Housing Protests Gets Unofficially Ignored by Nagin

Homeless in New Orleans? Sleep safely in Duncan Plaza, at least for the weekend.

With the Essence Festival soaking up tourists’ dollars only a block away, Mayor Ray Nagin has directed police to leave homeless folks in the small park outside city hall unmolested.

The homeless were invited to participate in a 24-hour tent city staged in the plaza by organizations representing renters, displaced public housing residents, as well as the homeless in the city. More than 50 protestors gathered at the site for July 4th – including a delegation of survivors from the 2004 tsunami.

The mayor’s generosity is no doubt linked to Essence celebrating its post-Katrina return to the city.

So rest your weary bones safely, but be ready to move out Sunday afternoon, when the NOPD will most likely clean-up Duncan Plaza.

Organizers served lunch and dinner and drew a large number of homeless people seeking shelter from the rain, a hot plate for dinner, and a safe place to sleep.

“Today on Independence Day, when a lot of people are celebrating the freedoms that they have in this country, we in this city are not tasting those freedoms,” said Malcom Suber of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund.

Nearly two years after Katrina, New Orleans officials tout the ongoing recovery efforts, showing off the repaired Superdome, a cleaner French Quarter and reconstruction surge on Canal Street to lure national events and tourist dollars into the city.

But everyday citizens find themselves struggling to find clean, safe, affordable housing.

Protestors demanding four items from the city: A definitive plan to help renters return to the city;
A definitive plan to address the catastrophic level of homelessness in the city;

Passage of a city ordinance making it illegal for landlords to price-gouge and create a tenant-landlord council and;

A resolution from the City Council signed by the Mayor in support of Senate Bill 1668 (the Senate version of Maxine Waters HR 1227).

Organizers have committed to continuing to feed the homeless who gathered in support at least once per day while the park is still a safe space. Efforts are being made to garner support from local churches to continue serving a daily meal in Duncan Plaza.

Although the city is recovering in small pockets all around, the homeless issue continues to grow, with some groups estimating the homeless population has tripled in Katrina’s aftermath.

The closing of thousands of inhabitable units of public housing combined with a near doubling of rental rates serve as a gateway to homelessness for many of the working poor in the city.

Two of the city’s largest developments – St. Bernard and Lafitte – remain closed by HUD which operates the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Although the units received little damage initially in the storm, the brick structures have been sitting with little or no maintenance

Landlords have been allowed to continuously raise rents, and repair storm-damaged properties to minimal living standards, and the present Louisiana laws are not tenant friendly.

Most renters in New Orleans do not have a written lease, but instead have month-to-month verbal agreements with the landlords. Those renters lucky enough to have a lease may still have no legal rights, unless the tenant takes on the cost of copying and filing the lease with the city.

HUD provides a list of available properties accepting the Section 8 voucher on the local HANO website. But, phone surveys of many of those listed properties, found them in various stages of readiness and with steep costs in order to move-in.

The event was organized and sponsored by Survivor’s Village, the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Common Ground Relief. Several other local organizations attended and have joined in solidarity to fight for affordable housing.