Reconstruct New Orleans

Articles and links / Articles et liens

We Are Not OK: Why New Orleans Is Not Ok, Seven Months On by Poppy Z. Brite

Post-Katrina looting continues
(March 28, 2006) FEMA has broken its promise to reopen four multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts for Hurricane Katrina work, including three that federal auditors say wasted significant amounts of money

Information for Displaced Voters

seeks to empower grassroots groups to influence policy for sustainable, equitable and culturally respectful rebuilding.

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Gentrifying Disaster

The powerful House Republican Study Group has vowed to support only relief measures that buttress the private sector and are offset by reductions in national social programs such as food stamps, student loans, and Medicaid.
Mike Davis

The members of Levees.org are holding the US Army Corps of Engineers and the federal government accountable for the Greater New Orleans flood

Rebuilding New Orleans: Principles and Priorities
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Reconfigure, Reconstruct, Rebuild / Reconstruire (ou ne pas reconstruire) la Nouvelle-Orléans

Response to ULI call for suggestions

Jason Henderson, San Francisco State University
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Rebuild New Orleans?

Towards a Sustainable New Orleans Dr. Marty Rowland>
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Brookings Institition Study: New Orleans after the Storm (full study - pdf)
(executive summary - pdf)

With Iraq sucked dry, Bush cronies line up to loot New Orleans
The Bush version of crony capitalism should perhaps be termed predatory capitalism, following as it does so closely in the wake of war and natural disaster

Very few cities actually die, but could New Orleans be one of them?
With every passing day it becomes less and less likely that these and other displaced Orleanians will ever come home. If they do not, then the Crescent City's future is dim indeed. A city can be reconstructed without being recovered, and therein lies the great hazard of post-Katrina New Orleans. If history is any guide, there is little doubt this city will be rebuilt in some form. But will New Orleans be recovered as a real and robust metropolis? And whose New Orleans shall it be?

Evictions the first skirmish in Third Battle of New Orleans- from Wet Bank Guide

If the people of New Orleans are going to have the ability to return, the city is going to need action. The malign neglect of the federal government cannot be allowed to continue. Deliberate inaction in providing immediate housing relief inside the city of New Orleans, in my view, differs from the ethnic cleansing campaigns of tribal Africa or central Europe only by degree of ruthlessness, and not by kind.

The predators of New Orleans
A partial ethnic cleansing of New Orleans will be a fait accompli without massive local and federal efforts to provide affordable housing for tens of thousands of poor renters now dispersed across the country in refugee shelters. Already there is intense debate about transforming some of the poorest, low-lying neighbourhoods, such the Lower Ninth Ward (flooded again by Hurricane Rita), into water retention ponds to protect wealthier parts. As the Wall Street Journal has rightly emphasised, "That would mean preventing some of New Orleans's poorest residents from ever returning to their neighbourhoods"

Resurrect New Orleans: A Better City Is Possible by Van Jones [...] the big fight is to ensure that evacuees are able to participate fully in decision-making about who rebuilds the region and how they do it. Congress should ensure that community organizations have a role in planning, where federal dollars are in play.
And governments and charities must ensure that all evacuees maintain an effective right to vote in the Gulf Coast until they can return.

More blogs about reconstruct New Orleans.

The Mysteries of New Orleans - 24 questions about the 'Murder of the Big Easy'

23. Why isn't FEMA scrambling to create a central registry of everyone evacuated from the greater New Orleans region? Will evacuees receive absentee ballots and be allowed to vote in the crucial February municipal elections that will partly decide the fate of the city?

Hurricane Katrina and Climate Justice

The people of Cancer Alley have suffered the scourge of oil several times over. Every day they breathed the filthy air and drank the contaminated water that the neighboring petrochemcial corporations served up. Many are sick. Some are dead. Now their homes are gone, swept away by a hurricane likely fueled by global warming caused in part by the oil refining that poisoned their community in the first place. [...]
Rebuilding a more green and just New Orleans and Gulf Coast could be an example to the rest of the country and the world of how to use clean energy and environmentally sustainable construction and production to diminish our negative impact on the Earth's ecosystems.

After the deluge, what next?
New Orleans will be rebuilt. But how? Should its slums be replaced by mixed-income housing? And if the city can't attract investors, should we just let it wither?

Power to the victims of New Orleans - Naomi Klein
With the poor gone, developers are planning to gentrify the city. "The people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night", scattering across this country to become homeless in countless other cities while federal relief funds are funnelled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, chemical plants. We will not stand idly by while this disaster is used as an opportunity to replace our homes with newly built mansions and condos in a gentrified New Orleans."
The idea could take hold in the United States, and it must. Because there is only one thing that can compensate the victims of this most human of natural disasters, and that is what has been denied them throughout: power. It will be a long and difficult battle, but New Orleans's evacuees should draw strength from the knowledge that they are no longer poor people; they are rich people who have been temporarily locked out of their bank accounts.

CNN Publishing People's Opinions on New Orleans

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Readers' opinions

Orleanians Answer Chicago Tribune Columnist
- M. Rolufs
- S. Hall

Levy a levee tax paid in dirt

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Not The New Deal
President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism - that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever he can. (He still hopes to privatize Social Security, F.D.R.'s biggest legacy.) So even his policy failures don't bother his strongest supporters: many conservatives view the inept response to Katrina as a vindication of their lack of faith in government
New Orleans will rise as a pale imitation
"Each week that the people of New Orleans stay in exile means that fewer and fewer will return ... And the people of New Orleans are what's irreplaceable" ... the poor were the most important, and the least likely to return. The culture that we attribute to New Orleans was largely the creation of its poor — black, white, Creole and Cajun. The music, the food, the attitude — it was all born out of grit, poverty and repression, and while such problems should never be romanticized, their contributions should never be forgotten either."
The case against rebuilding the sunken city of New Orleans
"The storm could become an excuse to banish the African-American poor in the interests of the private redevelopment of New Orleans, or the city could become the geographic center of a progressive program of urban revitalization."

Was it deliberate policy at FEMA to scale back the assistance offered by FEMA in future disasters and to privatize the response once needs were assessed? This would be consistent with the US practice in Iraq.

Recent NYT Op-Ed articles
A 'New' New Deal
If "market forces" are allowed to design the recovery program, much of New Orleans and environs will be plowed up (think no-bid contracts for Halliburton and Bechtel) and reduced to a theme park for hot jazz, good restaurants and grubby jobs. [...] Former Senator John Edwards proposes a vast new jobs program, patterned after the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), in which the displaced and the poor are hired at living wages to clean up and rebuild their devastated communities.

Time for a Tough Question: Why Rebuild?

Grace and Generosity in Houston
Meanwhile, in Baton Rouge, Bush-connected firms like the Shaw Group, Bechtel and Halliburton are lining up to get big portions of the $62 billion in federal money that will soon flood the storm region. The fact that some of these companies had been convicted of defrauding the federal government in the past, are under investigation again for corruption in Iraq and were once banned from federal contracting due to unethical practices has not stopped the process. Many of the people here at the Astrodome, aware of the money headed to the region, say they too would like the chance to help reconstruct and shape their city.

Reform the Administration's method of reconstruction in the Gulf
Dreaming A New New Orleans
"As a resident of a major city I have noticed that when the redevelopers get to work it rarely includes the poor returning back to the same location that they were dislocated from especially since the tax value will increase and they will not be able to afford the rent being that it will probably range between $900.00 and 1200.00 per month. So we can bet they are not included in this plan."
Reclaiming the Big Easy will require hard decisions

"The help from outside is appreciated and needed, but isn't it time for residents to take care of their own homes and neighborhoods? [...] These are jobs that should go to the people of New Orleans."

FEMA Needs to Tell People What It Intends for Their Homes:
[...}some of the houses are a total loss and need to be torn down. On some portions of satellite images houses formerly aligned in neat rows now look like they were casually dropped and haven't been lined up yet. Those homes are gone. There is no question that they need to be replaced. But many others, some in quite deep water, may well be reparable. The question is this: How much of New Orleans does FEMA plan to restore, and how much does it plan to simply replace. And if the houses are replaced with something else, are they to be replaced for their original owners? Or will the land be taken by eminent domain and redistributed?

A World Treasure

Much Of New Orleans Was Built On Former Swampland And Below Sea Level. After The Flood, Should We Do It Again?

STRATFOR: George Friedman: New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize

New Orleans's present is the future for all coastal cities

News/Actualité

• FEMA to expel volunteers from NOLA
• NO Mayor Accused of "Racism"
• City of New Orleans Violates Restraining Order

New Orleans residents faced a standoff with demolition workers in the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans on Thursday morning after city officials ordered the violation of a temporary restraining order against demolition. Community members and legal activists have been working to insure that all residents receive notification and give permission when their property becomes a target for demolition.
• Cyril Neville Won't Be Coming Back
  
  "Without African Americans having ownership, economic equity and the same type of things the French Quarter gets -- like tax cuts -- the city will never be the same. The 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Wards should have their own tourist commission. Build our own hotels and restaurants in those areas. The key is ownership. Then I would think about going back and living there. But we're still practicing American democracy. How can we ever bring it to somebody else?"
• From Outrage to Action: Survivor's Assembly and March for Right of Return
• Corruption as Usual in Old New Orleans
  ...the politically connected have landed work as subcontractors in the few hot economic markets of post-Katrina New Orleans. Whether the job involves debris removal and staging, roof tarping, trailer sales or building inspection and cleanup, people with familiar names and faces are making money -- often in areas where they seemed to have no particular expertise before the storm
• Louisburg Square tenants threatened with eviction again Letter to the Attorney General and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff prepared by a visiting volunteer attorney on behalf of the tenants of Louisburg Square who, after winning in court Nov. 2, have been served notices to vacate on November 30th.
• ULI Founder played key role in promoting racial covenants and other deed restrictions to keep African Americans out of neighborhoods
  Nichols was an influential real estate "pioneer" from Kansas City in the first half of the 20th century who played a key role in promoting the use of racial covenants and other deed restrictions, to keep African Americans and other "undesirable" ethnic and racial groups out of neighborhoods.
• Progress made in opposing improper evictions of displaced New Orleanians
  This is a clear-cut victory for the people in a long-standing battle waged by the most victimized population of the Katrina disaster against government entities and landlords around the right of the people to return home.
• Why is FEMA interfering with New Orleanians' right to vote?
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's refusal to allow its records of where Hurricane victims have relocated to be used to send voters notice of upcoming elections
• Urban Land Institute Issues Report
  The Urban Land Institute, of which developer Joseph Canizzaro is a former president, has published the report submitted by its panel on rebuilding New Orleans. The leader of the panel is another real-estate developer. The Rebuilding Lousiana Coalition, a group of citizens and advocates, has issued a critique of parts of the ULI report (both in MS Word format).
• Nagin says New Orleanians are on their own in recovering their homes
  In an interview made available on NOLA.COM, Ray C. Nagin, a probable candidate for the mayoralty in New Orleans if elections are held in February, said that he doesn't believe predictions that the demographics of New Orleans will change, excluding African-Americans. He says he feels that anyone who really wants to will "figure out a way to come back." more...
• N.O. Mayor's Commission Denounced to UN Representative in Report on Human Rights Violations
The enormous population shifts created by the aftermath of Katrina threatens to disenfranchise tens of thousands of evacuees, many of whom lack the resources to return. Commissions of private citizens have been set up by local and state officials and tasked to develop plans for the future of the region, with no accountability to the electorate. Thus, the debate over such vital issues as the size of the city, whether to rebuild in certain areas, and how to spend federal funds, is largely confined to business elites.
• U.N. poverty expert finds N.O. 'shocking'
After listening to Hurricane Katrina victims and disaster relief workers for several hours Friday, as well as touring parts of New Orleans, United Nations expert on human rights Arjun K. Sengupta, called America's response to the disaster "shocking."
• The mayor and the governor have already named their blue ribbon rebuilding commissions. Representatives of community-based organizations have not been given seats at the table.
• Mayor's Commission Links to Real-Estate Industry Think Tank
• Orleanian Responds To T-P: Be Wary of Urban Land Institute
• Cry For Help From NO Resident
• New Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again!
Renters in New Orleans are returning to find their furniture on the street and strangers living in their apartments at higher rents - despite an order by the Governor that no one can be evicted before October 25. Rent in the dry areas have doubled and tripled.
• No Place To Go?
"Drennen points out that many of those neighborhoods were dysfunctional to begin with. He says the city now has an opportunity for "twenty-first-century thinking": Rather than rebuild ghettos, New Orleans should be resettled with "mixed income" housing, with rich and poor, black and white living side by side.
What Drennen doesn't say is that this kind of urban integration could happen tomorrow, on a massive scale. Roughly 70,000 of New Orleans' poorest homeless evacuees could move back to the city alongside returning white homeowners, without a single new structure being built. Take the Lower Garden District, where Drennen himself lives. It has a surprisingly high vacancy rate--17.4 percent, according to the 2000 Census."
Here's how we identified more than 11,000 empty, rentable homes in New Orleans
• Disaster Profiteering: Purging the Poor in the New New Orleans

"...the people re-populating New Orleans didn't look very much like the people who lived there before. It was overwhelmingly white, whereas the people still in shelters were overwhelmingly black."

• Congress members demand Halliburton suspension (pdf)
• Windfalls of Disaster: Information on Reconstruction Contracts
  "They're just giving the contracts out without a competition. But they won't give a contract to a minority firm,"
• Bulldoze Poor Communities While Rebuilding For The Rich?
• The same players who bungled the reconstruction of Iraq are rebuilding the Gulf. Surprised? "In Iraq, limited accountability, corruption, massive cost overruns, and devastating failures fed the chaotic mess that has followed the 2003 fall of Baghdad. Nonetheless, the largest Katrina contracts have been won by many of the same politically connected companies that oversaw that failed reconstruction."
• Commentator Accuses Mayor Nagin of Corruption, Says Bush Will Protect Federal Money From Corrupt Politicians
  "Corruption has been a way of life in Louisiana for generations. And it would be a crime to waste the funds earmarked for recovery, not for corrupt state and city officials. ...President Bush and Congress need to make sure that federal funds are spent properly instead of put to political and personal use by pathetic politicians."
• Government funds are pouring in to "hurricane relief"
  - and before the most basic needs of people had even been taken care of, billions of dollars in government contracts were already being promised to giant engineering and construction firms with high political connections.
• "We were alarmed to hear the first company to get a contract in the rebuilding of New Orleans was Halliburton, another non-bid contract,"
  said Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice, which bills itself as the largest anti-war coalition in the United States.
  The largest U.S. contractor in Iraq, Halliburton Co.'s subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root has been given a $29.8 million contract to rebuild Navy bases along the Katrina-battered Gulf Coast.
  Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton, whose subsidiary secured no-bid contracts in Iraq after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein.
• "Toxic Soup" Argument Only a Pretext for Bulldozing Poor NO Neighborhoods?
  Bush said there are significant environmental concerns. New Orleans still lacks safe drinking water, and there are fears about the contamination in the remaining floodwaters and the muck left behind in drained areas of the city. "The mayor _ you know, he's got this dream about having a city up and running, and we share that dream," the president said. "But we also want to be realistic about some of the hurdles and obstacles that we all confront in repopulating New Orleans."
• Reconstruction ruling benefits Bush pals
  Workers who have found the courage to return to their devastated communities suffered another blow last week when President Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act.
• Let the people go back to their houses to make their own decisions, house by house. They want to do it, but grand plans are afoot that seem likely to preclude that process. In the end, Hurricane FEMA could do more damage to the city than Katrina if let to run its course. [...] Except in obvious cases, in which a house has been replaced by a debris field, it should be up to homeowners, in consultation with structural engineers and other such professionals, whether NOLA homes that are still standing need to be demolished, not handwaving politicans making sweeping generalizations. The vast majority of New Orleans houses are still standing and should not be razed without their owner's consent.

• from marketplace.publicradio.org, via Looka:

  "Noble words worthy of applause, says Louisiana's AFL-CIO president Sybil Holt. The only thing missing is actions to back them up. "Within five days, corporations contracted for support included the Shaw Group, Fluor Corp., Bechtel National Inc. out of San Francisco, CH2M Hill out of Denver, Dewberry Technology out of Fairfax ... Fluor Corporation is out of California." While local workers and business owners were still dealing with the devastation of their flooded homes and trying to relocate their families, insider deals in Washington had already laid the foundation for the entire rebuilding effort.

• WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

• Nagin on rebuilding: New Orleanians should take the lead


Sunday, 8:40 a.m.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Sunday morning that any rebuilding effort should be led by New Orleanians and not outsiders. [...] "I don't want anybody outside of New Orleans planning nothing as it relates to how we're going to rebuild this city without us signing off on it"
• The president, in a brief question and answer session with reporters after his tour on Monday, said that government coordination in rebuilding the city and the region was paramount and that local vision should determine the direction of the reconstruction. "It's very important for the folks in New Orleans to understand that, at least as far as I'm concerned, this great city has got ample talent and ample genius to set the strategy and set the vision," Mr. Bush said after his 40-minute tour. "Our role at the federal government is, you know, obviously within the law, to help them realize that vision. And that's what I wanted to assure the mayor."
• "Matthew Whiticar, 38, who has stayed in New Orleans begins cleanup outside the convention center. An Illinois company hired about 30 refugees to help clean streets and businesses." (Caption on AP photo in Minn. Star-Tribune - Presumably this "refugee" is a citizen of New Orleans.)