Project Katrina

Over and over again we keep hearing the same stories in lower-income areas. Families have returned. They have the resources to rebuild, yet the city of New Orleans is doing everything in their power to take their property. If it isn’t bad enough these folks have to rebuild from scratch, that they have to jump through hoop after hoop and cut throw miles of red tape. The Times-Picayune reports:

In appealing the condemnation of his home as an "imminent health threat," he offered a letter showing that a nonprofit group planned to clean out the ungutted property, and a city-issued permit he had secured to rebuild. He walked away with a signed receipt assuring him the city would take the house off its list of tear-downs.

So it came as a shock when Lucien, who lives in a FEMA trailer park in St. Roch, dropped by his one-story Wilton Drive house on July 12 to find the electricity cut off, the door lock broken and colorful Xs painted on the outer walls.

Spotting the telltale signs of impending demolition, Lucien rushed back to City Hall, where a clerk said the house, which by then had been gutted, was scheduled to be knocked down the next day.

Though he secured another written confirmation that his home would be spared, he didn’t trust it—and spent the day and night hunkered down in front of his home, girding for a stand-off with bulldozers, which never came. While his house still stands, Lucien fumes over his bungled case.

"The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing," he said.

Similar frustration appears to be growing as property owners who can’t figure out why their clearly repairable—or, in some cases, occupied—houses have been cited, fight to make sure their homes don’t become piles of rubble.

Look I get that much of the New Orleans government, which wasn’t the most functional in the US before Katrina hit, was crushed as well. I also understand why there are building regulations. But next to basic services: police, power, water, garbage pick-up the next most important thing the city has to do we prove a quick path for people to rebuild. If they can’t rebuild their won’t be enough of a tax base to support basic services. It is that simple.