“New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.” – HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson
Now we are learning that when Bush promised to remove the legacy of racism in New Orleans, he meant he’d remove the poor who were victims of that racism.
Bush’s Secretary for Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson revealed that reality in an interview to the Houston Chronicle.
“Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time,” the HUD secretary said. “New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.”
Jackson predicted New Orleans will slowly draw back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 to 40 percent of the post-Katrina population would be black. (Prior to Katrina, New Orleans was two-thirds black.)
“I’m telling you, as HUD secretary and having been a developer and a planner, that’s how it’s going to be.” Jackson revealed that he advised Mayor Ray Nagin not to rebuild the overwhelmingly black 9th Ward.
The people of the 9th Ward are the maids and waiters who serve New Orleans tourists. They are the musicians who give the city its blues. Half of the houses there are owned, not rentals. Many of these workers are dispersed to over 40 states.
No one could figure out why the Bush administration wouldn’t give the evacuees housing vouchers to rent housing in and around New Orleans. Instead FEMA has ordered tens of thousands of trailers and is struggling to build trailer parks to shelve Katrina’s victims.
Bush isn’t planning urban renewal, he’s planning urban removal. The administration has given the victims of Katrina a one-way ticket out with no plan for their return. Instead the planners will turn New Orleans into a gentrified theme park. “That’s how it’s going to be,” says the president’s secretary of HUD.
Katrina’s victims should not be brutalized again. Congress should insist that they have a right to return – and FEMA should develop a plan to make their return possible. They should have preference for the jobs that will be created in rebuilding the city. They should be provided housing vouchers to use for nearby housing. They should be paid the prevailing wage, with decent health-care benefits.
The people of the 9th Ward should decide the fate of their homes, not urban planners intent on building a New Orleans without its black people. If their neighborhoods are not rebuilt, then affordable and public housing should be built in other parts of the New Orleans.
That’s not what Alphonso Jackson and the administration are planning, so it will take street heat and congressional action to make them see the light.