Protests lead officials to halt demolition

Housing for the poor is
scarce in New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Demolition of three public housing complexes, slated to start this weekend, was halted Friday amid complaints about the scarcity of housing for the poor after Hurricane Katrina.

The Housing Authority of New Orleans, which is run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, agreed to postpone the start of demolition pending a hearing Thursday before city council. Opponents of the tear-down plan had filed a lawsuit contending that the council’s consent was required by the city charter.

Work crews had been expected to start demolition today under the housing authority’s plan to replace about 4,500 federally administered public housing units with mixed-income, mixed-use development. Demolition at a fourth complex, B.W. Cooper, can continue because the city council approved demolishing 14 buildings there four years ago, lawyers said.

“We knew the law, HANO knew the law; maybe they forgot it,” said Tracie Washington, a civil rights lawyer who filed the suit.

Rachel Wisdom, a lawyer hired by the housing authority, said that because the city ordinance was vague the agency agreed that the city council should take the matter up.

The council backs redevelopment, but with caveats. On Nov. 1, the city council passed a resolution to support a congressional bill that calls for phased redevelopment and one-for-one replacement of public housing units. By comparison, the HUD plan envisioned quicker redevelopment and a reduction in the number of public housing units.

It is premature to say what HUD would do if the city council rejected its plan, said Donna White, a department spokeswoman in Washington.

The proposal has sparked lawsuits, congressional legislation and street demonstrations in a city where housing for the poor has been scarce and homelessness has soared since Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, and more than two years later, the city’s public housing residents, most of whom are black, are still scattered throughout the country. Rental prices have risen sharply for private housing that remains in the city.

Advocates for current and former residents of public housing say the redevelopment plan won’t make available enough housing to allow the thousands of exiled residents to return.

HUD says about 3,000 families who once lived in New Orleans public housing remain scattered across the country, and social workers say the number of homeless people in the area has doubled to about 12,000.

There is no consensus on what’s best for New Orleans’ poor, even among public housing residents. Redevelopment would diminish the public housing stock and drive many into less stable voucher programs. Repair of brick and barracks-style projects badly damaged by Katrina would keep intact poor but close-knit neighborhoods.

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson criticized the protesters in an interview aired Friday, saying many of them have never lived in public housing.

“It’s amazing how people have little respect for low-income people in the sense that they want them to go back into that drug, crime-infested environment where they don’t live,” Jackson told WWL-TV in New Orleans.

He said he has spoken to about 400 displaced public housing residents “and almost to a person they want to come back to something better than what they left.”

Sharon Hall, a nursing home clerk, has fond memories of neighbors and cheap rent in the St. Bernard housing development, where she had lived all her life until Katrina hit. But the most part, she said, life there had been tough.

There was violence and too many unemployed residents; her ceiling fell in and repair workers would take a week to fix a stopped-up toilet.

“The walls are peeling. The mold is there. They would have to take the heating system out,” said Hall, 35. “Why not let them tear this down and bring something better back, something fresh for the future, for the children, for the old folks?”