The government’s plan would be to prevent the old days of warehousing the poor.

Jennings says she also has to spend greater rent — and utilities, which she never had to pay before. And her twin sister, Gloria Williams, now lives around the corner on another street. She utilized to reside right next door.

“It’s harder for me,” Jennings states. “I love the unit, but I don’t like my lifestyle.”

Mixed-Income Development

But not every previous C.J. Peete resident feels the exact same. Jocquelyn Marshall grew up here and says there’s no question Harmony Oaks is a vast improvement over the aging, crime-ridden development she fled five many years ago.

Marshall now has a three-bedroom brick home with peach shutters that she shares with her son. Everything is clean and new. There’s even a large outdoor pool and exercise room nearby for her to use.

“I love my house,” she states. “I adore the landscaping, how it goes up a little on a hill.”

Marshall, who’s president of the Harmony Oaks Neighborhood Association, knows that the journey right here has left lots of ill feelings and mistrust, that housing officials promised more than they could deliver, and citizens had been sometimes lied to and left within the dark. But she states, at some point, previous residents had to choose whether to keep fighting the planned demolition or assist to shape what was to be constructed instead.

“Many people, when they were relocated off the website and given vouchers to live in other cities, they started living in better conditions. They didn’t wish to arrive back again to poor plumbing. They didn’t want to come back to the crime,” she states.

David Gilmore, who runs the Real estate Authority of New Orleans, states Hurricane Katrina only hastened what was bound to happen sooner or later to the city’s aging public housing stock. And he thinks it’s for the very best.

“Nobody in his correct mind would ever develop a C.J. Peete again, or any of these developments again, within the same manner in which they were constructed the very first time,” he states. “So what’s the option? The choice is then to go figure out what makes much more sense.” And that, he says, is the mixed-income communities now being built, with less stigma for the poor and more opportunities for residents, like job training and counseling.

Gilmore says he understands that individuals are frustrated. Redevelopment takes a long time, and it could be a number of more many years prior to the projects are complete. The city’s real estate authority has also been hampered by mismanagement and corruption. Gilmore was brought in earlier this year by HUD to turn things close to.

“I think folks need to be told the straight scoop correct from the outset,” he says. “Yes, we’re going to do this. And no, we’re not going to do this. We just can’t get it done.”

And that includes telling public housing residents that not each and every one of them will get to return, that some instead will get vouchers to find other housing in New Orleans and elsewhere. In fact, that’s what many previous public housing residents have already done. Gilmore states that no one who qualifies for aid will be abandoned.

Sky-High Rents

Real estate advocates say they’re hopeful he’ll be good to his word. But they’re worried about a shortage of inexpensive units in a city exactly where rents have gone sky high.

Laura Tuggle with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services says there is been a lot of real estate assist from the federal federal government since Katrina.

“But the demand is so huge that in case you had been to re-open the public real estate waiting list these days, I am particular that you would get thousands and thousands of more applications,” she states.

For now, Bobbie Jennings says she’s going to try to stick it out at Harmony Oaks.

“I’m gonna battle until all the fight is gone out of me. But whenever you can’t fight no more, you can’t battle no more. You have to give up,” she states.

This month, she took a hit when her daughter got a work and her rent went up $160 a month. To assist spend for it, Jennings returned the sofa set she was trying to purchase on layaway for her new post-Katrina home. 

Source: NPR News