Tell HUD: No Choice Neighbrohoods Grant to Demolish Iberville

Secretary Shaun Donovan
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
451 7th Street S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20410

Dear Secretary Donovan,

This letter is to demand that the Department of Housing and Urban Development not award a Choice Neighborhoods Implementation grant to the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) and City of New Orleans to demolish and privatize the Iberville Public Housing development. HANO and the City, on behalf of their for-profit developer “partners”, HRI Properties and McCormick, Baron, Salazar submitted their application in October 2010.

The decision of the City of New Orleans and the Housing Authority of New Orleans--the latter led by HUD-imposed director, David Gilmore, of Gilmore Kean LLC--to seek the demolition of Iberville is a continuation of the same demolition and dispersal policies pursued by the Bush and Nagin administrations. The demolition and privatization of Iberville, and forced eviction of residents--what HUD and HANO euphemistically call a “transformation plan”--will only deepen the dire affordable housing crisis confronting New Orleans. According to a study conducted by HUD itself, since the 2005 Hurricane Katrina the city’s homeless population has doubled and mid-priced rental units in the $300 to $600 have fallen from 66,300 in 2004 to 19,300 in 2009, while the average monthly housing cost has jumped from $662 to $882 a month. New Orleans, unsurprisingly, is now the most rent-burdened city in America, with a 2008 study finding that 41% of New Orleans renters spend at least half of their pre-tax income on rent.

Greatly contributing to the affordable housing crisis was the Bush administration’s demolition of 5,000 little-damaged, and badly needed public housing apartments in the aftermath of Katrina. Two investigators appointed by the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)--Miloon Kothari and Gay McDougall--condemned the demolition as a flagrant violation of a host of international human rights treaties. In their report they called on federal, state, and local authorities to “protect the human rights of African Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina” by, among various measures, “immediately halt[ing] the demolition of public housing in New Orleans.” Sadly, the Bush administration ignored these calls. Today we suffer the consequences, as even the limited number of public housing units promised have not been built, and Congress’ failure to renew the so-called GO Zone tax credits threatens the few units promised at the Lafitte and B.W. Cooper developments.

David Gilmore told the Times Picayune newspaper that the failure to renew the Go Zone bonds “would represent a tragic loss to New Orleans”. Well, we argue the demolition of Iberville would be an even greater one. It is doubly troubling that Gilmore awarded the redevelopment contract to HRI. This well-connected New Orleans company carried out the displacement of low-income black residents at the former St. Thomas development. The HRI-led “redevelopment” slashed the number of public housing units from 1,510 to less than 200, with even fewer for those that make under 30% of the area median income--the income level of 90% of the former residents, most of whom have never had the chance to return. Further raising concerns is that a decade after HRI demolished St. Thomas they have yet to build the promised and agreed upon 100 off-site 3 and 4 bedroom apartments for displaced residents. This is the same company that is to guarantee the so-called ‘one for one’ replacement at Iberville!

Instead of demolition—32 apartments of which have already met the wrecking ball —we demand the immediate refurbishing of all the 821 apartments at Iberville. It is a crime that hundreds of quickly repairable units lie empty at Iberville while tens of thousands of families are on waiting lists for housing assistance—lists that would grow longer if applications were again accepted for public housing and section 8.

The repairing of Iberville—money which was made available as part of the Federal governments stimulus package, but not properly used for needed repairs—should be part of a massive expansion of public housing in New Orleans and across the country. We do not need nor want an expansion of the “3-D” approach of Demolish, Disrupt, and Disperse, which HUD is contemplating with its PETRA plan to hand over the entire public housing stock to bankers and developers. Instead, we call for a massive expansion of public housing as part of a new, direct government-employment, public works plan. New Orleans’ Iberville public housing development, a land that has witnessed two earlier displacements of low-income African American communities, is a good place to start this renewed commitment to both the public sector and racial and economic justice.