HUD to New Orleans' Poor: "Go F(ind) Yourself (Housing)!"

Now HUD says they now have 1000 apartments open and promise to repair and open another 1000 in a couple of months. After months of rumors, HUD confirmed their intention to demolish all the remaining apartments.

HUD’s demolition plans leave thousands of families with no hope of returning to New Orleans where rental housing is scarce and costly. In New Orleans, public housing was occupied by women, mostly working, their children as well as the elderly and disabled.

To these mothers and children, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said: "Any New Orleans voucher recipient or public housing resident will be welcomed home."

Exactly how people will be welcomed home, HUD did not say.
How can thousands of low-income working families come home if HUD has fenced off their apartments, put metal shutters over their windows and doors and are now plans to demolish their homes?

Jackson, who is likely sleeping in his own bed, urged patience for the thousands who have been displaced since August of 2005: “Rebuilding and revitalizing public housing isn't something that will be done overnight."

Patience is in short supply in New Orleans as over 200,000 people remain displaced. "I just need somewhere to stay," Patricia Thomas told the Times-Picayune. Ms. Thomas has lived in public housing for years. "We're losing our older people. They're dropping like flies when they hear they can't come home."

Demolition of public housing in New Orleans is not a new idea.

When Katrina displaced New Orleans public housing residents, the Wall Street Journal reported U.S. Congressman Richard Baker, a 10 term Republican from Baton Rouge, telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

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