Housing by the Numbers
Despite the fact that 200,000 residents, of all colors, are still displaced, HUD is authorized to spend $762 million in US taxpayer funds to tear down 4600 public housing apartments and replace then with 744 units. Do the math. 84 percent of the housing units will not be rebuilt. 1000 market rate apartments are expected to price out at $400,000 and up. The breakdown by project is C.J Peete (723 units), Lafitte (896 units), St. Bernard (1,436 units), and B.W. Cooper (1,550 units).
HANO maintains that pre-Katrina New Orleans had 7,000 public housing units, of which 5100 were occupied, 1,900 unoccupied and a waiting list of 6,000 people. The discrepancy has been explained by saying that families had to be matched to size of the apartments.
There are an estimated 12,000 homeless living in NOLA, and one camp is located directly across the street from City Hall. This is an increase of 6,000. There have been charges that not all of the people in the camp are “homeless.” However, all one needs to do is to look under any overpass of the I-10 and you will find tents, lawn chairs and sleeping bags. This is a real time tragedy, and it is difficult to believe that everyone is choosing to live under these conditions.
HANO counters by claiming that there is plenty of housing available, some for as little as $400 per month. Activists counter that the increased utility bills and general condition of the units are significant drawbacks to any incentives to move there.
Housing concerns have reached beyond crisis proportions on the Gulf Coast. Estimates are that there are still 50,000 families living in formaldehyde spewing trailers.
The promotional material for Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine reads: “Sometimes when the first two shocks (disaster and public disorientation) don’t succeed in wiping out all resistance to (disaster capitalism), a third is employed: that of the electrode in the prison cell or of the Taser gun.”
The issues facing the city of New Orleans far outstrip the immediate housing crisis and are reflective of a spreading intellectual malaise which is encouraging the social reengineering of all sectors of American society with projects that benefit the few to the exclusion of the many.
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