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We are back on the road!  Watching the east Texas countryside go by as I type this.

 

It was our first time to NOLA, and a real experience. Perhaps we broke down there for a reason.  It is an easy place to become attached to, and it is easy to see why so many new comers are attracted there.

We had a little trouble at first getting the lay of the land (the city follows the river, so don't think "grid") but we were able to connect with a lot of good folks that helped us out in all kinds of ways!



I probably don’t have anything particularly insightful to relate to folks already familiar with the city, but will make a couple of observations anyway;



Meditating on housing for a minute….



So, before Katrina N.O. was filled with a really huge number of old wood frame houses.  (there are still a lot) There is and was a lot of poverty in NO, but there was also a lot of affordable (cheap!) housing.  Many many "low" income people were home owners, with houses that had been passed down for generations. Carrying no debt, and no mortgages  Property taxes were non existent or very very low.



Now, to me, this doesn’t seem like a bad thing. Cheap housing, with no debt tied to the global financial machine. People living secure lives in secure homes with low cash flow…so called ”poor” people.  Houses were so cheap that their value was well below replacement cost. You could by a house for 20G. 

No more….



The Storm came-



So, poorer home owners lost their homes, and have been paid “road home” money that is supposedly tied to “fair market value” before the storm.   So people receive checks for maybe 30,000, use it to pay off their credit card debt after being displaced, maybe buy a car etc, and that’s it. They are no longer home owners, and no money to rebuild.



They say 50,000+ people permanently displaced at this point. The city in major ways reconfigured.



And now of course , there is  a land rush going on in the more attractive neighborhoods. Many new people, new money. And ironically even all of the industrious and well meaning new comers that came to help after the storm and stayed (there are a lot) only contribute to the gentrification as they make their homes there.....



Of course this is just one small aspect of things, and though there are uncountable stories of loss from NO residents who lived thru Katrina, there are a lot of stories of ambivalence to the changes going on- that the city is in some way better off for it, or that something was needed to shake the city up, or some such thing….

that people just had it too "easy" before....



Perhaps it is just human nature to want to find meaning, to attach mystical significance, or to seek the silver lining in such a life changing event for so many folks.



And anyway most NO people we talked to said they welcome all the new folks, and are happy to have them come and help, that the city benefits from their energy….so who am I to say something else?



In any case, the bottom line as far as housing goes as that the speculative housing market that had somehow bypassed NO all this time, is now in effect in a big way.    

there are a lot of stories related to this out there:

http://www.truthout.org/article/bill-quigley-half-new-orleanss-poor-permanently-displaced-failure-or-success


http://www.alternet.org/katrina/71400/


http://www.soros.org/resources/multimedia/katrina




peas all,

kevin




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