I invite you to cross-post at < href="http://www.dailykingfish.com>Da ily Kingfish<>.  

The site's just started, and I'd love to make it a vibrant community for progressive Louisianans.

I'm a law student at LSU.  My understanding is that few folks in the 9th have been able to do ANYTHING about their land, mainly because the insurance industry refuses to play fair.  They've been busy trying to reduce their risk AND raise the rates, and  it is making damn near impossible for ordinary folks to afford a mortgage and the homeowner's insurance.  

http://acorn.org/cleanout

ACORN has gutted 2,000 homes with the help of volunteers all over the country, but that's just the start.

Leaders stand united behind recovery plan
Blueprint addresses fears of abandonment
Friday, March 30, 2007
By Michelle Krupa

After more than a year of infighting about how to orchestrate and finance New Orleans' massive recovery effort, city leaders coalesced Thursday around Mayor Ray Nagin's blueprint for spending $1.1 billion in public money to spur private investment in 17 target zones as the first phase of a decades-long effort to rebuild the entire city.

Flanked by community leaders and elected officials, Nagin and his recovery chief, Ed Blakely, pitched the plan -- the most definitive ever offered by his administration -- as a sure strategy for success. It would use public dollars to encourage entrepreneurs and developers to invest in key business corridors, with more than $300 million going toward loans, grants and other incentives.

Nagin said the plan already has the backing of City Council members, neighborhood activists, state officials and the local business community. It still needs formal approval from the City Planning Commission and the council.

In addition to breathing life into the city's sluggish recovery, Blakely said he hopes the proposal will serve as the basis of a formal master plan, which he recommends be codified into law to protect it from the whims of present and future political leaders. In the end, the 15-year rebuilding initiative will stretch far beyond Nagin's term, and likely his successor's.

Federal recovery chief Donald Powell said Thursday that he supports the plan in theory, though he had not reviewed it in detail.

"Any time that you can incentivize the private sector to participate in a recovery, I think it's good," he said. "The private sector will be an important and key sector in the rebuilding of New Orleans."

Community vision

Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said the city's proposal fits the bill his agency's board has been touting.

"The investments they're planning to make are consistent with the vision that thousands of New Orleanians helped to develop," he said, referring to the recently completed Unified New Orleans Plan.

The proposed target zones also were received warmly by council members, who could have the plan on their agenda as soon as May.

Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis said Blakely's plan will go a long way toward clearing up lingering "questions and doubts and fears" about the future of her crippled district. Willard-Lewis represents eastern New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward, which are slated to receive the two largest lump-sum investments.

"I think we achieved a consensus today," she said, adding that naming the two hard-hit neighborhoods as target zones "reverses all of the previous discussions of green space and wastelands and toxic soil."

She said the plan now on the table represents "what sound planning principles and science and community input can deliver at the end of the day."

Ready to turn dirt

Councilman James Carter, who represents mostly unflooded areas, including the French Quarter, Algiers, Bywater and Faubourg Marigny, called the plan "a good first step."

"You got to start somewhere," he said, adding that he hopes the plan will progress in a timely fashion.

Councilwoman Stacy Head said she is pleased with Blakely's "focused and realistic approach" to recovery and his swift action. The renowned disaster expert, who lobbied for the position, has been on job just three months. Council President Oliver Thomas agreed.

"Look, if he's going to be our czar, then we need to trust him," Thomas said. "If he makes a mistake, then we need to deal with that at that time. But right now I trust the guy. He's got all the credentials in the world. We just need to start turning some dirt."

Vanessa Gueringer, chairwoman of Lower 9th Ward chapter of the community activist group ACORN, had trouble containing her excitement when she saw the blueprint for her ruined area. While vowing to keep the city honest about its proposal, Gueringer said she believes the plan will quell simmering concerns that politicians intend to abandon her neighborhood.

"This is awesome," she said, adding that she planned to spend all day on the phone sharing the news with her neighbors still displaced in Houston and Atlanta. "It says to the Lower 9th Ward: You can come home!"

'The people's plan'

Blakely said selection of the zones grew out of a "scientific" evaluation of resettlement patterns, coupled with the results of painstaking planning work completed in recent months by residents, including those still displaced, and professional consultants.

"This is not my plan," Blakely said. "This is not the city's plan. It's the people's plan. And it will work."

Nagin, who has been criticized for hampering the recovery by failing to identify neighborhoods that would be first in line for public investment, cut directly to the question of timing during a morning news conference at City Hall.

"Now, there may be a question about: Why now?" Nagin said, referring to the fact that it is 19 months after Hurricane Katrina. "It's because we're ready. Why now? It's because we have clarity on where the dollars are going to come from, which is the fuel that will drive us to higher heights."

Despite Nagin's indication that the money for the initiative is in hand, a bevy of questions remain unanswered about how the city will pay for the rebuilding effort. Though the mayor's plan identifies five financing streams, including federal grant money and a city bond issue approved by voters before Katrina, some options appear less than certain.

For instance, the biggest chunk of the city's investment -- $342 million -- would come from a federal appropriation intended to cover 10 percent of all FEMA-backed reconstruction projects in the city. Local officials have lobbied for a waiver of the 10 percent "match," which in theory would unlock that cash for discretionary use. The White House has threatened to veto such a waiver.

Powell unequivocally repeated that stand Thursday. "There's no current plans to waive the 10 percent match," he said.

Also unclear is how the bulk of the budget, assuming it all materializes, would be allocated. Nagin's plan calls for $742.2 million -- about 60 percent of the total -- to be spent citywide, a nod to residents who find themselves outside the zones, most of which will stretch about four blocks or a quarter-mile in every direction from a main intersection.

Blakely said Thursday that "blight removal" would be a major focus of the citywide spending, though he did not give a dollar figure. He mentioned the proposed "Lot Next Door" program, which would give homeowners adjacent to abandoned or blighted properties first crack at buying them. That program still must be approved by the City Council.

Inspection priorities

Tony Faciane, Nagin's deputy executive assistant for housing and neighborhood development, said some of the money will go toward enhancing a post-Katrina anti-blight enforcement effort dubbed "The Good Neighbor" program, focused on house-by-house inspections and court sanctions for property owners who fail to gut, clean and board up their buildings. However, he said no budget or timeline had been worked out yet for the added investment.

"Our inspectors will target those areas," Faciane said of the target zones. "They're going to prioritize administrative hearings in those areas, to stabilize them."

A "partial list" of citywide projects provided by City Hall shows that the money also would finance some capital projects, such as improving neighborhood parks, streets and traffic signals. Also on the docket are programs to support rent-to-own housing, neighborhood retail incentives and historic preservation incentives.

None of the items includes an explanation or a price tag.

Blakely said the remaining 40 percent of the $1.1 billion would go to the 17 target zones, 14 of them located west of the Industrial Canal.

The largest sum -- $145 million -- would go to the two hardest-hit areas: the Lower 9th Ward and a section of eastern New Orleans surrounding the former Lake Forest Plaza shopping center. Another $170.9 million would be spread in areas that need a minor boost to enhance recovery, such as the downtown section of Canal Street and the Freret Street market, and the rest spent in places that require thorough redevelopment, such as the commercial stretch of Harrison Avenue in Lakeview.

'A stronger city'

Several exhibition boards displayed Thursday in the City Hall lobby showed colorful zoning maps and artist renderings of the target-zone plans. But most of the illustrations offered only a bird's-eye view, with street names and proposed developments too tiny to discern. Only some of the zones were represented.

Blakely said all zones share a common theme that harks back to the city's earliest days.

"They're all centers for the old markets on which the city was built in the first place," he said. "So every one of these has a shopping center anchor or some other anchor around which the city was built.

"This also creates the opportunities for us to do the kind of clustering around civic assets -- building around these places so we can make this a stronger city in the end," Blakely said.

Pressed by two reporters for further details about what the areas might look like, however, the recovery chief took offense.

"I have a very clear idea" of how the zones will develop, he said. "Developers make a lot of money by getting those clear ideas early and getting the jump in the game. And that shouldn't happen in the newspaper. You're a newspaper reporter, not a developer."

Nagin, meanwhile, demurred in the face of reporters' requests for a rough timeline and a rundown of the kinds of projects that might sprout in the zones.

"I don't want to get into specific dates and specific projects with you guys because I know what you do with that: You come back later and you talk about the things that we haven't done," the mayor said.

Building trust

Former Mayor Marc Morial, speaking in general about recovery efforts during an appearance in Baton Rouge, said specifics are precisely what recovery leaders must provide, particularly if they are proposing a phased-in recovery that gives higher priority to certain areas of the city.

Morial, who now serves as president of the National Urban League, said residents from lower-priority neighborhoods must be convinced that officials also have their interests at heart.

"My sense is that people want to trust (Blakely), but they want to see some action," said Morial, who participated Thursday in a symposium at the Southern University Law Center. "If Ed Blakely says X action is going to happen July 1, and it does, then that trust will start to build."

Speaking to meeting participants, Morial said all recovery plans must hold to the principle that "every individual has the right to return," a mantra he has repeated since the storm.

Willard-Lewis, whose sprawling district includes dozens of neighborhoods not featured in the plan, said she will continue to lobby for areas outside the zones.

"We have to be mindful that this is Phase One," she said. "This is the first car. There will be others."

Though he declined to set firm dates, Blakely said he intends to have a financing package in place by June, some cash in hand by summer and "cranes on the skyline" by September. Shifting course from last month, when he announced that one 17-acre zone would serve as the pilot project, Blakely said Thursday that residents should expect the whole program to launch at once.

"There isn't a pecking order," he said. "This is all No. 1 stuff."

. . . . . . .

Staff writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.

Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3312. Frank Donze can be reached at fdonze@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3328.

1. Maybe because a lot of people in the Ninth Ward don't want their houses bulldozed?  (As evidenced by all the "No Bulldozing" signs all over the neighborhood, which you can't miss if you actually visit.)  They want to rebuild, not be bulldozed out of the way.  Get them the Road Home money they deserve.

3. Curious that you didn't include Vitter in your list of people to get rid of.  Mary Landrieu might not toe the lefty-blogger line on all your pet issues, but she's been the best advocate we have for rebuilding SE Louisiana since Katrina.  The progressive blogosphere (outside of Louisiana bloggers) hasn't exactly been clamoring for things like waiving of the 10% matching funds for the Stafford Act, getting Lousiana its fair share of housing money compared to Mississippi, letting Louisiana keep a portion of its oil royalties, rebuilding our wetlands, holding the Corps accountable for their failed flood control measures which killed so many people, investigating the faulty MWI pumps installed in the outfall canals last year, etc, etc, etc.  Mary has done all of that for us.  

If you have a chance, you might want to drive along the Gulf Coast...it's cleaned up alot, but LOTS of empty space here.

I'm a little concerned that some of these questions about "what I'd like to know about New Orleans" come packaged with pre-conceived notions about what's going on down here.

For instance:

"It might also be interesting to contrast the continuing problems in the poorer areas with reconstruction in some of the more middle-class areas. I took a look at the Google map of Chalmette (an eastern suburb where I spent a summer a long time ago) and it appears to be pretty well recovered from some pretty serious flooding."

You looked at a Google Map to determine that Chalmette is doing well?  And from this you conclude that the poorer areas have continuing problems while the middle-class areas are pretty well recovered.

I want to show how wrong-headed this thinking is, but it's hard to know where to start.  I guess if you think you can look at a neighborhood from a satellite and be able to tell if it's rebuilt and inhabited or still just a desolate block of gutted and overgrown shells of former homes, this would make sense, but you can't, so it doesn't.

White working-class Chalmette looks like Chernobyl, right now, 20 months after the storm.  As does racially-integrated middle-class Gentilly.  Black working-class Lower Ninth Ward looks like Hiroshima.  As does white middle-class Lakeview.

The mistake people make in covering this story is that they start with a preconception gleaned from news reports (e.g., "Katrina mostly affected black poor people") and then come down here to look for facts that validate their preconceived notions.

Nancy, please, whatever you do, come down here with an open mind and open eyes.  And talk to lots of locals, not just one or two.

UH, you did hear that Google scrubbed the post-K maps of the area, right?

I can say one thing for certain... the Hispanic population has boomed in the Gulf Coast since this, that's for sure. Certainly changing the dynamics of racial populations here, which is interesting.

I want to second, third and forth ray's comments here. His list of links is priceless and spot on (you could check out his site as well http://www.moronosphere.com/rayinneworle ans/ ).

There is also an excellent on going blog series in the online New Yorker that might be useful. (New Orleans Journal, Dan Baum)

All of these places would help clear up the 'observations' from some of the other recommendations posted here.

Frankly, this post gives the impression that you may not be very well schooled in what has been going on here since your last visit. That may be unfair. But giving the minimal amount of time you have to spend here, I'd recommend doing some serious analysis of the work of those who choose to dedicate huge portions of their lives to this subject (like Scout Prime at First Draft) as well as those who have no choice.

Perhaps that way you can select the aspect of this huge, complicated, on-going national disgrace that you can best help illuminate.