Public Housing in New Orleans
These units have been boarded up for 2 years. The citizens who lived in these units were evacuated as a result of Katrina and Rita. They are now living in other cities, Houston and Dallas and Austin and Atlanta, all over the place, and they thought they would be able to return once these units were rehabbed.
These units, many of them, were not destroyed. Some of them had minimal damage. For example, the one housing development, La Fete, only had water damage on the first level. And they could have not only rehabbed that first level of La Fete projects, they could have opened up those other units, but they did not. They have been boarded up. And people's lives have been in limbo living in these other cities, without the opportunity to come home and without the support that they needed.
In my committee, the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, we worked and we put together a bill, H.R. 1227. That bill passed out of that committee and off the floor in March, and we sent it over to the Senate, where it has languished.
But basically, that bill laid out not only the fact that we would do a survey, because HUD was saying, well, many of the people had left, they did not want to come back. In that bill, we asked for a survey to be taken. We also placed in that bill that 3,000 units would be rehabbed right away, people would be given an opportunity to come back who wanted to come back, then the residents would be involved, working with HUD and HANO, that is the local housing authority, and the City of New Orleans to talk about the future of public housing development, what they would like to see.
We are not against redevelopment. We think that there should be planned development. We think that, first of all, they should look at these units and see which of them should remain. They should work with the residents and the local elected officials to talk about what would be redeveloped. And we were very surprised. We were very surprised when just a few days ago they started to dismantle the "Big Four" public housing units.
Well, because they started, two different entities went ahead and got restraining orders. They have been working with a non-profit group, the Advancement Project, and Ms. Tracy Washington and Mr. Bill Quigley, two lawyers that got involved and got a restraining order to stop the bulldozers. And then the AFL-CIO that had been working on one of the big developments known in New Orleans to stop that development. So now a lot of people have gotten involved.
The conservancy got involved because some of these are historic properties. And now the city council, it has been thrown into their laps because when they started to look at what HUD was doing in dismantling, they found that they were breaking any number of laws. They had not gotten the permits, and perhaps they don't even have the legal authority by which to do it because they had taken over these public housing projects. They were in receivership. But the time frame for the receivership had run out. And so we don't even know if they have the authority.
So now we have at least one restraining order that remains and the city council that is going to take a vote about each of those. AFL-CIO was involved in the one called St. Bernard, one of the biggest ones.
I have drafted a letter to the members of the city council explaining to them what we thought was an arrangement that we had worked out with the HUD Secretary, Mr. Jackson, that would do the rehab of a limited number of units and involve the tenants and the plan for the redevelopment of all these units. We are surprised they want to bulldoze them. We are very surprised because homelessness has doubled in New Orleans. There are no rental units. Many of those units were destroyed. People are still living in FEMA's trailers. And to think that they would dismantle 4,500 units of public housing is unconscionable when people are looking for places to live.
So I have developed a letter that is going to the members of the city council and will try to engage them as much as I can to explain what we have done here. We also asked Speaker Pelosi, along with Senator Reid, to put together a letter asking the President not to dismantle these units. That letter has gone out. My letter is going out. The telephone calls are going forth. But it is important for the people of this country to understand what is going on.
There were rumors following Rita and Katrina that perhaps some people wanted to change the make-up of New Orleans. Some people wanted to get rid of the poor people and thought that all of that city should really become the tourist attraction with all of the hotels and the gambling and all of the other things, and workers should live outside and not inside New Orleans. And some people think that they are carrying out that kind of a mission and that kind of program. I would just ask the Secretary to not demolish these public housing units.
It is Christmastime. To give to the people of New Orleans a Christmas present of tearing down these units is unconscionable.
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