Hurricane Katrina Resources

Asbestos.com

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Asbestos.com

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Asbestos.com

Current and up-to-date information concerning Hurricane Katrina and asbestos exposure is available at Asbestos.com, an extensive online resource for all issues and topics surrounding the toxic substance. Nearly three years later, the city of New Orleans is still coping with the threat of asbestos exposure, which can lead to illnesses such as asbestosis and mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer that attacks the internal linings of the lungs, abdomen, and heart. In St. Bernard Parish alone, 5,000 asbestos-contaminated homes are awaiting demolition to this day. For more information on the asbestos problems caused by Hurricane Katrina and all other issues surrounding this hazardous material, please visit Asbestos.com.

New Orleans Population Return

The return of the population to New Orleans region, which appeared to be gaining steam for some time, slowed down in the fall of 2007, according to the latest post-Katrina report from the Brookings Institution. The report, which was co-produced by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, says that from September to November the six-parish region saw only 15 percent of the growth it had in the same period in 2006. A continued housing shortage and a lack of public services continues to deter many skilled workers from moving to the region, according to the report.

The report can be found at www.gnocdc.org/NOLAIndex/NOLAIndex.pdf.

Shelterforce Coverage

Read these articles related to Hurricane Katrina recovery in Shelterforce: In the Winter 2007 issue, a report on young leaders emerging in the community development field on the Gulf Coast, and in the Fall 2007 edition, a story on the effort to ensure that people at the low end of the economic ladder are not left out of the recovery process.

Grist.org

Here’s a report from grist.org on the activities of the folks at Turkey Creek Community Initiatives in North Gulfport, Miss. Shelterforce featured this group just after Katrina hit in 2005 (see North Gulfport and Turkey Creek resources). The grist.org article also has an interview with representatives of Grand Bayou Community United, a Native American group in Plaquemines Parish, La. Both they and Turkey Creek residents report continued neglect by federal government relief agencies, which the residents say is nothing new for their marginalized communities.

FEMA Evictions

FEMA has been quietly issuing eviction notices to residents of its temporary trailer parks in New Orleans. The federal agency hasn’t officially announced any park closures, but it has sent notices to residents warning them that it will close all of them. Many residents say there is still a severe scarcity of rental units, and while prices may have stabilized somewhat, $500 apartments are still rare.

Rebuilding After Rita

That other hurricane, Rita, caused a heckuva lot of damage in Texas. According to a new report from the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service, the recovery process has been just as unpleasant as in Louisiana and Mississippi. Only 13 of the 75,000 houses damaged or destroyed by Rita have been rebuilt with state assistance, the report says. In addition, low-income homeowners are at a disadvantage in applying for help, because they tend to lack insurance. Also, the state won’t provide more than $40,000 per household, though many homes may cost much more to repair. Initially the state assumed the average cost of repair would be only $8,000, and this led it to ask Congress for less funding than it needed.

Common Ground Relief Documentary

A documentary shows the first few months after Hurricane Katrina and the birth of Common Ground Relief, a New Orleans mutual aid organization, through the eyes of founder Malik Rahim, other community residents and volunteers. The film depicts the raw racism and violence that were not hard to find in New Orleans in the first two years after the storm. But it also shows the revival of hope for people at the bottom of the economic ladder in a devastated city.

“Big Four” Faces Wrecking Ball

The “Big Four” public housing developments in New Orleans will likely face the wrecking ball, now that HUD has approved the work. The developments include Lafitte, St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper, which consist of some 4,500 units. The Housing Authority of New Orleans says it planned to demolish the projects even before Katrina, and that the hurricane just hastened those plans. This is an unsurprising argument, given that advocates for displaced public housing residents say these projects suffered minimal damage from the storm and flooding.

Democracy Now

Blueprint for Gulf Renewal

“Blueprint for Gulf Renewal,” a report issued in August 2007 by the Institute for Southern Studies, contains interviews with leaders of grass-roots groups working on a wide array of issues on the Gulf Coast.

Cementing Imbalance

New and renovated affordable housing in New Orleans is being targeted more to people with moderate incomes than those at the very bottom of the economic ladder. Still, a city watchdog agency says New Orleans is getting the burden of most new affordable housing, while the suburbs continue to get most of the jobs. The agency’s new report also says affordable housing continues to be concentrated in neighborhoods that already have too much of it.

Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act

On the occasion of the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the National Low Income Housing Coalition called on Congress to pass the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act. The bill has been stalled since it was introduced in the Senate in June as a companion to a similar House bill. The legislation, introduced in the Senate by Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.), would provide one-for-one replacement of public and assisted housing units damaged by the storm. It would also provide for the right to return to residents who were “in good standing” at the time of Katrina. Other provisions in the bill relate to delivery of mobile and project-based Section 8 vouchers, the legal status of the Housing Authority of New Orleans, and money for fair-housing enforcement.

Inspecting Abandoned Housing

The effort to deal with abandoned, decaying housing in New Orleans is floundering two years after Katrina, say critics, though city officials insist they are making progress. An analysis by the Times-Picayune shows that the severity of damage to a building has little impact on how quickly the city moves to address it. City officials often defend their slow progress by referring to the sheer extent of the problem; the storm left 105,000 homes severely damaged. They also note that many neighborhood-based groups have helped the city force action on properties that needed to be gutted. The city has inspected just over 12,000 homes, but an inspection is just the first step in a process that can last for many months.

New Floodwall and Levee Disparity

Floodwalls and levees built in New Orleans since Katrina have benefited relatively wealthy, mostly white neighborhoods far more than their poorer, largely African-American counterparts, a new article claims. The disparity makes it even more challenging for people seeking to rebuild their homes and settle again in their old communities.

Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School Rededicated

The Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology was rededicated in spite of numerous roadblocks erected by city and school officials. The Recovery School District claimed repeatedly that the building was not structurally sound, until a report from the city water and sewage board found it was safe. Hundreds of students and community members volunteered their time last spring to clean the building’s interior, though the city had warned they were at risk of arrest. About 600 students are registered to attend the school beginning in August.

Porch Helps Seventh Ward

Porch is a nonprofit that organizes arts activities in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans as a means of building community strength. The group began with block parties, tree plantings, and an annual music festival, and now provides a summer arts camp. The camp gives kids something to do in a still-devastated neighborhood and helps develop their sense of community as a necessity.

Lousiana Housing Alliance

Louisiana now has a housing trust fund, thanks in good part to the work of the Louisiana Housing Alliance. The alliance, formed in 2006 to address the severe housing crisis in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, made raising money for the fund a major part of its advocacy efforts. The state legislature approved the trust fund in 2003 but did not provide a dedicated source of money or a way to implement it. The only source of funding was a voluntary checkbox on state income-tax returns; this method raised about $6,000. But in the last week of June, lawmakers voted for $25 million for the fund. The Louisiana Housing Finance Agency is now working with the alliance and other housing advocates to establish guidelines for the trust fund.

Workers Rights Post-Katrina

A recent report from the Chicago-based group Interfaith Worker Justice shows how workers’ rights have been trampled on in New Orleans since Katrina. “Working on Faith: A Faithful Response to Worker Abuse in New Orleans” is based on a survey of 218 workers during the summer of 2006. Among the most common abuses are employers’ failure to pay workers for their labor, exposing them to toxins without proper safety equipment, not compensating them for injuries, and discrimination. In response to the lack of a significant partner organization in the New Orleans region to work with the Department of Labor to enforce the law, IWJ has created a branch there. The group made a point of collaborating with religious leaders in New Orleans, arguing that religious groups must stand up for workers’ rights. The report follows a similar study released by the Advancement Project in the summer of 2006.

Challenges Face Gulf Opportunity Zone

A new report from PolicyLink documents the challenges facing the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone program, which provided a special round of tax credits for affordable multifamily housing developers in Louisiana, Mississippi and three other states. According to the study, “Bringing Louisiana Renters Home,” the program has replaced only two-fifths of the 82,000 rental units lost during Katrina. Proposed housing has run into resistance from some parish leaders that do not want low-income units, while the program has failed so far to make an impact on still-shuttered public housing in New Orleans. Another notable finding is that GO Zone funding was not allocated to housing in sites close to public transit and services.

Housing Discrimination in New Orleans

African-Americans face widespread housing discrimination in the New Orleans area in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, according to a recent study by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. The group found that over half of the landlords it surveyed discriminated against black testers who came to them looking for places to rent. Blacks were often told apartments were unavailable, while white testers got the opposite response about the same units. Some blacks were offered less favorable terms than whites. In other cases landlords told both white and black applicants they would call them back about housing availability, but only called whites back. The group said it hoped the study would help inform prospective renters of their legal rights.

Rebuilding a Healthy New Orleans

“Rebuilding a Healthy New Orleans,” a report that came out of a June 2006 conference on how to address minorities’ lack of access to health care, was released in May. Sponsored by the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, the Alliance for Healthy Homes, and two other groups, the study includes a proposal to invest in cultural competence for workers who provide mental health services, and a case study of the ongoing impact of Katrina on one family.

Katrina Was Not A Natural Disaster

“Katrina Was Not a Natural Disaster: What Went Wrong in the Gulf Coast?” is available as an audio recording on the Open Society Institute’s Web site. The event featured Chester Hartman and Gregory Squires, co-editors of the recent book There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina (Routledge 2006) as well as book contributors Hassan Kwame Jeffries, Avis Jones-DeWeever, Peter Marcuse, and Wade Rathke, who explored the political and economic roots of Katrina as an unnatural disaster and discussed the democratic approaches to creating more equitable and sustainable communities in the Gulf Coast and other regions across the U.S.

Post-Katrina Portraits

The Common Ground Collective has released The Post-Katrina Portrait Project, an anthology of hundreds of reports by survivors of the hurricane. All of the survivors’ words are available free online, but the group is asking for people to purchase the anthology in book form to help it continue its work in New Orleans.

Giving Credit to ACORN

An article by NHI board members John Atlas and Peter Dreier looks at the media’s failure to credit ACORN, the national organizing group, for its crucial work in bringing back New Orleans after Katrina. The media have tended to characterize low-income people in the city as victims and the government as incompetent. Atlas and Dreier provide evidence that ACORN helped many poor people to become well-organized so they could protect their homes from demolition and begin their neighborhoods’ restoration. The authors also note that the federal government was not simply incompetent at dealing with disaster; rather, the response to Katrina shows what happens when government is starved of resources.

The Gentilly Project

Some good news from New Orleans: A survey of the Gentilly district by a group of Dartmouth College students shows that people are definitely moving in. Only four percent of properties in the area were untouched since Katrina, or abandoned. The survey offers the most comprehensive snapshot to date of recovery progress in one of the city’s most racially and economically diverse neighborhoods. The students did a door-to-door survey and put their results on a Web site, enabling users to view the status of homes in any block of the district.

HUD Takes Over For FEMA

After at least a year of pressure from advocacy groups, the Bush administration has agreed to give HUD responsibility for the housing needs of people who have been caught in FEMA’s Kafkaesque system for more than 18 months. The current extension of FEMA’s relief program ends on Aug. 31. Starting in September, local housing authorities under HUD’s oversight will administer programs for people living in FEMA trailers and other rental units. Beginning on March 1, 2008, families will pay a portion of their rent each month, and the amount will increase by $50 with each payment. The program will end on March 1, 2009, when the administration hopes every family will be ready to return to the private housing market. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) reports it is pleased that HUD is taking over housing management from FEMA, but that assigning every family to the Section 8 voucher program would have been better.

NLIHC Testifies to Congressional Subcommittee

Challenges Facing African American Business Owners

An article in ColorLines comments on the challenges facing African-American business owners and organizers of community gathering spots in New Orleans as they try to rebuild. Many who used to rent their spaces now must buy their buildings or watch them turned into condos. Meanwhile, philanthropists have been reluctant to give money to grass-roots community groups.

April 2007 Update on New Orleans

In their April 2007 update on the state of New Orleans, the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and the Brookings Institution say the city is finally giving investors guidance on how they can support the recovery. But basic infrastructure remains lacking in numerous areas, including public transportation, child care, and schools. Executive Summary

Profile of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s performance since Hurricane Katrina gets a rather unflattering analysis in an article in the Gambit Weekly, an New Orleans alternative newsweekly. The story quotes veterans of civil-rights activism in the city who criticize Nagin for trumpeting small accomplishments while poor people suffer. One activist argues that events have simply been beyond Nagin’s capacity to handle. But the article’s general tone is that Nagin, whose background was in business, not activism, was the wrong man to lead the city in a time of great crisis.

Roundtable Discussion on Affordable Housing

The Next American City published a roundtable discussion on affordable housing in Louisiana after Katrina, featuring PolicyLink leaders, a state housing official, and a state legislator. Their conversation touched on the potential of inclusionary zoning and mixed-income housing and building nonprofit housing capacity in the state.

Tenant Activists Get More Public Participation

Tenant activists in New Orleans won a victory on March 15 when the City Council called for more public participation in the siting of low-income housing developments. In this case, the public wants more low-income housing, not less. Several council members had tried to ban new multifamily units in certain parts of the city, partly to deter the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency from giving developers tax credits for rentals in those areas. One councilor said these neighborhoods already had a concentration of poor people, and this was a threat to property values in adjacent communities. Pressure from the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund Tenants Rights Working Group led the council to change its stance. Instead of a moratorium on new tax credit developments over 100 units, the council now wants the LHFA to hear its opinion, and that of the public, before deciding whether to site these projects. Tenant activists saw the council’s changing stance as evidence that tenants are finally gaining some ground, after 18 months of being virtually shut out of the city’s revitalization process.

Rebuilding The Ninth Ward

ACORN Housing/University Partnership has posted a Web site dedicated to its revitalization work in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. The activist group ACORN collaborated with local residents and students from several universities to craft a comprehensive plan for the neighborhood. The Web site includes the final version of A Peoples’ Plan for Overcoming the Hurricane Katrina Blues. The New Orleans City Council approved the plan on February 1.

Louisiana’s Individual Development Account

Here’s an uplifting feature about Louisiana’s Individual Development Account (IDA) program, which has helped some people displaced by Katrina to save money for a new home.

The Recovery Divide

A study from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University finds that recovery from Katrina has been more difficult for families living in FEMA trailers and other temporary housing in Mississippi than for people in permanent homes. The authors of “The Recovery Divide” say FEMA trailer park residents tend to be those who were the least well off in the region even before the hurricane. They have become more impoverished as a result of the storm, while people with resources were better able to rebuild their homes and maintain their incomes.

Trailer Parks in Strong Neighborhoods

Another report on the subject of trailer parks in New Orleans, by Tulane University Professor Daniel Aldrich, explores how neighborhoods that had more social capital fought to keep FEMA trailers out of their communities. Thus, a strong civil society, which is often seen as the glue for strong neighborhoods, was used in this case in a way that made it more difficult for the larger community to recover.

New Orleans Housing Authority Vs. HUD

A dispute between displaced residents of public housing developments in New Orleans and HUD and the New Orleans Housing Authority is headed to trial in federal court. Residents had filed a civil rights lawsuit last summer, arguing the effort to tear down their old homes was unreasonable given the sound structural quality of the buildings. Preservationists have also said some of the housing has great historical value. On Feb. 8, Judge Ivan Lemelle denied HUD’s attempt to have the residents’ lawsuit dismissed, partly because he said the vouchers residents were issued after Katrina have proved difficult to use in a city with such a housing shortage.

Advancement Project Documentary

Watch a documentary from The Advancement Project, a Washington, D.C. based civil-rights organization, on the efforts of displaced public-housing residents to return to their homes in New Orleans. HUD and the city’s housing authority fenced off the Crescent City’s largest public-housing developments after Katrina and has plans to demolish them. But residents continue to fight these plans, in the courts and in some cases by forcing their way back into their old homes.

Creative Financing For Community Center

Many New Orleans neighborhoods included community centers in the proposals they completed recently for the Unified New Orleans Plan. But in many areas, people don’t know if there will be government funding available to bring these projects to fruition. Residents of the Mid-City neighborhood turned to a Hollywood ad agency and an online electronics retailer to finance theirs.

Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward

The sixth volume in the Neighborhood Story Project series of books is the first released by the New Orleans outfit since Hurricane Katrina. The books in the series are all written by city residents, with the aim of sharpening reading skills and empowering at-risk students through the written word. “Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward,” was written by members of the Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club. The last chapter centers on the flooding, exodus, and painfully slow return of Ninth Ward residents.

Calling on Slidell for More Housing

Following up on its lawsuit against St. Bernard Parish, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center is calling on Slidell, Louisiana, to allow a developer to build more multi-family housing. Slidell officials are considering whether to prohibit new multi-family construction in neighborhood and downtown areas, and limit it in highway commercial zones. The city says people who moved to Slidell after the hurricane may start to move back to New Orleans as their homes are repaired, so additional multi-family housing in Slidell is unnecessary. The fair housing group disagrees and suggests that Slidell’s proposed zoning changes may even be illegal. The group sued St. Bernard Parish in September after it limited the number of single-family homes that could be rented.

Katrina Reading Room

The Brookings Institution, with support from Living Cities, Inc., has created a Katrina Reading Room. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, and the Urban Institute also contributed material for the site.

AFL-CIO Investment Trust Negotiating to Build Modular Housing Plant

Following up on its collaboration on the redevelopment of the Lafitte public housing project in New Orleans, the AFL-CIO Investment Trust announced it is negotiating with three companies to build an $18 million modular housing plant. The facility would be located in the New Orleans area and would produce as many as 1,000 homes annually. Factory-build homes are considered the ideal solution to the region’s acute housing shortage, and they are built much like homes that are assembled on-site. Unlike most modular housing plants, this one will have all unionized labor.

Bibliography for Nonprofits and the Renaissance of New Orleans

The Louisiana Association of Nonprofits, together with the Urban Institute, has developed an online bibliography on “Translating Research into Action: Nonprofits and the Renaissance of New Orleans.” It includes a collection of readings on subjects critical to the city, including housing, arts and culture, children and families, disaster preparedness, community health, and poverty reduction and asset development.

Justice For New Orleans

An online article argues that acts of civil disobedience have become an important survival tool for people with low incomes in New Orleans. It notes two recent incidents that received little media attention, one in which a tenant attempted to re-occupy her unit at the shuttered Lafitte public housing development, and another in which people broke into a gated area to gain access to an unused FEMA trailer. Residents who have succeeded in re-occupying public housing have been subject to harassment and have been denied public services.

Public Education after Katrina

The United Church of Christ published a good article on the issues facing New Orleans’ public education system a year after Katrina. Many public schools have been transformed into charter schools; and many people wonder if these schools will be as open to all as they were before. As an example, the article cites the allegations made last spring that thousands of children with special needs were not attending school because no school had accepted them. Since then the state has mandated that city schools under its jurisdiction admit students with special needs for at least 10 percent of their enrollment. But questions remain whether the schools have adequate staff to work with disadvantaged children.

One Year After Katrina Report

The Institute of Southern Studies’ Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch released a one-year anniversary report. “One Year After Katrina: The State of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast” is an update on The Mardi Gras Index, which was released six months after the hurricane. Here are just two of the many, many interesting statistics in this report: the unemployment rate among Katrina evacuees who are now back in their original homes is 4.2 percent, while for other evacuees, the rate is 23 percent. Also of note: The Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance has recovered over $700,000 so far in wages that contractors had refused to pay recovery workers, many of them undocumented.

Brookings Institute Releases One Year Anniversary Report

The Brookings Institution released its own one-year anniversary report…

Oxfam America Releases Gulf Coast Report

Oxfam America released “Forgotten Communities, Unmet Promises: An Unfolding Tragedy on the Gulf Coast.”

And Injustice For All

A report from the Advancement Project, “And Injustice For All: Workers’ Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans,” documents firsthand accounts of the abuse faced by black and Latino workers in post-Katrina New Orleans. The report contains numerous stories of mistreatment, including people charged money to sleep in tents in a city park, workers denied their wages, and police harassment. The report identifies common ground among undocumented, legal immigrant and black workers and suggests one way for them to defend their rights is through collective action. It also calls for renewed attention by policymakers and advocates to race and labor rights issues in the city. Link to the report

More on “Injustice For All”

Related article published in October 2006 in Labor Notes.

Undocumented Immigrants in New Orleans

Undocumented immigrants make up about a quarter of workers rebuilding the New Orleans area, according to a report released on June 7, 2007, by researchers at Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley. These workers are paid about 40 percent less than colleagues who have legal papers. The report also found that most of the workers, undocumented or not, were already living in the United States prior to Hurricane Katrina.

The New Homeless

“The New Homeless: The Affordable Housing Crisis on the Gulf Coast,” a video developed by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, depicts the evictions threat facing residents of many HUD-subsidized housing developments in southern Mississippi.

Survey of Survivors

Also a good resource: A survey of hurricane survivors’ experiences with trying to find aid from nonprofit and public agencies before and after the storm. Among its key findings are that nearly a third of the adults who did not evacuate chose to stay in their homes, as opposed to staying only because they had no means to leave. The survey was with people who lived in Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana before the storm.

Water Delivery and Storage in the Lower Ninth

The Common Ground Collective is seeking donations to fund water delivery and storage in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, where running water is still not available eight months after the hurricane. The organization plans to buy a truck that can hold up to 2,000 gallons of water, transport the water into the neighborhood and store it in tanks located throughout the area.

The Mardi Gras Index

The Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, a project of the Institute of Southern Studies, released “The Mardi Gras Index”, which provides indicators of how New Orleans was faring six months after the hurricane. It’s not a pretty picture. See also indicators updated monthly by the Brookings Institution (pdf)

Seedco List of Relief Agencies

SEEDCO, the national intermediary that partners with community organizations to develop programs in small business assistance, asset building, and workforce development, has compiled a list of relief agencies in states affected by the hurricane. These agencies offer immediate and long-term assistance and can be accessed on the web page by state, agency name or service type.

Organizing for the right of return to New Orleans

Also see here (pdf)

Policy solutions to help residents return

Ideas on how displaced residents can rebuild assets

Predatory lending after the storm

Know your legal rights

The Road to Homelessness (1/15)

By Michael Radcliff

Bringing the Gulf Coast to the Debate (1/10/08)

By Jeffrey Buchanan

Katrina Through Rose-Colored Glasses (11/5/07)

By Laura Washington

The Missing Katrina Story (Spring 2007)

By John Atlas and Peter Dreier

New Dance: The New Orleans “slow down” (4/30)

By Ronald Walters

Unstable Foundations: Not Forgetting New Orleans (3/20)

By Rebecca Solnit

Let Katrina Become a Symbol of Revival (1/9/07)

By Jesse Jackson

Tale of Two Sisters (12/28)

By Bill Quigley

It’s (Big) Easy Being Green (10/17)

By Alec Appelbaum

After a Year, Hurricane Katrina Still Pummels Workers (10/5)

By Jane Slaughter

Saints and the Superdome (9/28)

By Dave Zirin

Scapegoating the Least Among Us (9/8)

By Joe Atkins

Liberal Bad Faith In The Wake of Hurricane Katrina (5/8)

By Adolph Reed and Stephen Steinberg

Eight Months After Katrina (4/26)

By Bill Quigley

New Orleans’ Throttled Future (4/24)

By Neal Peirce

A New Orleans for All (1/12/06)

By Wade Rathke

Resurrect New Orleans: A Better City is Possible (Winter 2006)

By Van Jones

New Orleans’ Racial Divide: An Unnatural Disaster (11/16)

By Emma Dixon

How the Nonprofit Sector Should Respond to the Reconstruction Challenge of the Gulf Coast (9/29)

By Rick Cohen

Let the People Rebuild New Orleans (9/8/05)

By Naomi Klein

Unity Homes (a project of the Healthy Building Network)

Unity of Greater New Orleans

A collaborative of 60 member agencies providing housing and services to homeless people

Enterprise Corporation of the Delta

A community development financial institution based in Jackson, Miss.

Southern Mutual Help Association, Inc.

New Iberia, LA

Community Labor United

In New Orleans and other locations in Gulf Coast region

People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond

New Orleans

Common Ground

New Orleans

Rebuild Green

New Orleans

Louisiana Environmental Action Network

Baton Rouge, LA

ACORN

Southern Echo

Mississippi

Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund

East Point, Ga.

North Gulfport and Turkey Creek

This is a report on the status of the communities and some of the residents featured in the cover story in Shelterforce’s July/August 2005 issue, Crossing Muddy Waters. As they are located within three miles of the Gulf of Mexico in southern Mississippi, North Gulfport and Turkey Creek sustained heavy damage on Aug. 29, 2005 from Hurricane Katrina.

The groups featured in the story, Turkey Creek Community Initiatives (TCCI) and the North Gulfport Community Land Conservancy (formerly Community Land Trust) are among the groups involved in a grassroots planning process to protect their neighborhoods from encroaching development. The planning effort was instigated by Hurricane Katrina and is just getting underway. It is occurring on the heels of the Mississippi Renewal Forum, a planning process supported by Governor Haley Barbour, which made proposals for future development and land protection in the North Gulfport area. See Turkey Creek and Mississippi Renewal for more information.

Derrick Evans, founder of TCCI, was out of harm’s way when the hurricane hit in August. Many of his neighbors stayed in their homes to ride out the storm. Evans learned that his mother was in her home in Turkey Creek when water from the storm rose as high as the rafters. A neighbor helped her evacuate, using an air mattress to float. The TCCI office was badly damaged but many of its historical archives were salvageable. The neighborhood church and many homes along Turkey Creek were severely damaged or destroyed.

Shelterforce received word that Rose Johnson and Becky Gillette, co-founders of the Community Land Trust, were safe. We also heard that Burnice Caldwell, who is pictured on the cover of the July/August issue of Shelterforce, was safe, but her house was lost. Howard Page, a board member of the land trust and the photographer for the story, was able to evacuate with his entire family, although his home was also destroyed. It was only four blocks from the coast, in an area of Gulfport where an estimated 95 percent of all structures were ruined by the tidal surge.

As the focus shifted from emergency disaster relief to repairing homes, Evans brought roofing, tarps, bleach and other materials to the community from a base in Birmingham, AL. Trisha Miller, the author of our story, was in Jackson, MS on Sept. 9 helping disaster victims to register for federal aid. On the same day, TCCI and Johnson were close to securing the services of professional roofers to work in their community for 30 days.
(Thanks to author Trisha Miller for contributing to this report. See the September/October 2005 issue of Shelterforce for a follow-up story by Miller on the recovery and rebuilding effort. Also see the Summer 2006 issue for a story by Miller on how landlords tried to evict many tenants in southern Mississippi after the storm.)

Funds to help the community recover from the disaster can be sent to:

Turkey Creek Community Initiatives
14439 Rippy Road
Gulfport, Miss. 39503

Click here for additional listings of grassroots organizations and charities providing relief