Housing
The 2005 hurricanes uncovered existing man-made threats to fair opportunity and affordable housing, created by specific policy decisions and many years of neglect. Today there is a gaping lack of affordable housing, a low rate of home ownership, and widespread racial discrimination and residential segregation. Combined with a slow and uneven reconstruction effort, many Louisianans have found it difficult or impossible to start over. Significant, immediate action must be initiated to insure that displaced residents are made whole with affordable and long term housing.
In response to the overwhelming demand to address housing issues, Tracie Washington embarked on several policy and advocacy initiatives, including the 2006 Town Hall Meeting on the State of Housing in New Orleans One Year After Katrina, a partnership with PolicyLink and the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations to form the Louisiana Housing Alliance, and the continued fight for public housing, culminating in the federal lawsuit styled Anderson vs. Jackson filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
LJI also partnered with the Advancement Project, to sponsor a Town Hall Meeting on Housing in New Orleans – Where We Are and Where We are Going in July 2007. This gathering, featuring Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Congressman William Jefferson, Mayor C. Ray Nagin, other New Orleans City Councilmembers, and housing advocates and activists, attempted to address the community’s questions concerning public housing, rental housing, and the Road Home Program.
In the fall of 2007, LJI launched Housing Rights for the Elderly in New Orleans: Preventing Construction Fraud and Unlawful Demolitions. This program targets elderly homeowners, who have received Road Home Program or Insurance funds and plan to rebuild their home, or who have been the victims of construction fraud or an unlawful demolition of their property. LJI attorneys are developing a community construction monitoring system whereby all contractors’ licenses and reputations will be verified, all contracts will be reviewed, and community members will assist in monitoring the construction process on a weekly basis. LJI attorneys will also begin conduct community workshops in early 2008 on contractor fraud prevention and demolitions, an d LJI will publish training materials and distribute those widely to elderly homeowners. LJI is also co-counsel on Idabelle Joshua, et al v. City of New Orleans, where we have requested an end to all demolitions of property by the City without a proper appeals process for property owners.
LJI attorneys are currently using media and other advocacy tools to advocate for permanent housing for all FEMA trailer residents who are in threat of eviction from their FEMA trailers with no place to go. During January 2008, LJI used law students to conduct a large outreach project, targeting residents of FEMA trailer parks slated to close by May 2008. The law students conducted surveys to assess the needs of the residents and they also passed out a comprehensive list of housing and other social services currently being provided in the local area to the residents. LJI plans to release an exposé report based on the data gathered during that survey in late April 2008.
LJI is also working with neighborhoods in New Orleans which have been the most vulnerable to ‘green-spacing’ ideas that were bandied about early on Post-Katrina. Unfortunately many of these neighborhoods have not been able to rebuild fast enough and plan quickly enough to avoid massive land ownership turnover, and continued expropriation discussions. In March 2008, over 150 volunteers helped LJI complete a Community Mapping Project of the Hollygrove and Bayou St. John-St. Bernard neighborhoods of New Orleans. Both of these neighborhoods had historically high levels of African-American property ownership and are also poor neighborhoods.
The goal of this mapping project was to tell a story about what is happening in these neighborhoods, which can be used to support decision-making and consensus-building and which hopefully translate into improved policy development, organizing and advocacy on behalf of these vulnerable neighborhoods. LJI is currently compiling the community mapping data and meeting with the local neighborhood associations to determine how to make this information most useful and easily accessible.
