Hands Off Iberville, Bus Transfers on Canal St., and Kawana Jasper!

The local and national 1% are stepping up their racist, capitalist offensive in New Orleans. Not content with having demolished four public housing developments and 5,000 little damaged and badly needed apartments (in addition to destroying public schools and Charity Hospital), the real estate vultures (Kabacoff, Baron, and others) and their state agents (Gilmore, Landrieu, Obama and others) are trying get their hands on the Iberville public housing community. But they don’t stop there! To further the class and ethnic cleansing of the city, the Downtown Development District, an arm of the real estate industry, is trying to remove bus transfers from Canal St. This is a thinly veiled attempt to drive out, in particular, working class African Americans from the area. On the top that the 1 %’s enforcers, the NOPD, are stepping up murders of local workers, such as Justin Sipp, who cops murdered as he was driving to his job. They are also unleashing more repression against fighters like activist Kawana Jasper, a tireless defender of public housing and oppressed people, who is now facing fabricated charges. Come out Saturday March 24 to denounce the 1%’s agenda of more misery and repression, and to fight for our own, one that calls for a mass, direct-government-employment public works program at union wages, open for all, to rebuild public services from housing to education to health care. All out!

Saturday, March 24
1 PM
Iberville Public Housing Development
Meet @ corner of St Louis and Basin St.

Sponsor: C3/Hands off Iberville. For more information call 504-520-9521

Benefits for Who?

Benefits for Who?

A Critique of the ‘Community Benefits Agreement’ initiative for Iberville peddled by real estate lawyer David Marcello

Jay Arena, C3/Hands off Iberville

C3/Hands Off Iberville has worked for years, both before and after Katrina, for ‘Community benefits’ by defending all 800+ public housing apartments at Iberville, those throughout the city, and the communities that reside there. We have consistently fought against any destruction of public housing and have instead demanded that the government undertake a massive expansion of well built and maintained public housing in New Orleans and throughout the country as part of a new massive, direct government employment public works program.

Now real estate lawyer David Marcello has come upon the scene posturing as friend of the community and public housing by touting a so-called ‘Community benefits agreements’ in which everyone—including PH residents and developers-- win. Below are three important issues that should be raised with Mr Marcello regarding his initiative and purported benefits at the Thursday, Feb 9 ‘information session’ he will be holding on CBAs at the Candlelight Lounge at 925 North Robertson, from 3-4:30 PM.

I. On May 11, 2011 the New Orleans area chapter of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) hosted a meeting at Dillard University where David Marcello, director of the Tulane Public Law Center and lawyer with the real estate firm of Sher Garner, led a workshop on community benefits agreements (CBAs), entitled ‘Win Win Win: The Advantages of CBAs for Community, Developers, Government and You.” The origins of the forum lie with the local ULI’s recently formed “Cross –Reach Committee”, designed, according to committee coordinator Steve Bingler, an architect and head of Concordia Architecture and planning, to link real estate players and architects with community people “so they can learn from each other”. Appropriately, Bingler, representing ULI and the committee, was the MC of the CBA forum. Others supporters and sponsors of the event included Joe Canizaro’s Columbus properties, Pres Kabacoff of HRI, and the McCormack Baron and Salazar firm (who along with HRI has the contract to ‘redevelop’ the Iberville public housing development), among others. One of the Cross –Reach Committee’s first public events was at the Ashe Cultural Center, graciously hosted by Carol Bebelle. At the meeting Marcello intervened and said ‘we don’t have CBAs in New Orleans, but we should’. He then began working, according to Marcello and Bingler, with the ULI to organize and hold the forum at Dillard.

Marcello views on CBA’s are outlined in his article “Community Benefits Agreement: New Vehicle for Investment in America’s Neighborhoods,” published in the Urban Lawyer (Summer 2007). He touts the benefits of CBAs for the community, developers, and government, but he places special emphasis on the benefits that accrue to developers. “A successful CBA negotiation,” he emphasizes, “wins support for a proposed new development from community groups that might otherwise challenge the project.”

Yet, while he sings the praises of CBA’s, and the “win win win” provided for all sides, the supporters and sponsors of the CBA forum have created only “lose lose lose” results for working class communities in New Orleans. The Urban Land Institute, of course, worked with Joe Canizaro at the St Thomas public housing development to cook up a privatization and demolition deal that, importantly, was crucial in getting residents into negotiations and away from protests where they would have some power. The results were “win win” for real estate sharks like Kabacoff and Canizaro, their allies in city government, and some payoffs for co-opted tenant leaders, while it was ‘lose lose’ for most residents and others in need of public housing.

ULI was also the outfit that came out with the infamous green spacing plan for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, that was all win for developers, and lose for low income folks. The outfit, which was brought to town by Joe Canizaro of the BNOB, cooked up a ‘redevelopment’ plan that proposed green spacing-demolishing—mostly black neighborhoods.

In his presentation at the May 11, 2011 forum (see the link below) Marcello emphasized that with a CBA agreement “peace and harmony go up, creating a partnership among developers, city government, and community groups,” which he emphasizes “ is a good step, with value to all three communities.” Yet, the record shows that when working class communities cooperate with the ULI, developers, and local officials, “peace” has certainly been created, but not any justice.

(May 11, 2011 forum at Dillard on CBAs: http://www.law.tulane.edu/tlscenters/PublicLawCenter/home.aspx?id=3906)

II. The fried of the community that wants to demolish their homes: More reasons to be wary of Marcello’s seemingly good intentions.
In an article entitled “Housing Redevelopment Strategies in the Wake of Katrina and Anti-Kelo Constitutional Amendments: Mapping a Path Through the Landscape of Disaster,” published in the Loyola Law Review (2007), Marcello outlined a method for the city to more effectively condemn and appropriate the properties of low income people in New Orleans. He bemoaned the fact that in 2005 Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment that restricted the powers of state and local governments to appropriate private properties. He sees this as a major problem in condemning ‘blighted” properties in post-Katrina New Orleans, which are overwhelmingly inhabited or owned by low income folks.

In the article, Marcello, the CBA advocate and self-proclaimed friend of the “community,” recommends using aggressive enforcement of health and environmental code violations to ‘fast track’ the demolition and acquisition of blighted properties. Instead of a plan to help poor communities rebuild, he instead advocates a strategy to more easily take properties from, in practice, working class communities . He explains that “Code enforcement offers the best mechanism for processing tens of thousands of noncompliant properties within a reasonable time and for a reasonable cost. Code enforcement will also maximize private recovery responses by creating incentives for individual owners to repair their own properties or by allowing new purchasers to obtain the properties at auction.”
Marcello, as co-chair of the Landrieu administration’s transition task force on blight, outlined a plan to put his ideas into practice. The task force report (Blight Strategy, City of New Orleans, September 30, 2010) identified some 60,000 blighted structures in the city. He set an ambitious goal of demolishing and expropriating 10,000 structures over the first three years of the Landrieu’s first term. As in the Loyola Law Review article, the report called for using stepped-up health and other code enforcement to condemn, demolish and acquire properties and get around the obstacles created by the 2005 constitutional amendment protecting homeowners. “In order to streamline code enforcement hearings and increase their capacity,” the report explains “all hearings will be managed and staffed by the newly consolidated Department of Code.” (p.30). After this the cases pass through the administrative hearings they would be moved to the sheriff for sale.

The report also makes clear that developers, not low income folks , will be prioritized in the eventual return of the acquired properties to ‘commerce”.
“The City [through NORA]’, the report explains, “will need a means to take control of properties, cluster them, and package them with subsidies in order to make them more
attractive to developers” (p. 32).

III. A third basis for concern is Marcello’s employment with law firm of Sher Garner.

The firm specializes in assisting developers getting around regulatory hurdles and community protests that block their projects and the realization of profits. The firm has been, in particular, a big promoter of public housing demolition and privatization through HOPE VI. As Rich Richter, a lawyer with the firm complained, “We cannot have a HOPE VI project bogged down for years and years in a political process,” i.e. community resistance.
http://www.allbusiness.com/north-america/united-states-louisiana/1136469-1.html#ixzz1l3LGX63N

The New York Times’ Nicolai Ouroussoff: Architecture Critic or Real Estate Publicist?

The New York Times’ Nicolai Ouroussoff: Architecture Critic or Real Estate Publicist?

Jay Arena
C3/Hands Off Iberville

“[A] human and architectural tragedy of vast proportions”, is the words New York Times’ architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff used in 2007 to denounce George W. Bush’s demolition of New Orleans’ historic Lafitte public housing development. At the time he issued his critique, Ouroussoff was joining a host of others in condemning the Bush administration’s bulldozing of 5,000 badly needed and little damaged public housing apartments in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Yet, in 2011, as Barack Obama fires up the bulldozers to finish off New Orleans Iberville public housing development, Ouroussoff has changed his tune. Rather than expressing indignation over this crime, he instead expressed concern that Republican budget cutting efforts could nix a program--the so-called “Choice Neighborhoods Program”--needed to demolish Iberville! In his April 6th piece, entitled “To Renovate, and Surpass, City’s Legacy”, he shamelessly claims that not demolishing one of the few sources of housing for poor people would actually “be a significant backward step in the rebuilding of New Orleans”. A backward step? For who? Certainly not for poor people, whose lack of affordable housing has wrecked havoc on their lives. A recent report by University New Orleans Business professor Ivan Miestchovich underscores the dire market poor, working class people face in securing affordable housing in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Before Katrina, 78 percent of apartment units had rents under $800: some 28 percent had rents under $500, and 50 percent had rents between $501 and $800. Today, only 29 percent of apartment units charge rents less than $800: only 12 percent of units carry rents below $500, and only 17 percent have rents between $501 and $800.”

The demolition of Iberville would only further reduce the stock of affordable housing, and add to the obstacles that have kept over 100,000 displaced African Americans from returning to the city, and kept the city’s homelessness rate at record levels. In fact, Housing Authority of New Orleans’ (HANO) director David Gilmore, on behalf of his developer pals, is already closing the doors of Iberville to the homeless. On April 26th a homeless mother, Irvian Wells, was refused entry into both the Iberville development office, and later the central HANO office, by the HANO police. Her crime: the temerity to apply for housing at a public housing development that Ouroussoff and other voices of gentrification have called to be demolished.


All the News that Fits the Gentrification Agenda

Ouroussoff published his impassioned defense of demolishing Iberville in the country’s leading newspaper. Nonetheless, this piece of “journalism” actually reads like a brochure put out by Pres Kabacoff or Richard Baron, the two real estate moguls overseeing the “renaissance” at Iberville. As with most public relations pieces, if you scratch below the surface you discover some serious flaws and half truths. Let’s review a few.

First, Ouroussoff takes as good coin claims by the developers that their plans guarantee “one for one “ replacement of all of the 821 public housing a apartments now at Iberville (In fact Iberville had 858 apartments until a year ago, when over 30 were demolished in anticipation of the planned redevelopment). Under the current plans being floated by developers—which, as of yet, do not have funding--only 300 of the 830 planned on-site units will be public housing, in which people pay 30% of their income for rent (although they will have to pay utilities, which current residents do not). In addition, developers promise another 1600 units of housing will be built “around the site”, over 500 of which will be public housing, resulting in no loss of public housing units.

There are some obvious facts, the Ouroussoff conveniently ignored, which lead many in New Orleans to question the promises of one-for one replacement. For example Pres Kabacoff, one of the two developers in the Iberville deal, oversaw downsizing of the city’s St Thomas public housing development, shrinking it from 1,510 units, to only 182 public housing apartments. He touts St. Thomas--now renamed “River Gardens”-- as one of his grand successes. Furthering adding to consternation among those concerned about racial and economic justice is that in 2001Kabacoff had promised to build 100 three and four off-site bedroom public housing apartments in return for the city approving various tax changes needed to float his deal. The city complied, but Kabacoff did not. A decade later not one of these apartments have been built, and this is same developer that Ouroussoff wants us to believe will guarantee one for one replacement at Iberville.

Another issue left totally unaddressed by Ouroussoff, and one that further questions developers promises of “one for one” replacement, is how “off-site” units are defined. The public housing rights group C3/Hands Off Iberville, at a February 14th protest, highlighted that the New Orleans housing authority (HANO) and their developer partners have a very broad definition of promised units “around the site”. In fact a major portion of the promised 500 off-site units would be in an isolated, run down, abandoned property located on the city’s west bank side of the river, miles from the Iberville neighborhood. Finally, Ouroussoff, who was incensed over the destruction of the architecturally significant Lafitte, has no qualms with plans for bulldozing 2/3rds of the existing, sturdy red brick buildings that make up Iberville.


Choice Neighborhood Program: Old Wine in New Bottles

A second shaky claim made in Ouroussoff’s brochure--that he passed off as journalism--is that failure to fund Obama’s Choice Neighborhood Program (CNP) would mean “short circuiting a promising new model for housing the poor in cities in across the country”. In fact the same hype used to push the Obama’s CNP is eerily similar to that used to sell the now disbanded HOPE VI public housing program--which Richard Baron, Kabacoff’s developer-partner at Iberville, helped establish. During the 1990s and 2000s, HOPE VI “redevelopment” led to the net loss of tens of thousands of badly needed public housing apartments across the country, and fueled gentrification in the surrounding neighborhoods, leading to further losses in affordable housing. Like CNS, HOPE VI was also sold as a “bold” new way to address poverty. In practice it operated as simply the new packaging for the same old policy of poor people removal.

Class and Ethnic Cleansing: Then and Now

A final claim that Ouroussoff trots out to put a progressive spin on demolishing the homes of poor people is that the CNP, and its implementation at Iberville, will allow for “undo[ing] a pattern of racial discrimination that extends back decades”. In fact what the plans for Iberville represent is not a departure from racism in the United States, but rather a change in the form in which it is imposed. A brief excursion into Iberville’s history is revealing in that respect.

In 1897--only a year after the Supreme Court ruled against nearby Treme neighborhood resident Homer Plessey’s challenge to segregation laws--the area where Iberville now stands was designated as the Storyville red light district. The ensuing increase in land and housing costs led to the displacement of many residents of this long-established black community. After the closing of the district during World War I, housing and rents became affordable, and by the 1930s it was again a predominantly low income back community--but not for long. In 1937 the newly created Housing Authority of New Orleans appropriated the property through eminent domain for the then-new--and white-only--Iberville public housing development. Black families were forced to pack-up again. It was not until 1965, following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, that black working class families were again able to reside in the area. Since then there has been an incessant campaign by real estate interests to seize this valuable property for their profit-making ventures, rather than to meet human need.

The only difference with the contemporary eviction plans are the faces and pretexts. Expulsions are no longer carried out under a Jim Crow, all-white officialdom as before, but instead in a post-segregation context, in which some African Americans are in positions of authority. A second difference is that in the past cases of ethnic and class cleansing there was little or no effort to legitimate the initiative. In contrast, developers and public officials--and journalists like Ouroussoff-- now expound on theories of “deconcentrating poverty,” drawn from academic sociology, to explain why driving poor people from their homes is actually a benevolent enterprise. What ties the different historical periods together is that power and profits--despite all the benevolent rhetoric--are still the driving forces behind the racist land grabs.


Ouroussoff, NGOs, and the Progressive Cover for Political Reaction

The political cover Ouroussoff is providing for Obama’s agenda at Iberville reflects a broader political tendency in contemporary U.S. politics. While Bush’s liberal opponents denounced illegal detentions and torture at Guantanamo, endless wars, bailouts of Wall Street banksters, and public housing demolition, they have become silent or apologetic when carried out under the direction of his much more eloquent successor, Barack Obama. This pattern is particularly evident in New Orleans where many “grass roots activists --especially those in the non-profit-foundation funding orbit--that had vocally opposed Bush’s demolition of public housing, have now become silent about Iberville. Challenging this layer of progressive apologists for the new CEO of American capitalism will be required to mount an effective defense of Iberville and other facets of the rapidly expanding racist ruling class offensive.

HANO BARS WOMEN & CHILDREN FROM ITS OFFICES

HANO BARS WOMEN & CHILDREN FROM ITS OFFICES

Today, April 26, 2011, HANO police prohibited two homeless mothers and one infant child seeking to apply for housing assistance from entering first the Iberville Development Office on Treme Street and, shortly afterwards, the HANO Building on Touro Street. Chesnian Rixner, Chesnian’s ten month old daughter, Irvian Wells, and Irvian’s one and a half year old son arrived noon today at the Iberville Development Office to apply to live in an apartment in the Iberville Development. The mothers and children are homeless. Disgraceful is the word that best describes how HANO treated these New Orleanians.

When Chesnian and Irvian attempted to enter the Iberville Development Office four HANO PD officers, under the command of an Officer Mercadel, formed a human wall in front of the doors to the office. Mercadel told the homeless mothers that they could not enter the building despite the fact that the office was open for business. When Chesnian informed Mercadel that she and Irvian had come to apply for an apartment at the development the officer told them that they could not enter the building. Instead referred the mothers to the HANO building on Touro Street.. At this point Chesnian, Chesnian’s infant daughter, Irvian and three supporters traveled in the car of a friend to the main HANO office on Touro.

When Chesnian and company arrived at the Touro HANO building, about seven miles from the Iberville Development, four HANO PD officers formed a line front of the Senate Street entrance to the housing authority structure. These were the same four HANO PD officers who had prevented Irvian, Chesnian and infant from entering the Iberville Development Office. Upon approaching the entrance to the HANO building on Touro Irvian, Chesnian, Chesnian’s infant and three friends were told by Officer Mercadel that they could not enter the building! Mercadel and the other three HANO officers situated themselves between the entrance to the office and Irvian and company. Mercadel responded with silence when Chesnian pointed out that he was the one who had just told her to go to this address to apply for public housing assistance.

Mercadel did tell Irvian and Chesnian that a HANO spokesperson would speak to them outside the building. That promise was made at 1:05 pm. The mothers waited in the hot sun till 1:35 pm for the spokesperson but to no avail. At this point Chesnian, who was holding her ten month old, decided it would be best to leave. Chesnian and friends promptly left the scene of the degrading standoff.

Anyone who feels that this injustice should not go unanswered is invited to the 7pm Thursday meeting of C3/Hands Off Iberville in St. Jude’s Basin Hall. The time for silence is over.

Mike Howells 504-587-0080

Rally for Housing and Justice

Rally for Housing and Justice

Saturday, April 23

12 Noon

Corner of Conti and Basin Streets

New Orleans, in front of the Iberville Public Housing Development

We say no demoltion of the Iberville public housing development. Instead of demolishing public housing, and destroying other public services, we need a massive expansion of the public sector through a new public works program--Jobs for All, Legalization for All. Sponsors: C3/Hands off iberville, rev Raymond Brown, Eloise Williams, Coalition for Change, May Day New Orleans. For more info call 504-520-9521.

MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA ON THE STATE OF UNIVERSAL RIGHTS IN EGYPT AND NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC HOUSING

.

The people of Egypt have rights that are universal.
Barrack Obama, January 28th 2011.

Attention President Barrack Obama: yes, the people of Egypt have rights that are universal. What you fail to recognize is that the poor people of New Orleans have universal rights too.

That poor people who live in or want to live in public housing in New Orleans have universal rights is clearly an incovenient truth for you. Your committment to freedom of speech doesn't extend to the Iberville Development where HANO police, your police, use the threat of arrest to stop the distribution of fliers in the neighborhood that criticize your government's latest scheme to "redevelop" poor people out of the area. Your committment to universal rights is not so deep as to compell you to mention even a word of criticism when the New Orleans Police Department trampled on the freedoms of assembly and speech of public housing supporters, outside and inside New Orleans City Hall, who attempted to peacefully voice their opposition on December 20, 2007 at a "public" City Council meeting during which Council members voted to authorize the demolition of 4,500 of the city's public housing apartments. You, then a candidate for the U.S. presidency, responded to requests from the movement to condemn that brutal repression in the Crescent City with silence. And your administration continues and deepens the post-Katrina housing "redevelopment" initiatives of the Bush Administration that UN investigators and many others note effectively violate the universal right of return of low income, mostly African-American Katrina Survivors. These are but a very few of the violations of the human rights that public housing residents and supporters in this city have endured in Lousiana's largest city recently. Violations of universal rights that produce not so much as word of concern from you.

And Mr. President, you've said that the people of Egypt have a right to free and fair elections. Agreed. But what about the right of the people of the Iberville Development in New Orleans to have free and fair elections? The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations has clear guidelines regarding what constitutes fair and legal residents council election in an American public housing development. Yet, your appointed agent, Housing Authority of New Orleans Receiver David Gilmore, orchestrated a residents "election" at Iberville that clearly violated the guidelines that U.S. Code sets for residents council elections in the U.S. Only a handful of Iberville residents, instead of all of them, were given the opportunity to consider participating as candidates in last year's "residents" election. And Iberville residents were given no more than four days advance notice insteaded of the legally mandated thirty days advance notice.

How is last year's residents "elections" in the Iberville development under the direction of your government any less a rigged election than the elections held in Egypt under the direction of Hosni Mubarak's government? Poor people in the United States, including the poor people of New Orleans, have a right to free and fair elections too!

Mr. President. Have you ever consider that the use of police intimidation to prevent the distribution in Iberville of materials critical of your government's housing policies there is of one and the same spirit as the use of police intimidation to stop the distribution in Egypt of materials critical of Mubarak's government? Have you paused for even a moment to acknowledge, if only to yourself, that the tear gassing and tasering of public housing residents and supporters in New Orleans puts people here in just as much danger as the tear gassing and tasering of protesters in Egypt puts people in that country? And do you even realize that a government sponsored rigged election in Iberville is the moral and legal equivalent of a rigged election in Egypt? Are you oblivious to the reality that your government systematically violates the universal rights that thousands of displaced Crescent City public housing residents have as internally displaced persons just as the Mubarak government systematically violates the universal rights that Egypt's internally displaced have as internally displaced persons? Mr. President what blinds you to injustice in New Orleans, ignorance of hypocrisy?

The poor people of New Orleans have rights that are universal!!

Mike Howells C3/Hands Off Iberville

Mike Howell's commentary on tragic 9th ward fire of 12/28/10

December 30th post on the C3 list on tragic Tuesday, Dec. 28 fire in an abandoned warehouse that killed 8 young people:

Hi Elizabeth,

While Landrieu is forced by circumstances to acknowledge that New Orleans suffers from a homelessness problem, he is also proposing "solutions" to the social problems highlighted by the Ninth Ward fire that in effect trample on the human rights of the city's homeless. Today's Times-Picayune reported the Mayor as saying, "It is, just from my perspective, if someone's in a dwelling and they're putting themselves and other people in danger, it's better for them to be on the street". That people who live on the sidewalks and streets of the city are in danger of dying from exposure to the elements apparently does not register with Landrieu. Another one of Mayor Landrieu's "solutions" to the dangers confronting the homeless who squat in abandoned homes is to have those who are fortunate enough to reside in safe, sanitary and affordable housing to rat out their squatter neighbors to the authorities. Just what the homeless need, new enemies in the form of neighborhood vigilantes! Yeah, you right Mitch. And, finally, another one of Landrieu's "solutions" to problems confronting the homeless, in particular those homeless drawn to squatting, is to step up the mass demolition of the city's true shelters of last resort-abandoned homes. These "solutions" collectively sound like a final solution to me.

So what can those of us who are in a positon to challenge the narrative on squatting and homelessness being spun by Landrieu and the gentrifiers in the wake of the Ninth Ward fire do? Bill Quigley and World Socialist Website have provided a progressive analysis of the tragedy for a national audience. I think it would be a good thing to network with the Crescent City Anti-Authoritarians and interested housing activists to see if there is intererest in organizing collective resistance to the most heinous of the Mayor's proposed "solutions" to the problems facing homeless squatters. Perhaps this networking will lead to a meeting, an educational, a press conference, a protest or something else. Whatever, I do have a gut feeling that the tragedy on Tuesday in the Ninth Ward is putting some fire into the bellies of the often beaten beaten down people of New Orleans.

Any feedback?
Mike Howells


December 29th post on the C3 list:

Today Mayor Landrieu put forward his solution to the acute problem of poor people in New Orleans being compelled by force of circumstances to find shelter in abandoned structures, demolish the abandoned structures! This is the same mayor who would like us to believe that the proposal to destroy the Iberville Housing Development, the city cente'rs single most important source of affordable and safe low-income housing, is an anti-poverty measure. Don't get the wrong idea though. Landrieu is not against all low -income housing close to the city center. He is a booster of that one form of state owned public housing for the poor that every member of the local ruling class supports, Orleans Parish Prison. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Mayor is now attempting to use the tragic fire in the Ninth Ward as a pretext to promote "anti-bilight" measures that promise only to worsen the city's horrific shortage of low-income affordable housing.

If anything approaching a humane solution to the problem that forces thousands in New Orleans to take shelter in abandoned and unsafe housing here everyday is to be achieved, the first thing that needs to be demolished is the unspoken rule that as far as housing policy goes the government is only in the business of promoting gentrication. As part of this process well intentioned people need to come to terms with the reality that charity and self-help measures are band aids that do little more than partially cover the growing social cancer of homelessness. This is clearly a very hard lesson to learn for the people of a city who have given so much of themselves to self-help initiatives and charitable activities. Still, this is a lesson that needs to be learned. This is a stepping stone to the building of a movement that demands, fights for and achieves the addition of the tens of thousands of units of safe, sanitary and affordable units of housing that New Orleanians need but that politicians like Landrieu and his corpoarate paymasters don't want.

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.

Open Letter to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty

Why did the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP) Provide a Platform for a Privatization and Home Foreclosure Advocate ?

NLCHP’s Invitation to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan raises serious concerns


Dear Eric Tars and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty,

I always appreciate Eric Tars’ regular reports on efforts to use a human rights discourse and institutional framework to win housing as a basic human right in the U.S. and globally.

Yet, at the same time, I see as very contradictory and deeply disturbing that Tars’ employer, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, headed by Maria Foscanris, invited Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary Shaun Donovan to be the key note speaker at the organization’s annual awards banquet on October 14th in Washington, DC. Donovan’s keynote speech was entitled “Ending Homelessness in Our Time”. Considering the HUD secretary’s attempt to sell off the nation’s public housing stock through the so-called “Choice Neighborhood Program” and the proposed PETRA bill now in Congress, a more apt title for his address might have been, ‘How I Make Appearances to End Homelessness, while actually expanding it through continued public housing demolition and forced evictions”

Indeed, Donovan has an aggressive plan to expand homelessness. He is working with HUD-imposed administrators in New Orleans to demolish the badly needed 800+ public housing apartments at New Orleans’ Iberville development—one that even convicted human rights violator George Bush and his henchman Alphonso Jackson could not get their hands on after Katrina. Donovan and his New Orleans collaborators are promoting the demolition of Iberville as a model for what can be done nation-wide under a generously funded and approved PETRA bill. But Donovan is not happy with just expanding homelessness by demolishing and selling off public housing. He’s an ambitious man. He also opposes any measures to stop the massive home foreclosures that bankers are carrying out, telling the New York Times recently that any measures to stop the forced evictions “would do more harm than good” (New York Times, October 28, 2010). Harm to who — banker’s profits or peoples’ lives?

Why would an oufit named the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty provide a platform to this enemy of public and affordable housing and a friend of bankers and homelessness?

The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty invite is a disturbing sign that they and other NGO’s and ‘tenant leaders” are ready to be ‘realistic’ and sit down with Donovan to provide a fig leaf cover for the handing over of public housing to the banks and real estate sharks—on a larger scale than they already have.


We need to ask NLCHP and other NGO’s where they stand on PETRA and the attempt to demolish New Orleans Iberville Public Housing development?

We at C3/Hands Off Iberville denounce PETRA, Choice Neighborhoods, or any other scam to privatize public housing. We oppose efforts to ‘improve' the bill that some NGOs and sell-out tenant leaders are advocating. These bills and plans are rotten to the core. We also call for an immediate moratorium on all home foreclosures. On top of these defensive demands, we call for the creation of a massive, direct government employment Public Works plan , open to all workers, including immigrants and the formerly incarcerated, to rebuild housing, schools, hospitals and a infrastructure. This is what we need to fight for. Join the growing campaign!

In addition, call and/or email these officials and demand that HUD not approve funding for the Housing Authority of New Orleans' application for a "Choice Neighbrohood" grant to demolish and 'redevelop' the Iberville public housing development. We demands instead that all the 800+ apartmwents are repaired and maintaied as Public Housing, in which tenants pay 30% of their income for rent and utilities.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.
Email: Secretary.Donovan@hud.gov Phone: (202) 708-0417

New Orleans Mayor- Mitch Landrieu.
Email: mayor@cityofno.com Phone: (504) 658-4900

U.S. President-Barrack Obama.
Email: president@whitehouse.gov Phone: (202) 456-1414



Jay Arena
Hands off Iberville

Lessons of History for Defending Iberville Today

HOW THE PEOPLE STOPPED HANO’S ATTEMPT TO DESTROY IBERVILLE IN 2005 & WHAT THEY CAN DO TO SAVE THE NEIGHBORHOOD FROM HANO TODAY!

The widely disseminated idea that a Big Four style “redevelopment” of the Iberville Housing Development is a done deal fails to account for why HANO and HRI attempted to impose a virtually identical scheme on the public housing neighborhood in 2005 but failed. If anything, in 2005, the position of the forces that wanted to destroy Iberville by way of mixed-income housing reform was stronger than today. Iberville was closed at the time. Its residents were scattered throughout the country. And HANO was under the control of the Bush Administration. Yet Iberville, the conventional public housing neighborhood, reopened despite the opposition of then Mayor Nagin, City Council and HRI.. Why?

Come to a public discussion putting the spotlight on the people’s fight back of 2005 that forced the Administration of George W. Bush to reopen and maintain the Iberville Housing Development. Learn how a grass roots coalition of Iberville residents and non-resident public housing supporters accomplished what most “experts” at the time thought impossible, the reopening of the Iberville Housing Development as a conventional public housing neighborhood. And get insights into what can be done to stop HANO’s new attack on Iberville.

7pm Thursday
October 14, 2010
St. Jude’s Basin Hall
410 Basin Street

Sponsor: C3Hands Off Iberville. 504-587-0080

Please forward.

C3/Hands Off Iberville member Malcolm Willison: Letter to Editor Denounces Demolition Plan

To the editor:

Your recent editorial on News Orlean's housing crisis (September 2, 2010) is much appreciated by those in the city faced with a continuing crisis in af-fordable housing.Rental housing scarcity, as you point- ed out, means that a major part of the income of low-pay workers and of those retired or handicapped or oth-erwise unable to work full time or at all, has to be de-voted to rent. Far too many pre-Katrina New Orleans residents are stuck far away, unable to come back to their city. In abandoned housing, shelters, or on the streets are between three and twelve thousand home-less, many veterans, twice the number before Katrina. Yet HUD continues its recent mass demolition of loc-al public housing: the HUD-run Housing Authority of New Orleans is pursuing federal funding for demoli-tion and radical downsizing of conventional public housing at the Iberville Development, the last of the sturdy, repairable public housing aimed for the low-income, retired, and disabled. The “mixed-income” housing redevelopment HANO has sought is part of the disastrous post-Katrina HOPE VI “revitalization” of the city’s Big Four housing developments, eliminating 5,000 crucial public housing units after Katrina. Yet Congress has sharply reduced funding for HOPE VI, and private corporations involved struggle to sell bonds for the building, while long waiting lists bedevil those seeking inadequately funded Section 8 housing, with constant difficulties with landlords and evictions.The administration needs to improve its housing policies.

Yours sincerely, Malcolm Willison

The Iberville Development: No Murders, No News!

The Iberville Development: No Murders, No News!
By Mike Howells

With the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching the struggle to defend and expand public housing in New Orleans continues. As part of that effort the local public housing support group C3/Hands Off Iberville held a press conference on August 3rd highlighting the Iberville public housing development’s status as one of the few murder free neighborhoods in New Orleans over the last year. The press conference was held on the date of the national Night Out Against Crime. The press conference was met with a corporate news blackout. The refusal of the corporate news to cover the Iberville press conference is perfectly in line with the longstanding media practice of nurturing an image of Iberville as a spawning ground for criminal violence. The general drift of this news coverage reinforces the widely held view of the public housing complex as a hothouse for violent crime in dangerously close proximity to the French Quarter. Recent crime statistics, however, contradict the widely disseminated view that Iberville is one of New Orleans’s ultra-violent neighborhoods.

The absence of the local press is not due to a lack of notification or media interest in violent crime in the Iberville Housing Development The news blackout happened even though press releases were forwarded the day before the event by organizers to the city desk of the Times Picayune and the news rooms of WWL 4, WDSU6, WVUE 8 and WGNO 26 on August 2nd. These news outlets devoted coverage to neighborhood based Night Out Against Crime in previous years and 2010. And the post-Katrina murders that did occur in Iberville also received media coverage. For example, the Times Picayune, the New Orleans paper of record, carried articles on each of the three murders in the public housing complex in 2008. These same news sources ignored the message the Iberville is a murder free neighborhood. And the fact that Iberville went murder free in a city with the nation’s highest murder rate did not convince the TP and company of the newsworthiness of this development. The New Orleans media is clearly in no hurry to highlight a public housing success story in the midst of the city’s murder epidemic.

A dearth of murders and shootings in Iberville did not stop the corporate news from linking the public housing development to violent crime. A WWL news report broadcast on August 18, 2010 described Iberville as a “hotspot” for crime. The same report makes no mention that the neighborhood went murder free the twelve preceding months. A September 23, 2009 article in the TP put Iberville in the headline of a piece covering a non-fatal shooting that transpired in another neighborhood, the Sixth Ward. And the headline of another TP article, dated October 28, 2009, identified Iberville as the site of a murder on Bienville and North Derbigny. This intersection is actually located in another neighborhood. Even when Iberville is free of murders and shootings the corporate media insists that the neighborhood is experiencing murders and shootings.

The widely disseminated view that Iberville is the French Quarter’s ultra-violent neighbor is contradicted by crime statistics. From January 2008 through July 2010 New Orleans suffered 443 murders. Iberville was the scene of 6 of those murders. This accounts for 1.3% of the city’s murders. And the widely disseminated view that Iberville is a publicly subsidized killing field located dangerously close to the French Quarter does not withstand an examination of murder and shooting statistics. During the period mentioned above the French Quarter, like Iberville, recorded 6 murders. On the matter of shootings in this period Iberville registered far fewer than the city’s oldest neighborhood. A total of 10 people were shot in Iberville..In the city’s oldest neighborhood 21 people were shot. Judging from these figures the high income, privately owned French Quarter is actually a greater source of criminal violence in New Orleans than the low-income, publicly owned Iberville Housing Development!

The media image of Iberville as a haven for criminal violence serves the agenda of the cabal of politicians and real estate developers determined to eliminate public housing from the landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans. HUD responded to the epoch shortage of affordable housing following the storm by first closing and then demolishing 5,000 of the city’s 7,000 public housing apartments. The vast majority of the demolished apartments came out of the storm and flooding in habitable or easily made habitable condition. When HUD finally began demolition of these public housing apartments in late 2007 the size of the local homeless population was double that of the local homeless population in 2005. As of this writing, New Orleans has the highest per-capita rate of homelessness of any city in the nation. This bleak situation did not prevent the Housing Authority of New Orleans from announcing in August that it will seek HUD funding to radically downsize the number of public housing units at Iberville.

No persons were murdered or shot in the Iberville Housing Development during the twelve months that preceded the 2010 Night Out Against Crime. This reality clashes with the media supported image of Iberville as a breeding ground for criminal violence. This caricature of Iberville implicitly sends the message that government support for the neighborhood amounts to taxpayers subsidizing violent crime. This is a false message. Iberville is not a hot house for violent crime. And this is an inconvenient truth for the news establishment of the Crescent City.




Crime Statistics

Iberville/ French Quarter Murders and Shootings.[1]

Murders/ Shootings
2010[2]
Iberville 0 /0
FQ. 1 1

2009
Iberville 3/3
FQ. 4/7

2008
Iberville 3/ 6
FQ 1 /13

Totals
Iberville 6 /9
FQ. 6/ 21

New Orleans Murders[3]

2010 90

2009 174

2008 179

Total 443







[1] From January 1, 2008 through August 3, 2010. Sources examined: Online reports from WWL 4, WDSU6, WVUE8, WGNO26, NOcrimeline.com; and the New Orleans Times-Picayune
[2] Period surveyed for 2010 ends August 3, 2010.
[3] From January 1, 2008 through July 2010. Sources: New Orleans Police Department,
Administrative and Support Bureau for 2008 and 2009 murder statistics. The murder stat for 2010 is 58% of the 2009 murder total. NOPD murder totals for 2010 through July were not available online.

Media Fails to Cover Good News About Iberville--No Murders in Over a Year

For the Night Out Against Crime 2010 residents and supporters of the Iberville Housing Development held a press conference to announce that the neighborhood is one the few in New Orleans to have gone through the last year murder free. The relative safety of Iberville in comparison to most of the city's other neighborhoods contradicts the image, carefully nurtured by the corporate media and real estate developers, that the neighborhood, indeed all public housing developments, is a de-facto killing field. Not wanting to put forward information that challenges the crime friendly depiction of public housing, the Times-Picayune and the television news reports on New Orleans television chanels 4, 6, 8 and 26 passed on invitations to cover the Iberville's Tuesday Night Out Against Crime press conference.

The refusal of the corporate news media to cover the good news on the crime front from Iberville is in stark contrast to what happens when a murder does occur in the neighborhood. When a murder does occur in Iberville, as it does at some point or another in virtually all New Orleans neighborhoods, news crews from the Times-Picayune and channels 4,6, 8. and 26 can be counted on to cover the tragedy. The slanted news coverage of the crime issue as it pertains to Iberville sends a loud and clear message of the type of image of Iberville that the media sends to the general public.

Mike Howells

Take Action NOW to Defend Sharon Jasper, Free Speech, and Public Housing

Public Housing activist and human rights leader Sharon Jasper is facing political repression --an attack that threatens the free speech rights of us all. On May 30, 2010 Ms. Jasper participated in a non-violent protest at the former St Bernard public housing development, renamed “Columbia Parc”, to denounce the exclusion of former residents. The protest was part of the nationally coordinated “take back the Land” actions. The following week a NOPD SWAT team arrested her at her home, charging her with “battery”--totally unsubstantiated and baseless---against a Columbia Parc employee during the May 30th protest. Then, on July 9th, she received a letter from the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) revoking her section 8 housing voucher because of the battery charge. As part of the unconstitutional “one strike” law, passed under the Clinton administration, public housing residents can be evicted for being charged--not convicted--of a crime!

This attempt to evict Ms Jasper is a clear cut case of political repression. The phony “battery” charge and eviction order are designed to silence not only Ms. Jasper but the larger struggle against the real estate sharks and privatizers scheming to grab valuable land and carry out ethnic cleansing in New Orleans an across the country. Very powerful forces are behind the attack on Sharon Jasper. The partner of Columbia Residential in their redevelopment of the former St Bernard public housing community is an outfit called the, “Bayou District”, with, among others, former president George H.W. Bush, and influential local “venture capitalist” Gary Solomon sitting on the board. In addition, the Columbia Parc development is backed by the so-called “Purpose Built Communities”, with billionaire Warren Buffett, hedge fund manager Julian Robertson, and real estate shark Thomas Cousins being major investors. These capitalists identify valuable public housing proprieties as “emerging markets”, and activists like Sharon Jasper stand in the way of these vultures cashing in. We can’t let them get away with this crime.
For more information call C3/Hands Off Iberville at 504-520-9521

Call and/or Fax these officials and demand that the charges and eviction order be dropped against Sharon Jasper
· Columbia residential--Noel Khalil, CEO--(404) 874-5000, x111; Fax (404) 874-0999
http://www.columbiares.com/about/principals.html

· Bayou District--Gerard Barousse, Jr., Chairman, (504) 272-0307 Fax: (504) 523-1704
http://bayoudistrictfoundation.org/

· Purpose Built Communities--Charles Knapp, President, (404) 591-1400, email: interest@purposebuiltcommunities.org
http://www.purposebuiltcommunities.org/network-members/overview.html

· Housing Authority of New Orleans--David Gilmore, Executive Director, (504) 670-3300
http://www.hano.org/

IBERVILLE SPEAKOUT ON THE BP OIL SPILL

The BP Oil Spill is a New Orleans problem!

IBERVILLE SPEAKOUT ON THE BP OIL SPILL.

The arrival of tar balls in Lake Pontchartain makes clear that the BP oil spill is reaching New Orleans. What impact will the oil spill have on the health and economic well being of New Orleanians? What can low-income New Orleanians do to avoid being exploited Katrina style by those forces who treat every catastrophe as another opportunity to rip off the poor? These are questions that Iberville residents and other low-income New Orleanians need to address and will be addressed at the Iberville Speakout On The BP Oil Spill.

You are invited and encouraged to attend and participate in the speakout below.


IBERVILLE SPEAKOUT ON THE BP OIL SPILL
6PM THURSDAY, JULY 15TH
IBERVILLE COURT(Near Basketball Court)
IBERVILLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT
Free and open to all.

For additional information call (504) 587-0080
Sponsors: Iberville residents and C3/Hands Off Iberville

All Out to Defend New Orleans Public Housing Activist Sharon Jasper

All Out to Defend New Orleans Public Housing Activist Sharon Jasper

Stop Political Repression Unleashed by
HANO/Columbia Residential/Bayou District

Attend meeting and/or make calls (see info below)
HANO Board Meeting
4100 Tour St.
(near corner of Elysian Fields and Gentilly)
9:30 AM—Rally
10 AM—Board Meeting

Public Housing activist and human rights leader Sharon Jasper is facing political repression because of her defense of New Orleans public housing and the right of return. On May 30, 2010 Ms. Jasper participated in a non-violent protest at the former St Bernard public housing development, renamed “Columbia Parc”, to denounce the exclusion of former residents. The protest was part of the nationally coordinated “take back the Land” actions. The following week a NOPD SWAT team arrested her at her home, charging her with “battery”--totally unsubstantiated and baseless---against a Columbia Parc employee during the May 30th protest.
Then, on July 9th, she received a letter from the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) revoking her section 8 housing voucher because of the battery charge. As part of the unconstitutional “one strike” law, passed under the Clinton administration, public housing residents can be evicted for being charged--not convicted--of a crime!

This attempt to evict Ms Jasper is a clear cut case of political repression. The phony “battery” charge and eviction order are designed to silence not only Ms. Jasper but the larger struggle against the real estate sharks and privatizers scheming to grab valuable land and carry out ethnic cleansing in New Orleans an across the country. Very powerful forces are behind the attack on Sharon Jasper. The partner of Columbia Residential in their redevelopment of the former St Bernard public housing community is an outfit called the, “Bayou District”, with, among others, former president George HW Bush, and influential local “venture capitalist” Gary Solomon backing sitting on the board. In addition, the Columbia Parc development is backed by the so-called “Purpose Built Communities”, with billionaire Warren Buffett, hedge fund manager Julian Robertson, and real estate shark Thomas Cousins being major investors. These capitalists identify valuable public housing proprieties as “emerging markets”, and activists like Sharon Jasper stand in the way of these vultures cashing in.

For more information call 504-520-9521

Call and Fax these officials and demand that the charges and eviction order be dropped against Sharon Jasper

· Columbia residential--Noel Khalil, CEO--(404) 874-5000, ext. 111; Fax (404) 874-0999
http://www.columbiares.com/about/principals.html

· Bayou District--Gerard Barousse, Jr., Chairman, (504) 272-0307 Fax: (504) 523-1704
http://bayoudistrictfoundation.org/

· Purpose Built Communities--Charles Knapp, Pres,. (404) 591-1400, email: interest@purposebuiltcommunities.org
http://www.purposebuiltcommunities.org/network-members/overview.html

· Housing Authority of New Orleans--David Gilmore, Executive Director, (504) 670-3300
http://www.hano.org/

The Iberville Public Housing and Mass Public Works Movements Make Gains!

The Iberville Public Housing and Mass Public Works Movements Make Gains!

HANO Commits to Repairing All of Iberville--the Mass Movement Must Ensure This Happens

All Out to Defend Sharon Jasper at July 21 Court Appearance

In a major reversal, Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) administrator David Gilmore committed, at the agency’s June 29th hearing on their 2010-2011 annual plan, to repair and reopen all of the over 800 apartments at the Iberville public housing development. Only a few months ago Gilmore had said only 500 would be repaired and that there were “other [privatization] plans” for Iberville. Clearly this change of course is due to the determined and consistent resistance of C3/Hands Off Iberville and other forces that have denounced HANO’s demolition by neglect strategy, and the maneuvering of the Downtown Development District-led Iberville Advisory Committee to demolish and privatize Iberville.

Yet, we cannot be led into complacency by words and promises. Let us remember that in October 2001, after five years of demolishing several thousand units of public housing, then-HANO administrator Ben Bell reassured attendees at a board meeting that, “We have vowed not to build another HOPE VI project without the replacement of one-for-one public housing.” These words, of course, did not stop them from demolishing over 5,000 apartments after Katrina, with plans to only rebuild a handful. Indeed, HANO has more downsizing on the agenda. While committing to repairing all the units at Iberville, HANO’s 2010-2011 annual plan calls for selling-off 500 of the over 700 apartments in their scattered site portfolio, and includes no plans to rebuild the Florida development (that had been over 700 units), nor the Imperial Drive complex. With the two “tenant leaders” for these complexes--Diane Connerly (Florida) and Paula Taylor (Imperial Drive)--both enjoying HANO contracts for the “non-profit” agencies they head, you can be assured that these vetted leaders will not raise many objections.

The only power that can assure that the all the desperately needed units at Iberville are repaired, and that we win the equally needed mass public works plan, is a mass, independent, racially unified, militant, working class movement. The nucleus of that type of movement was present at HANO’s June 29th hearing on their annual plan. In attendance at a pre-meeting press conference and rally were C3/Hands Off Iberville members, Mike Howells, Michele Perez, Cody Marshall, Eloise Williams and Jay Arena, Pax Christi representative Paul Troyano, Joe and Katy Heeren-Mueller from the Catholic Worker house, Sam Jackson with May Day New Orleans, Endesha Juakali with Survivors Village, Public housing leaders Sharon, Kowana and Shannon Jasper, Rose Kennedy and a member of the housing group STAND.

At the rally and subsequent meting activists not only demanded the repairing of all the Iberville units, more public housing and section 8 vouchers, and the creation of a public works program, but also denounced the arrest of Sharon Jasper by a NOPD SWAT team on June 3rd at her home. The arrest and phony battery charge were in retaliation for Ms. Jasper’s heroic and continued defense of public housing and against police brutality. The week before her arrest she protested Columbian Parc’s (the former St Bernard development) continued exclusion of former residents. She also joined other community activists to as they picketed the NOPD’s central city station to denounce the reign of terror the cops have been carrying out in the area, one that has faced massive gentrification since hurricane Katrina. Ms. Jasper made it clear that, despite the repression, she will not be silenced and will continue the fight for justice in the city she loves.

Activists also gathered at the July 1, 2010 city council meeting to denounce Sharon Jasper’s arrest and the city’s plan to expand repression by building the only type of public housing they seem to support—prisons!

C3/Hands Off Iberville invites all friends of justice to join the fight for public housing and a massive public works program. All are encouraged to attend Sharon Jasper’s next court appearance, which will be on Wednesday, July 21 at 3 PM in Municipal Court, Court Room “D”. For more information call 504-520-9521.

Tell the Iberville Advisory Committee:Hands of Iberville! No to Privatization! No to land grabs!

Tell the Iberville Advisory Committee:

Hands of Iberville! No to Privatization! No to land grabs!

Reopen and repair all the public housing apartments at Iberville NOW!
Stop the Demolition by neglect strategy.

Expand don’t destroy Public Housing and other Public Services.
Public Works Now!

The Iberville Advisory Committee (IAC), a sham outfit set up by HANO and developers, will be holding a “community hearing” to “gather input” on “short and long term improvement to the Iberville” on Thursday, June 24. Their real agenda is to justify Iberville’s destruction as a public housing development. We must use this hearing to expose IAC’s real agenda and present a genuine peoples plan to defend and expand Iberville and public housing.

The chair of the IAC is Henry Charlot, an operative of the Downtown Development District (DDD). The DDD, and Charlot’s boss, Executive direct Kurt Weigle, have long sought to destroy Iberville. In a May 21, 2009 interview with WWL TV, reporter Susan Edwards found that from the perspective of “Kurt Weigle….redeveloping and demolishing Iberville removes a barrier to investment, opening the medical district up to more than just retail and residential possibilities.” Weigle told Edwards that “It (the demolition of Iberville) is going to have a positive effect on the medical district, the construction of the two hospitals…will have a much greater potential to attract investments around them.”

HANO’s appointment of a Weigle subordinate the IAC chair is a slap in the face of residents and non-residents alike who genuinely want Iberville to continue to be a source of affordable housing for low-income, working class New Orleanians.

Let your voice heard and demand that the hundreds of empty but badly needed public housing apartments at Iberville be repaired and reopened NOW!

Iberville Advisory Committee Community Meeting
Thursday, June 24
6 PM
St Jude Hall, 410 Basin St.


For more information contact C3/Hands Off Iberville, at 504-520-9521

Protecting homes and communities--Protest BP Oil Spill

COME TO N.O. HALLIBURTON TO PROTEST THE PERPETRATORS AND MISMANAGERS OF THE BP OIL SPILL.

More than fifty days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Halliburton in New Orleans finds itself allowed to engage in business as usual in the major American city closest to the oil spill. The Halliburton office on Canal Street in the CBD has not, so far, been the scene of even a token attempt to put the spotlight on the pivotal role that this company has played in helping manufacture the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Halliburton was entrusted with the task of ensuring that the BOP of the Deepwater Horizon rig was sealed. Now faulty sealing of the Deepwater Horizon’s BOP is widely assumed to have been a major contributing factor to April 20th explosion that unleashed the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And this is exactly the type of work that allows Halliburton to profit enormously from oil industry activity in the Gulf.

Staging a very public protest at the site of the Halliburton office in the CBD sends the message to Halliburton, BP and the government that people in New Orleans are willing to directly confront, albeit peacefully, the worst corporate predators in our midsts. That we are pulling the welcome mat away from the corporate and political predators whose wretched handling of the crisis is resulting in ever greater encroachments on our welfare and the welfare of our neighbors. We are no longer willing to allow our righteous and healthy indignation to be funneled exclusively into dead-end corporate and government staged “public meetings” that are designed to imbue us with a feeling of powerlessness.

SO WE PROTEST!

4:30PM FRIDAY
JUNE 18, 2019
601 CANAL STREET
Bring signs, chants, friends and, most importantly, yourself.

Unity Based on a Common Interests and Principles

(Below is a post by Chicago Public Housing activist William JR Fleming regarding the debate on who should be included in the New Orleans Public Housing delegation that will meet with HUD on January 20, 2010 on the future of Public Housing. Following that is a response from C3/Hands Off Iberville member Jay Arena).

Hello All,
I am praying for all of us this just what the powers to be is counting on FOR US TO BE DIVIDED! As a resident of Cabrini Green in Chicago and all public housing in the world(my extended family) it hurts me to see what is happening in New Orleans my second home and where a lot of my family still resides. I am confident enough that Carol Steele and Cheryl Johnson can handle the Chicago representation so with that being said I am willing to give up my seat at the table if it would bring resolve to this crisis! WE ARE ALL WE GOT! WE SHOULD FIND COMMONALITY IN THE STRUGGLE FOR HOUSING! We cannot continue to have in-fighting I plea with My New Orleans Family Today is a New Day and Year lets Move Together on the Promise tomorrow brings and not live on the mistakes of yesterday.

Catherine I'm not singling you out but please see what is happening and understand your POWER in this situation to bring resolve!Which reminds me of MLK Jr. Quote

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.


Peace Love Respect and Unity

WILLIE J.R.FLEMING

(Jay Arena's response)

Principled Unity is What We Need--Based on Defending and Expanding Public Housing

Yes, JR, we need unity in the Public Housing Movement, but unity based on common interests and principles. We need unity based on the principle, on the common agreement, that we are for defending and expanding PUBLIC HOUSING—where housing is based on NEED, not profit. Unity not based on these principles does not make us stronger, but rather weaker.

The New Orleans Public Housing movement demands that Sam Jackson and Kawana Jasper represent us at the January 20th meeting with HUD because they support our interests, our demands, to defend and expand Public Housing. The issue is not some childish concern that they been left out of a trip to Washington DC.

Cynthia Wiggins, in contrast, has another agenda. She—and other resident mangers-- has a material, an economic interest, in turning over public housing to private resident management. Wiggins is very clear about this. She does not want to defend the Iberville Public Housing development, for example. As she said, “The public housing that we knew is no more”. Instead, her interest is working with developers to “redevelop” public housing and ideally have them run by private resident managers like herself. And she wants to have as much power as possible, as any landlord would, over residents. As Wiggins told the Gambit weekly, she wants her and other resident managers to have the right to evict people that can’t find work—and this when we have the highest unemployment since the 1930s.

Wiggins has been clear that she will be representing not residents, but the class interests of the National Association of Resident Management Corporations, of which she belongs, at the January 20th meeting. Wiggins concern is how public housing can be “reformed” so she and her fellow mangers can make more money. Indeed, in a December 16th email , Wiggins placed as her number one concern to be addressed at the January 20th meeting at HUD was to overturn:

“* the $1m [$$1 milion] limit placed on resident own business during [doing] business with a PHA and the lack thereof”.

I have included as an attachment a slew of for-profit, and ‘non-profit’ businesses that Wiggins controls. Therefore her concerns about the money-making of her businesses—which she wants addressed at the January 20 meeting-- makes sense from her class position. But her interests and concerns are different from those of the Public Housing movement. WE need to be clear about that. If we gloss over those different economic interests in the name of some false unity, then we become weaker.

Therefore, JR, if you want to show solidarity with your friends and comrades in the New Orleans public housing movement DONT Give up your seat. Go to Washington and speak up for DEFENDING and EXPANDING Public Housing. To show solidarity demand that Catherine Bishop REMOVE Cynthia Wiggins as part of the New Orleans delegation-which was a conflict to begin with since Wiggins was a part of the selection committee, and picked herself! Instead of Wiggins, demand that Sam Jackson and Kawana Jasper, along with Stephanie Mingo, be our representatives.

C3/Hands Off Iberville