Greetings from the Big Easy!

Hello from New Orleans!

I arrived late Sunday night in the Big Easy ready for a much needed spring break. This isn’t the traditional spring break, though. I’m here with 13 other SU law students to support the local legal system.

If you’re like me, you might be wondering how bad things are two and a half years after the hurricane. Hopefully, I’ll have some pictures to post after today. In the mean time, I’ll just describe the city.

The first thing you notice when you get here is the overwhelming musty/moldy smell. It’s there when you walk off the plane and seems to permeate everything. It might just be because it’s so humid here, but I don’t remember this smell from other places.

Our hotel is on the corner of Canal & Claiborne Streets. I-10 runs over Claiborne, providing shelter for thousands of homeless people. We have tent cities in Seattle, but nothing like this. The tents used to be situated in front of City Hall in protest of the housing situation, but they were forcefully removed in advance of the Sugar Bowl. Now they live, stretched out under the freeway for miles.

Housing - or the lack of it - will likely be a theme this week. Before Hurricane Katrina, 25% of the city’s population lived below the federal poverty line. These folks were stripped of all of their resources when the hurricane hit. And when I say everything, we’re talking not just personal belongings. Their church, friends, schools, community centers, family, house, all of their support systems...gone. Those who couldn’t leave were placed in 240 sq. ft. trailers - sometimes whole families in one trailer. Later, it was discovered that these trailers emitted toxic levels of formaldehyde. (Congress apparently knew about this before sending the trailers down here.) Hundreds of thousands of people still live in these trailers, making the tough choice between risking cancer or becoming homeless.

The backlash against the government regarding these trailers is creating a new set of problems, though. The government’s new goal is to move people out of the trailers as fast as possible. With the shortage of affordable housing, however, it means the people who live in these trailers have no where to go. In the next 60 days, 35,000 families (over 100,000 people) will get 3-day eviction notices. For these people, it’s not a matter of if, but when they will become homeless. There is a crisis here, but it’s of a different kind.

Today we start our work with the residents still living in these trailers. Last year students surveyed the trailers to find what types of unmet legal needs existed. Our job is to help these folks find and take advantage of the legal services available to them here. We’ll see how it goes.

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I was just down there, and it didn’t look that bad to me.  I was also there 18 years ago, and I really could see no difference between the two visits.  I am wondering, if when you refer to “the government’s new goal” you mean the City, County, or State?  Or, are they still wondering why it’s so dark and stinky where their heads are?  What a bunch of know-nothings sucking off the Federal Government!  I hope you’re able to help some people that need it.

Rick -

I’m not sure what parts of the city you visited. If you spent your time in the Central Business District or the French Quarter, you wouldn’t have seen much of a difference because those areas were not flooded. I was here 10 years ago, so I have a good frame of reference. Honestly, you really have to have your head in a hole not to see the devastation.

Drive a few miles to the east of the French Qtr - to the Lower Ninth Ward for example - and it’s a different story entirely. The area is surrounded on three sides by water. It’s also below sea level. When the water from Lake Ponchartrain broke through the levee and flooded the canals, the water spilled into this area burying houses in 13’ of water.

We visited the area yesterday and saw nothing but devastation. Nine in 10 houses were destroyed. (I’ll post some pictures shortly to show you.) I’ll concede that these are not wealthy people, but the Lower Ninth had the highest rate of home ownership in all of NOLA, so they were doing something right.

Unfortunately, many of them do not have the resources to restore their houses and the insurance companies are fighting them tooth and nail, saying that the cause of the flood was man-made. Sure, the army corps of engineers didn’t maintain the levees properly, but that doesn’t help the people who need funds to rebuild their houses when the federal government won’t take responsibility for their failure.

Because the area hasn’t seen much improvement, it’s become a haven for drugs. My good friend Louis came close to being shot yesterday. Fortunately for us he grew up in the Central District and has a sharp tongue and a good sense of how to handle himself on the street.

Finally, when I said the “government’s new goal” I was referring to the federal government - the executive branch to be precise. FEMA and the CDC have documented toxicly high levels of formaldehyde in the travel trailers. Rather than provide safe housing, they want to evict people as soon as possible - even when they have no where to go.

I realize that some of the problems are systemic. It’s also easy to judge the people still living in trailers. (I caught myself doing it today.) I get the feeling from the tenor of your comments, however, that you didn’t really take the time to talk to people who were deeply affected by the hurricane and understand what challenges they face. If you had you wouldn’t be so quick to stereotype them and condemn them.

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