While people in New Orleans stand down bulldozers menacing public housing, Twin Cities residents served the local HUD office with a "Condemnation Notice". The Director of the HUD office sent a representative to speak with the protesters and agreed to meet with them Monday morning.

This action was part of a rising tide of opposition to HUD's demolition plans in New Orleans and elsewhere. Housing advocates across the country and around the world are calling for a halt to HUD’s ongoing campaign to tear down public housing units and force the relocation of public housing tenants against their will.

In New Orleans the question is urgent. Consistent with Katrina “Restoration” (cruel boondoggles), HUD plans to spend $762 million to demolish 4,605 units of public housing and replace them units with a lower number of mixed-income housing units of which only 744 units will be for public housing residents: a resulting loss of loss of 3,861 low-income public housing units (82 percent of the current number) at the cost of approximately $400,000 per unit.2

Even the proponents of aggressive "Deconcentration of Poverty" strategies advocate that HUD stop its demolition of viable inner city public housing (such as the New Orleans units in question), stating:

“. . . viable public and assisted housing should also be preserved, in light of the severe housing shortages facing low income families in the United States.” 3

Minnesota Solidarity: As part of this call, low income housing advocates and human rights activists in Minnesota gathered today in a Solidarity Rally at HUD Offices this morning in solidarity with the New Orleans tenants who are facing the loss of their housing to HUD’s demolition and gentrification plans. As part of the Rally, which included informational picketing, they posted a Condemnation Notice at HUD’s Minneapolis headquarters condemning HUD for its violations of the New Orleans’ tenants human rights.

New Orleans Demolition Immanent: Low income housing advocates and human rights activists in Minnesota rallied to condemn HUD plans to demolish 5,000 viable and much needed public housing units in New Orleans and called for an immediate halt to HUD’s demolition plans The impetus for the Rally was a call for support from New Orleans tenants and their allies who are bracing for a showdown with HUD over the demolitions which HUD has said are immanent. HUD says it plans to begin the demolitions in mid-December. For the latest news, visit neworleans.indymedia.org/.

Background:

Public housing tenants and their allies in New Orleans have called on supporters across the country and around the world to demonstrate their solidarity with the tenants' opposition to the Bush administration's criminal plans (to be carried out by HUD) to enrich a few by demolishing thousands of viable and badly needed public housing apartments in New Orleans.

New Orleans public housing is garden style 3 story apartments. For a picture of the housing HUD seeks to demolish, look here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/arts/design/22hous.html?_r=1&oref=slog...

The current 4,605 low-income public housing apartments will be the replaced by 744 low-income public housing apartments. That results in a loss of 3,861 low-income public housing units – or 82%. HUD's plan is to spend three-quarters of a billion dollars (approximately $400,000 per unit) to reduce public housing in New Orleans by 82%.

Local organizations joining together as the Minnesota-New Orleans Solidarity Committee calling on HUD to STOP THE DEMOLITIONS include: Minnesota Tenants Alliance, Minnesota Tenants Union, Minnesota ACORN, MPIRG, St. Stephens Shelter, University of Minnesota Human Rights Center, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, Northside Neighbors for Justice, Maria Iñamagua Campaign for Justice, Minnesota Homeless Coalition, and the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign.

Echoes of Twin Cities Demolitions: At their early morning Solidarity Rally at local HUD headquarters, Minnesotans active for low-income housing rights and human rights recalled that Minnesota is no stranger to large-scale tax-propelled government clearance of large numbers of low income and minority residences to make way for gentrified communities, scattering existing communities of color in their wake: see, for example the highway development that routed the Rondo Community in St. Paul and the Holman “Development” in North Minneapolis that demolished nearly 1,000 units of low income public housing, displacing and dispersing thousands of low-income residents of color.

Voices from New Orleans Condemn the Purge of Black and Poor Residents from New Orleans

New Orleans tenants and their supporters write:

Public Housing residents in New Orleans find themselves caught in the grip of two unyielding government authorities: the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). . . . Actions taken by both organizations have made it difficult to survivors to move past the tragedy of the storms to rebuild their lives. Because measures taken by HANO and HUD primarily impact Black and poor residents, they inevitably appear to have an undercurrent of racial and economic discrimination and exclusion.

The public housing crisis is unfolding within a broader human right to housing crisis. For example, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center has documented widespread discrimination in the city’s rental markets and nearby White suburban communities have reportedly passed anti-subsidized housing legislation to ensure that Black and poor families do not settle in their neighborhoods. When added to this is HUD’s inexplicable shortening of the normally 100-day demolition review process to one day, in order to expedite the destruction of the few existing public housing units, poor people have literally nowhere to turn. This violent push to demolish the public housing units represents an extreme manifestation of policies and approaches to rebuilding New Orleans that appear to purge Black and or communities almost by design.

HUD Action Violates Human Rights Standards
Under human rights standards, governments must provide those who have been internally displaced by events such as natural disasters specific safeguards with respect to housing. Article 28(1) of the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recognizes when carrying out international development policy states:

Competent authorities 4 have the primary duty and responsibility to establish conditions, as well as provide the means, which allow internally displaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence . . .

In addition, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundational instrument of human rights adopted unanimously by all member countries of the United Nations (including the United States) states:

Article 25(1): Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and his family, including . . . housing . . .

Further, Article 11(1) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty ratified by the United States 5 in 1994, states:

States Parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee to right of everyone, . . . to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of . . . the right to housing.

National Commitment to Housing Trashed Before Our Eyes
In 1949, the United States government pledged to realize as soon as feasible
. . . The goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family, thus contributing to the development and redevelopment of communities and to the advancement of the growth, wealth, and security of the nation.

Despite that commendable goal, in recent years the sight of government bull dozers and wrecking balls poised to demolish public housing for the poor is not unique to New Orleans. Indeed regression from the goal of adequate, affordable housing for all seems epidemic in the United States. For example, the Housing Authority of New York City is reported to be in financial disarray and remains vulnerable to private control, with an inevitable increase in rents and displacement of low income tenants. Under the HOPE VI program, HUD has demolished far more housing units than they have thus far replaced. The over 13,000 demolished units in Chicago have forced approximately 20,000 residents from their homes and has thus left tens of thousands on an indefinite waiting list. Throughout the United States housing is becoming acutely unaffordable with the resulting housing crisis increasing homelessness.

A Call to Action

The New Orleans Solidarity Organizing Committee unites with the New Orleans Public Housing and Right to Return Movement, the United Front for Affordable Housing, and other tenant organizations to demand a halt to HUD’s plans to demolish approximately 5,000 units of badly needed and structurally sound public housing. HUD’s planned demolition of this valuable housing resource would exacerbate the suffering of low income New Orleans tenants and effectively block their return to New Orleans, in violation of human rights standards, commitments, and common decency as shared by all peoples of the world. HUD should turn its energies to housing people in need and facilitating the return of New Orleans low income residents rather than demolishing their homes and blocking their return.

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For further information: Peter Brown 612-824-6533 / peterb3121 (at) hotmail.com.

For information on the legal basis for housing as a human right: Bret Thiele, Senior Legal Officer, Center on Housing Rights and Eviction, 218-733-1370; bret (at) cohre.org

For information on HUD’s demolitions of public housing demolitions under HOPE VI: Professor Edward Goetz, Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 612-624-8737 and egoetz (at) hhh.umn.edu.

To view a slide show giving the real story of redevelopment: 82% loss of public housing under current plan causing tremendous costs socially and financially, see Bill Quigley’s slide show posted at www.justiceforneworleans.org. Using pictures, statistics, and published reports, Quigley shows who wins and who loses in the New Orleans housing market. Guess who?

Final Note: The JusticeForNewOrleans website www.justiceforneworleans.org also has much other dynamic & pertinent and up to date information about the on-going housing situation & the historic struggle for basic human rights going on today in New Orleans.