Affordable Housing Crisis in New Orleans
Check out this article posted by Kate Scott of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center on Change.org. Kate is also the supervisor for AVODAH Corps Member Rebecca Waxman, who works as a Fair Housing Assistant at FHAC.
Because 130 hours a week is not an option…
Published February 04, 2009 @ 06:00AM PST
Working a minimum wage job in New Orleans these days, you would have to work over 130 hours a week to afford a two bedroom market rate apartment here. This is the plight in which many New Orleans residents find themselves, as low-wage service jobs are the bedrock of our tourism economy. Rents have risen 52% since the 2005 hurricanes, yet there certainly has not been a corresponding 52% increase in wages. But the post-Katrina explosion of homelessness is about to get a lot worse.
The Disaster Housing Assistance Program (DHAP), which has provided rental assistance to thousands of Katrina survivors, is set to expire at the end of February. Currently, over 30,000 people relying on the DHAP program for housing assistance (about half of whom are in the New Orleans area) face grave uncertainty about what the future will bring. Many DHAP recipients and their landlords don’t even know that the program is soon to expire. Due to factors like intense NIMBYism throughout the New Orleans metro area and the sharply reduced value of Low Income Housing Tax Credits, the replacement of storm devastated affordable housing is lacking to say the least.
Perhaps most troubling though, is the continued lack of a cohesive plan to address the affordable housing crisis that we all knew was going to be a problem in the weeks following the levee failures in 2005. With the looming expiration of the DHAP program, thousands of families whose lives have already been upended time and again over the last three and a half years are about to go through the ringer again. Advocates on the ground will once again be disappointed that we weren’t able to make it right for our communities.
In the meantime, the New Orleans City Council and the Mayor are taking each other to court over the details of a trash contract in the French Quarter, and the Bush Administration denied a request this month to extend DHAP until 2011.
Often I hear people comment on the remarkable and tireless work of local residents in conjunction with enthusiastic volunteers from out of town. Indeed, our accomplishments are remarkable, but they are not sufficient, nor should they be since we are all paying taxes.
Local politicians have for the most part failed to represent the interests of ordinary New Orleanians for the past three years. For example, in the face of a staggering crisis in affordable housing, first the City Council and then the Mayor signed off on demolition permits that resulted in the loss of 4,500 units of deeply affordable housing. Far too often, we end up battling each other over crumbs rather than holding our local leadership accountable for their betrayals (and I am in no way absolving myself of responsibility for this while pointing it out).
In the same vein, the Obama Administration and Congress have many opportunities to fulfill the broken promises of the federal government in relation to Gulf Coast recovery. Extending the DHAP program until there is a holistic plan to address the need for affordable housing in the area is one way to do so.
If you care about Gulf Coast recovery, please consider contacting your representatives and Congressional leadership to remind them that the issue of affordable housing post-Katrina has not been dealt with satisfactorily, and that an extension of the DHAP program is essential for this reason.
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