Environmental Justice and Human Rights in the Aftermath of Katrina

Dr. Julieann UlinPat Schenkle

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize speech, 1986

• “What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends our ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.”

• What are the personal, communal, and governmental responsibilities for social welfare?

Impact of Hurricane

Poverty and Visibility• “That the poor are invisible is one of the most important

things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.” (Harrington, The Other America, 1962)

• “After seeing who escaped the flood and who remained behind, it’s impossible to ignore the shocking breadth of the gap between rich and poor. It’s as if we don’t see poor people in this country anymore, as if we don’t even try to imagine what their lives are like. . . .To be poor in America was to be invisible, but not after this week, not after those images of the bedraggled masses at the Superdome, convention center and airport.” (Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post, 9/9/05)

“There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans.” – President Bush, Sept. 15, 2005

Undergradresearch.nd.edu

Class 3: Housing and Katrina

• Intro

• Freewriting exercise based on It Takes a Nation: How Strangers Became Family in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina (Earth Aware 2006)

• Logistics of the evacuation and logistics of the return

What is the significance of home?• This profound attachment to the homeland appears to

be a worldwide phenomenon. It is not limited to any particular culture and economy. It is known to literate and non-literate peoples, hunter-gatherers, and sedentary farmers, as well as city dwellers. The city or land is viewed as mother, and it nourishes; place is an archive of fond memories and splendid achievements that inspire the present; place is permanent and hence reassuring to man, who sees frailty in himself and chance and flux everywhere. (Tuan 154)

• “Our home is thus an extension of our personalities. It is for this reason that any unwarranted invasion of this private territory, such as burglary, can be so upsetting. The powerful emotional effect of being burgled stems not just from sorrow over the loss of personal possessions, but also because it represents a breach of security of the private territory and a violation of an aspect of the self.” (Korosec-Serfaty and Bullitt 1986). 12.

• “In urban areas, social bonds contribute to a sense of neighborhood and the sharing of outdoor space by residents.” (Greenbaum and Greenbaum 1981). 14-15

• “Home, of course, is the penultimate place of experience, second only to the body.” Katherine Platt, Places of Experience, the Experience of Place

Housing Background

• Desperate for property but unable to afford housing in other areas of the city, African Americans, who were formerly enslaved Africans, risked flooding and disease to move into the Lower Ninth Ward (Jackson 2006)

• Overwhelmingly, those who did not evacuate in the face of Katrina were those who lived in concentrated poverty in poor neighborhoods with low paying jobs (Dyson 2006, pg. 6)

• The impoverished citizens of the Gulf States were often poorly educated. Schools in New Orleans have long been considered among the poorest performing in the nation.

• Inner city New Orleans had a 13% unemployment rate in 2005 (over twice the metro average)

• New Orleans ranked second among the nation’s largest cities in the degree to which its poor families were clustered in extremely poor neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward (Berube and Katz, 2005)

“There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans.” –President George W. Bush, Sept. 15, 2005

• Beyond the confines of its tourist districts, New Orleans was a far poorer city than most Americans probably imagined. The average household income of families there is below $27,500, with ¼ of African Americans earning less than $10,000. (Alterman, 2005)

• I think that Americans everywhere began to imagine what it would be like to live in New Orleans or Biloxi or Gulfport, what it would be like to see the place you grew up lying in ruin, what it would be like to see your childhood neighborhoods underwater, to see your home and you possessions and everything you’ve worked for washed away without warning or reason. I think that moment of imagining and the action that followed is when we became a national community again. It’s when people from Chicago and Houston, Tacoma and Charleston, Boston and Denver picked up their phones and called a charity, packed up their cars and headed to the Gulf, or readied the extra bedroom for the arrival of complete strangers who could stay as long as they wanted.

• - Forward to It Takes a Nation: How Strangers Became Family in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina (2006) by Senator Barak Obama

Refugees?

• Act II. Scene 3. “American Citizens” and Act III. Scene 4. “Coming back.”

New Orleans Scarcity Resources• Access to cars pre-Katrina:

http://www.brookings.edu/metro/20050915_katrinacarstables.pdf

• Housing shortages post-Katrina

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5242517

• Shortage of mental health services and medicine in New Orleans

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/56312.php

Debates over Rebuilding?• “It looks like a lot of that place could be

bulldozed. We ought to take a second look at it. But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness.” – former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Sept. 1, 2005

• www.slate.com/id/2125810• www.thenation.com/doc/20050926/klein• WTLB: Act III. Scene 4 “The Roots Run Deep”• Homeowner’s Insurance: Flood vs. Hurricane

Key Dates for Housing• October 2005 – More than 40,000

people living in shelters awaiting temporary housing. All residents allowed to return except for those in Ninth Ward. By mid-month 95% of these moved to trailers and other temporary housing.

• FEMA extends housing payments for evacuees until January 7, 2006

• January 2006 – Lower 9th Ward residents win restraining order to prevent razing of their homes

• April 24th 2006 – Housing Secretary proposes that the “best residents” be allowed to return

• May 2006 – some areas of the 9th Ward declared safe

• May 2006 – FEMA closes its Long Term Recovery Office in New Orleans

• June 2006 – HUD decides to demolish 4 of 10 public housing units

• September 2006 – St. Bernard’s parish demolished 4,000 unclaimed homes

• October 2006 – Hundreds of Gulf Coast residents sue insurance companies for refusal to cover flood damages

• January 2007 – New Orleans census at half of pre-Katrina level of 444,000

• February 22, 2007 – First new houses built in Lower 9th Ward.

• See also http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/

Rebuilding New Orleans

Bring New Orleans Back Plan, Lambert Plan, & Unified New Orleans

Plan

Frustratingly Slow

• With billions allocated to rebuilding the gulf coast, Louisiana Recovery Act was set up to oversee allocation of Federal Funding

• Different schools of thought presented different plans: Top-down vs. Bottom-up methods.

• Slow return: no representation of city to vote and establish a plan

Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) Plan

• Establish a central organization to oversee redevelopment efforts

• Immediately invest in the least damaged areas of the city’s commercial, industrial, and historical core

• Reimburse homeowners property to full pre-Katrina value

• Launch housing reconstruction in “target areas”• Planning would be done at the neighborhood level

The Lambert Plan

• Decision making power rests with neighborhood organizations and local residents

• Neighborhoods were responsible for creating and beginning plans for their local area

• Excluded local officials who would be held responsible for the implementation of the rebuilding effort

Unified Now Orleans Plan (UNOP)

• Revise Pubic Education System• Restore Physical and Social Infrastructure• Rebuild Neighborhood-based health care

networks• Maintain housing availability for all incomes• Promote New Urbanism concepts• Provided incentives for flood-mitigating building• Prioritize rebuilding based on repopulation and

flood risk

UNOP

• Neighborhoods develop plans and submit for approval to a centralized organization withdrawn from the political realm