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Prescott College Community Members Report from the Area
Joan Clingan and Frank Cardamone
June 2006 Visit, Week 1

On June 13, 2006 Joan Clingan and Frank Cardamone arrived in Louisiana with the hope of reconnecting with some of the individuals, families, and communities that they assisted on their visit in September 2005.

June 19, 2006—Today we drove to Gentilly and saw more of the same kind of destruction and struggle to return NO to the community it can be. One of the more shocking realities here is the number of abandoned cars. New Orleans has a large number of parking areas underneath the freeways—we’re not sure, but these look like they might be park and ride lots, where people park and take public transportation to work. Perhaps they are just parking for workers from that very busy business and tourism area. The thousands of cars that were parked there when the flooding began are all still sitting there, evidence of high water marks on each, now destroyed, with stickers pasted all over the windshields offering to remove them for free. We often wonder what will happen when we finally run out of fossil fuel and there are millions of cars needing to be disposed of. This city gives you a real taste of what it means when perfectly good cars, expensive cars, and all the old cars of a city are suddenly rendered useless. There’s a lot of metal for landfills that someone will need to remove from these Gulf Coast states.

We also drove down to the campus of SUNO (Southern University at New Orleans). SUNO is where the Race, Gender, and Class Project is housed, and our original connection from several years ago to the city. SUNO is one of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and a state institution whose campus was right on the lake in a very low elevation. It was underneath 10 feet of water for weeks and the campus is completely lost. It sits there waiting to be gutted and razed.

We met with our colleague Jean Belkhir who teaches at both SUNO and UNO and has an office on the UNO campus; the second floor offices of the sociology department at UNO were damaged by winds and rain so he is in a new location. FEMA provided large trailers and has created for SUNO the only all-trailer state university campus in the country, which reopened this spring. It was wonderful to see students everywhere and to even see evidence of a FEMA success story—the only one we’ve heard.

SUNO and UNO both have provided housing in trailer encampments for their faculty and students who were left without homes, as many of them were renters. There is no plan in the future for where they will go.

Jean is going to introduce us to one of his students who is a pastor of a church that serves the St. Bernard Projects. We are looking forward to being able to connect Patti and the Heartfelt Foundation with a person serving people in a New Orleans community that is struggling to regain its footing.

With hope,

Joan and Frank

June 18, 2006 [Updated with corrections and clarifications June 23]—Today we biked out to the Lower 9th Ward. On the way there we were delighted to find a recently opened corner bookstore in Marigny and stopped to escape the rain. While we were there a resident of the neighborhood came in pleading for something mindless—she said if she didn’t get something totally innocuous soon she was going to attack Nagin. She was happy to disappear into the graphic novel section. As happens in small bookstores, we were soon in a conversation with the person who worked there. Mostly just listening to him talk to us about the situation as he sees it. Our conversation began when he asked if we were visiting and one thing led to another. He told us that the locals here are really just talked out due to so many journalists and volunteers and story seekers. Yet he went on and shared a lot of the frustrations the locals are experiencing.

He was clearly torn between acknowledging the gratitude and appreciation folks have for groups like the Common Grounds Collective, which is made up of volunteers who are gutting and cleaning houses for people who don’t have the means to hire contractors to do it, and the feelings of many residents who dislike that privileged white college kids who would never have set foot in these neighborhoods a year ago, are here now wanting to "help the disadvantaged." He repeated many times how good intentioned the work is, and how grateful people are, but how wrong it feels to have this presence of privilege right in their homes.

He talked about the situation with many of NO's housing projects still being locked down and Nagin's very outspoken plan to have them demolished and replaced with other more profitable undertakings and the surprise that he was re-elected anyway. It's no secret that this plan was in place well before the storms and will now just be easier with everyone out of their homes. [Addendum June 23: HUD confirmed earlier during this week that it does intend to demolish four of the ten largest public housing projects in NO, or 5,000 units, and provide rental vouchers instead (which of course can't be used in New Orleans if there is no rental housing).] This lock-out means that no one can go back in even to get their belongings. [Correction June 23: Although this is a commonly held belief in the city, we talked with residents of the St. Bernard Housing Development/Project, which is one of the four scheduled to be demolished and folks can make appointments individually with 72 hours notice to go in and get belongings (lots more on St. Bernard Project later).] Even though the project buildings are two and three stories high, and only the apartments on the first floor were under water, the city will not even allow residents to return and get their belongings out of fear that if they let them in, they’d never leave. One of the most powerful acts of collective resistance in New Orleans has been the accomplishment of locals from neighborhoods that were under water and that remain without any services, such as electricity, phones, garbage pick-up, etc. People from all around these neighborhoods moved back in and staked their position as home owners. This kept the city from being able to condemn and raze the neighborhoods on a large scale. When residents can get back in, they don’t leave. The city knows this and so keeps residents—who are primarily working mothers, elderly, or disabled people, including many who have lived there for decades—locked out of their homes in the projects—which pre-storm were in better shape than many of the houses and neighborhoods in NO. So mold continues to grow, critters have made their way in to get to the food, and dishonest people have broken in to steal anything of value. And the residents cannot do anything—there are fences preventing them from cleaning and returning to their homes or simply retrieving their belongings.

The worker at the bookstore shared that he is a new resident of New Orleans, a student at UNO for the past year, so he feels he doesn’t have much right to have an opinion about the future of the city, but he said that clearly someone needs to come forward with a large overarching plan for redeveloping the city that includes creating or rebuilding housing for all aspects of the New Orleans community. Right now that simply is not happening. The highest income residents are just fine—even the ones in the one high end neighborhood that was flooded. Middle income people tend to have better insurance and have been able to work the system; many are on their way to rebuild, though many are stuck in the system and still have not received FEMA assistance or insurance. And the low income or those on public assistance are fundamentally locked out. FEMA is considered a joke here by most. We hear this over and over. And the city’s plans about restoring New Orleans have absolutely nothing to do with this city’s history and people—the city frets about having lost half its population and half its workforce, yet has essentially locked out all of its working population.

We rode our bikes for several hours in the Lower 9th Ward and into Arabi and of St. Bernard's Parish. It is hard to believe that we saw what we did. We knew it would be bad, but allowed ourselves to hide behind a modicum of naiveté and think that we might find streets filled with strong willed locals rebuilding everything despite the city’s insistence that they stay out and that these neighborhoods and homes be bulldozed.

What we found was a huge part of this city that still has no public services at all—no power, traffic lights, trash pickup, phones—nothing. The stores and businesses that line the main streets are all destroyed and filled with debris. Doors and windows are non-existent and business after business is simply sitting there as it was when we were here in September. Abandoned cars and even boats sit everywhere. The only thing that looks different is that the debris is gone from the roads, and cars are driving through. Otherwise, little if anything has happened here since August 29, 2005. This creates a situation where people are living in homes without water or power in an area without lights and proper law protection and enforcement; which of course allows New Orleans' existing criminal element to thrive and problems to increase that are caused by youth who have no kind of creative outlet, educational opportunities, or even entertainment possibilities. Now that school is out of session more families with kids and teenagers will be returning to these areas.

Further into the residential neighborhoods we found much of the same, house after house completely destroyed. Most had extensive structural damage from the storm and then just fell apart as the water rushed through and then sat there for two weeks. But even those that didn’t have structural damage from the hurricane—perhaps even the majority of houses—were significantly damaged or destroyed by the flood water that kept them submerged for more than two weeks. There were many yards with nothing left except the foundation.

There are many houses that have not had anyone inside them since the storm—these were probably rental properties and the people who lived there simply do not have the means to return to the city to look for any surviving belongings.

Perhaps an equal number of houses are gutted and waiting for the next step. We don’t know the details of the various regulations, but there are many rulings here about what needs to be done to rebuild and of course to receive any assistance. We know that before a permit to rebuild can be granted, the house must be gutted, rewired, and re-plumbed. Home owners with flood insurance and access to volunteer workers have been working at this. Many churches and charity groups are providing this service for free to those who don’t have the means to do it. ACORN is doing amazing work here, having already gutted over 1,000 homes for low income folks all over New Orleans—all supported by volunteers and donations. (The Acorn web site has a number of slide shows and videos of the current condition of New Orleans.) There are also bureaucratic deadlines, and depending on who you talk to, they vary from last month to the end of the summer. Deadlines that say that if a house has not been gutted it will be bulldozed.

There is spray paint all over the front of every home. It began with the National Guard, DEA, and other rescue workers alerting each other to the house’s occupancy condition. It has dates, numbers of people found, dead or alive, and pet information. Then there is more recent spray painting with messages from home owners that say DO NOT BULLDOZE. There are signs everywhere provided by various agencies alerting no bulldozing. And there is the occasional request to destroy and remove a house that cannot be saved. We read in the New York Times that 4,400 home owners in St. Bernard Parish have made request to have their home destroyed and removed by the volunteer church groups. We also read in that article that one of the largest charities doing this work is pulling out due to the barriers or back-log caused by the city. They simply can’t afford the worker and equipment time while nothing can be done due to bureaucratic delays. [Addendum June 23: It was announced today that an agreement has been reached and that the free demolitions will resume now that clear plans are in place for the handling of toxins such as fluorescent bulbs and freon.]

The third category of house is the one where residents have returned. They live in FEMA trailers on their front lawns and driveways as they work to gut and repair their homes. Some streets have many of these, and some only one here or there. A few homes we saw had electrical power that has been brought in on new lines. We haven’t asked anyone about that and it’s not clear what one must to do to qualify for that.

And though rare, we even saw a few brand new houses that have been built to fully replace the old one. We've heard that Habitat for Humanity is building in the area, but don't know if that's how these houses have been built.

There are signs all over this city offering services of bulldozing, gutting, carpentry, removal, etc. There are signs everyone stating a political position about the city’s future. Mostly there are signs saying “We’re Home and We’re Staying” “Rebuild New Orleans” “ReNew Orleans” “Don’t Bulldoze” and so on. It’s very hard to imagine what will happen to the people who are here in their homes and even those who have rebuilt homes, if the city has its plan and eventually condemns and razes these neighborhoods to build condos, malls, parks, business districts, or pumping stations. There is a concern among the residents of NO that the city is criminal in its choice to approve construction and allow citizens to move into their homes if the area will be razed in the future despite their efforts and presence. We choose to believe and hold our intention and vision for the success of these people. We trust that their resistance and rebuilding will secure them and their neighbors a home. Time will tell what will become of this part of New Orleans and the people for whom it is home.

On the way back we rode through Treme. Treme has always been one of our favorite neighborhoods where we ride bikes every year along side the neighborhood kids. This part of the city was not under as much water and did not sit in water for as long as the lower neighborhoods and it looks like it is closer to returning to a healthy community though there is extensive damage everywhere and many, many empty homes. We were pleased to see the usual people sitting on their stoops all over the area. We passed through several block parties—perhaps celebrating Father’s Day. The absence of kids and pets everywhere we’ve been has been sadly stark, but we saw more families back in Treme than we've seen anywhere else so far.

We were just beginning to feel some hope seeing families back in Treme when we came to the Lafitte Housing Project. We knew that many of the city’s housing projects are locked down to prevent residents from returning, but this was beyond what we could understand. Every single door and window on the ground level, and all doors and windows on higher levels where there is a balcony, have been sealed with individual steel security doors. The extent and expense that this city has gone to in order to prevent people from returning to their homes is deplorable and beyond our comprehension.

Joan and Frank

June 17, 2006—We bought bikes today from Richard at the Farmer’s Market/French Market in the French Quarter (he’s there with inexpensive rebuilt bikes every Saturday and Sunday). We bought our first NO bikes from him five years ago. Bikes will allow us to visit many of the neighborhoods that have not yet been supplied with services so we can talk to the people who are there trying to rebuild. Before we leave Louisiana we will give the bikes to people who can use them to get to work or in their process of seeking work here in the city. We spent much of today riding around the nearest neighborhoods and in the evening rode along the Riverwalk—a long sidewalk that runs for a mile or so along the Mississippi River. The absence of homeless people is stunning. This is a city where there are always many folks who live on the streets or work very low wage jobs who you see present on the streets. Workers on bikes or hanging out with friends at the end of the work day are a huge part of the population in and around the quarter. The silence from not having this community here was very striking.

One of the cycles in place right now is the city wanting to see its tourism industry back to the numbers that sustain it, yet there is no housing available for most of the workers. Even at the hotel we are staying in now that we're in the city, we have observed that there is only one person working alone at the front desk for very long hours. French Quarter service staff is visibly at a minimum. Restaurants and shops all have limited staff. Without affordable housing and rental housing, it will be awhile before there are enough working-class folks in this city to operate the tourism industry at its full capacity.

June 16, 2006—We left Baker this morning and drove to New Orleans with a goal of seeing the places we visited when we came here last September. It’s easy to see why much of the world thinks this is last year’s problem. From the highway to about the middle of the metropolitan area, or the actual start of New Orleans, everything looks fairly okay. For tourists coming into the airport and heading to downtown New Orleans things largely look repaired or untouched. First you drive past miles of Jefferson Parish neighborhoods that were hit by the Hurricane but other than few exceptional areas that had some storm flooding, they were never under water. Then you go to one or more of the downtown/uptown areas of the Central Business District, Magazine Street's shops, the convention area, Garden District, and French Quarter, which are all along the river on the stretch of land that is the only actual part of New Orleans proper that were not under water. You see evidence everywhere of the storm's destruction, such as boarded up windows and buildings, broken street lights, missing signs, dozens of roofing workers on top of the Superdome, and more abandoned cars than we want to think is possible. But overall it looks not all that different than it did pre-storms—a large, rather dirty, city. It’s easy to come into the Big Easy and believe that the problem is handled, that donations and support are no longer needed, the reconstruction is under way, and all is well. Ray Nagin’s huge face smiles down all over the city from billboards proclaiming “Our Mayor. Re-Elect Ray Nagin.”

We drove first to the French Quarter and Marigny, since these are the areas that we have called our home when we’ve stayed in this city each year for the past five years for the Race, Gender, and Class Conference sponsored by Southern University at New Orleans. We like the locals who live here and welcome us. We buy bikes and ride around each night seeking wonderful food and music. This is the part we know best, and is always our starting place.

These areas were never underwater and are primarily back to their regular activity. Some residents have left and we noticed more houses for sale than we remember in the past. Houses in this high ground area are extremely expensive right now. As we mentioned rentals are almost non-existent and the rare rental is asking a lot more than pre-storm. A lot of businesses are still closed. It is June, so tourism is down naturally at this time of year, but we heard from workers here that it is extremely slow and only starting to regain some momentum. They are hoping that the publicity around the continuance of Carnival/Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest will bring more tourists back. Their livelihood depends on it.

The Bywater area nearest the river is where we stayed in September following the storms and flooding. At that time it was surrounded by barbed wire, tanks, and debris. There were only a few random residents squatting on their own properties, trying to ensure that their homes were not bulldozed or locked down in their absence. Today all of the outer signs of a police state are gone, and we found that many more residents are in their homes. But it is still largely empty and unreliable as a community. For example, garbage pick-up is completely random and residents never know when or if it will be removed. The amount of garbage being created is high due to construction, and it shows in the numerous and massive piles of trash bags. Some shops in this neighborhood and in Marigny seem to be missing in action. But for the most part, it looks like residents and businesses are there or coming back.

We also went out Esplanade and made a short drive through Treme. Once we have bikes we will visit these areas again. In September this area was abandoned and locked down by law enforcement and impassible debris. Now, nine months later, the police state appears to be over and the debris caused by the storm has been removed, only to be replaced with immense piles of debris coming out of the houses, which must all be gutted, rewired, and re-plumbed, and then approved by whichever official is doing that, before any rebuilding can begin.

Outside of the laundromat in Marigny, we met Jarnell. He had been moved by bus to North Carolina, then Texas, then Oklahoma. He just got back to NO at the end of May when he could verify that he had a place to stay. He feels very blessed to have met a guy on the street doing construction, and is now working for him and able to make good money. But not enough to get him into a home of his own yet. He is staying at a friend’s, but needs to leave there to be in a safer space. Jarnell talked a lot about his experience here. We haven’t asked anyone to talk or asked any questions, people just seem to need to talk. There is a sense among many New Orleanians that outside of New Orleans everyone has forgotten or thinks it’s all okay. We tend to agree with that perception as the response we got this year when we asked for donations to bring here was very small compared to the huge response we got to our request last year. We also heard comments about “them” not being grateful and not needing help, or about how FEMA and other agencies had it under control now. We wonder if our nation has really forgotten that half of New Orleans' citizens were forced out of the city and many are still trying to come back.

Jarnell talked about the water coming in to a space where he was working under a house and filling it in minutes. About his efforts to get to his family member’s homes and make sure they were safe. About the death and destruction he witnessed first hand. His resentment at seeing the city locked down while people died in hospitals and nursing homes, was balanced by his gratitude that he and his family survived this. He talked about his frustration at the system that has stopped providing rental assistance and has still never provided any of the promised aid to him. At seeing folks whose houses around him were not under water (he is working in Marigny and Bywater, which were not flooded) who are now using the aid received to fix their homes while he cannot even get back to his home in Franklin. He interspersed every comment of frustration with an acknowledgement of gratitude that he is alive and the blessings he has received in being home and having work.

The city may be coming back to life, but for people like Jarnell there is a long row to hoe ahead.

Joan and Frank

The city may be coming back to life, but for people like Jarnell there is a long row to hoe ahead.

Joan and Frank

June 13 - 15, 2006—We arrived at the Louis Armstrong airport in New Orleans on June 13 and drove directly to Baton Rouge/Baker. It’s been just over nine months since we were here volunteering our time, energy, and hearts in a church shelter in Baker, which is east Baton Rouge. We were feeling pretty anxious to get back there and see if we could reconnect with anyone we met last September.

Although Baton Rouge wasn’t hit by the hurricanes last August and September, it was hugely affected when its population doubled with an influx of residents from places south, who found themselves displaced and homeless following the storms and flooding. Churches, schools, and other community groups all over Baton Rouge and the surrounding areas made room for those in need. We had found our way on September 10 to Bethany Baptist church in Baker, which took in hundreds of people between August 29 and sometime around mid-November, and then took in folks again in February when FEMA’s subsidizing of hotels stopped and folks once again found themselves homeless. Many of the folks we met there were moved to trailer encampments in a cow pasture in Baker and we were hoping to reconnect with some of them.

We went to Bethany first, hoping they’d have some record of where people were relocated when the shelter closed. They gave us directions to the trailer site, but had no record of where anyone went who left the shelter. They shared that Catholic Charities had been involved in helping find people places to go and suggested we try them. We drove out to the trailer community, and passed several others on the way there—there seem to be more trailers in Louisiana right now than the entire rest of this country. Security is extreme and brought up the same question we had last year at the shelter—is this intended to keep something out or to keep something in? It has the look and feel of a police-state refugee camp with barbed wire, chain link, and checkpoints. We gave the guards the names of some of the folks we were hoping to find, but without a trailer lot number, we were as far as we’d be able to go. After some calls to Catholic Charities, we were able to set a meeting with a case worker who said he’d try to help us locate our acquaintances.

We went back to Renaissance Village, as the encampment is called—it’s hard to know what to call it since it’s not really a trailer park—to meet with Sam. When we arrived he was sitting across from a young woman who looked like she’d just won the lottery—as long as she signed in the right places. Sam had confirmed an apartment for her by working with various agencies. He had located some furniture from other agencies. And he mentioned having one group who would help her out with some of the small stuff—she said “The small stuff is important!” Her obvious delight at being able to leave the trailers for her own apartment in Baton Rouge was understandable.

Sam told us that he works to connect the folks in the trailers with the various existing agencies so they can get some of the support they need to find work, housing, and of course deal with anything related to their previous homes. He told us individual stories as they demonstrated the things we were interested in. For example we had heard that banks were now foreclosing on people who lost their jobs and couldn’t keep up with mortgage payments. Sam shared a few examples and added a story about one person who’d had a fire in his home several years back. He had to take out a second mortgage to repair the damage done by the fire. After the flooding last year the man thought he’d be safe since he had mortgage insurance; however, the mortgage insurance only covered the first mortgage, and the bank was now threatening foreclosure since he couldn’t make the payments on the second mortgage. He described people’s efforts to make enough money at their jobs to pay their existing bills—cars, insurance, debts, etc.—and to manage their current living expenses—school uniforms and supplies, food, clothes, and anything else they need since everything was lost to them last year—and to try and create a new home. It simply doesn’t add up.

These kinds of situations are common for the 1,500 people living in Renaissance Village, most of whom were renters in New Orleans. While some home owners are able to try and gut their houses and rebuild, there is no future for low cost housing in sight. Sam just kept saying, “Go into New Orleans—you need to see the city.” His prediction is that it will be five years before any rental or affordable housing is available in New Orleans again; this a prediction for a city that had 53.5% of its population renting.

We met Victor, a person who has been in this trailer village since last November. He, like many of the residents, volunteers with Sam to do service. He had been relocated to Texas and his family members and fiancé had all been taken to other places. Now they are scattered around the south. His fiancé is living in a trailer in New Orleans because her job called her back. The rare rental in NO is an apartment for $1,200 a month. No one can rent there yet except the many people who are here from out of state to do construction and rebuilding—that’s another story for later. Victor is trying to find work in NO so that he can move back to the city, and in the meantime is working to save so he’ll be able to move when he can.

While we sat and talked with Sam and Victor, a person from an agency in town brought in some cases of baby formula. Sam asked her for more, for diapers, and if she might know how to locate a stove and refrigerator—for the new apartment of the person he had last worked with. He laughed with a lot of joy about never missing an opportunity to solicit for whatever he needs. She gave him her card and several ways to reach her, saying she’ll work on it, she understands, and that she does the same thing, taking every opportunity to ask for what she needs.

We talked with Victor and some others who come in to get support and offer support, while Sam took another phone call. When he came back he said it was CBS wanting to profile someone adopting a family. Sounds great, but most agencies and individuals don’t want either the publicity or the red tape that such an undertaking could add—they just want to give support directly to the people who need it.

We’re very hopeful about the connection with Sam and will be back next week to work directly with him for a few days. He took our list of the people we're looking for and found that none of them are living in this trailer village any longer—the last to go left for an apartment two months ago. We were sad to not be able to reconnect, and very happy that they are not in this situation, but are in a home of their own.

For those in our community who we were connecting as partners with LA families who are moving from shelters and trailers back into their own homes, Sam will now be able to provide us the names of other people as they are preparing to make that move. Please let us know if your community—your office colleagues, church, school, neighborhood, or families—want to act as a sponsor to a family and we’ll help to match you with someone. The idea of this is to commit to being there for a family to send a little extra money around the holidays, back to school time, or as expenses become challenging in the rebuilding process. Our help is still needed and will be for some time.

In addition, we have connected our friend Patti of the Heartfelt Foundation with Sam so that Heartfelt can support families and also do some of their great back-to-school support projects in these communities (uniforms are $100 per child at the start of each year—these families can’t manage that especially when they have several kids). We encourage you to send your support through Heartfelt if that feels right to you.

We simply can’t say this often enough—the New Orleans community needs help and is going to need and welcome support for a long time to come, as does so much of the Gulf Coast region. We need to remember our neighbors as we’d hope to be remembered if such a disaster hit our own community.

For our family: We brought our tent, air mattress, and sleeping gear, so while we’re here in Baker we're camping at a small campground called Waniteri Lake. The city camping we used last year no longer allows tents after some were blown around during last season’s storms. It’s a lovely spot created by a family on their long time home property. We feel very blessed to have found it.

More to come.

Joan and Frank

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