New Orleans Public Housing to be Destroyed; 200,000+ Low-Income Residents Remain Displaced

We take a look at the situation with public housing in New Orleans. Last week, Federal housing officials announced that more than 5,000 public housing units for the poor were to be demolished even though tens of thousands of low-income residents remain displaced. On Saturday, public housing residents and advocates protested the decision by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and vowed to use any means necessary to stop the bulldozing of their apartments. The HUD decision means that at least 3,000 families who lived in the units before the storm will have to find someplace else to go. If the federal government's plan goes forward, New Orleans will have lost 85 percent of its public housing over the past decade.

Last week, the Deputy Chief of Staff of HUD, Scott Keller, attended a meeting of the New Orleans City Council. After the meeting Free Speech Radio News correspondent Christian Roseland asked him if now was the right time to be tearing down public housing since there are still over 200,000 people displaced from the hurricane. This was Scott Keller's response.

* Scott Keller, Deputy Chief of Staff of HUD interviewed by Free Speech Radio News correspondent Christian Roseland.

To talk more about this, we are joined now by New Orleans law professor Bill Quigley.

* Bill Quigley, Law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. He is also the director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola. His most recent article is titled: "HUD to New Orleans' Poor: "Go F(ind) Yourself (Housing)!" http://www.counterpunch.com/quigley06192006.html

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