This makes no sense. Not from any perspective. We heard that the plan for New Orleans was to get rid of renters, but many renters lived in undamaged brick heritage public housing which lent character to the outskirts of the Old Quarter. These same units could easily be re-classified to become single family dwellings for mixed classes, without the huge reno costs already distributed for all the other owner-occupied dwellings of mostly middle class citizens. Renters have been practically ignored for restoration of former homes or new housing, and their trailer homes are scheduled for dismantling. Many of those units were found to have high levels of toxic insulation. No plans have been announced with respect to accommodation for those who will lose their trailers.
Natalia BUSH REGIME DESTROYING PUBLIC HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS BLOOMBERG - In New Orleans, public housing doesn't mean bleak high-rise towers. The city has thousands of units with Georgian brickwork and lacy ironwork porches that came through Hurricane Katrina barely scathed. Yet the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, last week approved $31 million worth of contracts to demolish 4,500 public housing units of such high quality that some are on the National Register of Historic Places. The demolitions, scheduled to start as soon as Dec. 15, come as the city faces an unprecedented shortage of rental housing. To add insult to injury, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced last week that it would evict hundreds of residents of emergency trailer parks in New Orleans over the next six months, even though they don't have houses to return to. Merry Christmas, poor people. . . New Orleans tracts have been among the worst managed, suffering most of their damage from neglect by the Housing Authority of New Orleans. HUD took over the local agency and had determined before the storm to evict residents and demolish thousands of units. Low-income housing advocates were not the only defenders of these projects. Sturdily built and sensitive to local history, the tracts always had the potential to lose their "project" stigma and join the rest of the city as an invigorating mixed-income neighborhood. . . HUD and the local housing authority have steadfastly resisted revamping thousands of units on four other public housing sites, preferring to bid them out for new construction of mixed-income developments that will take years to build and house a fraction of the neediest. Washington policy makers see homeowners as the only class of residents who deserve aid. So billions have been poured into financing to stretch inadequate insurance payouts, like "soft" second mortgages that become grants. And these programs have worked. Neighborhoods of mostly owner-occupants are swarming with contractors completing repairs. Renters -- about half the households in New Orleans -- have been left to fend for themselves. Before the storm, many landlords could make a profit renting out aging ranch houses or Creole cottages at modest rates. Few were subsidized, most served people of modest income and many are remarkable works of historic architecture that could catalyze more growth if fixed up. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=muse&sid=a4BOhsJzfYeU --- avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 071208-0, 12/08/2007 Tested on: 12/8/2007 1:55:35 PM avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2007 ALWIL Software. http://www.avast.com _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
