Mayor Ray Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back committees have released reports on how to rebuild the city, but like many post-Katrina initiatives, their recommendations left some community members furious.
The most divisive proposal, put forth by the Urban Planning Committee, is a four-month moratorium on building permits in the most damaged neighborhoods, including the Lower Ninth Ward and Lakeview.
Neighborhood planning experts will try to contact residents from those and other neighborhoods that fall into the defined neighborhood planning areas. The experts will assess how many residents are expected to return, then team up with urban designers, public health consultants and outreach organizations to decide on a blueprint for the area.
If less than 50 percent of a neighborhood intends to return, then residents will be offered 60 percent of their home equity as part of a governmental buy-back program. The committee also said that they could not guarantee city services such as utilities and police protection in all neighborhoods.
Critics of the plan say the city has not done enough to secure temporary housing, without which many residents are unable to return.
Some community groups are already publicly against the moratorium.
“Of course people want to return and rebuild – and they need some basic help to do that,” Louisiana Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now member Tanya Harris said in a press release posted on ACORN’s Web site. “We need a government plan that assures people there is a commitment to rebuild, not a set-up for our communities to fail.”
New Orleans East resident Giselle, who declined to give her last name because she is a city employee, said she thinks the four-month timeframe is unfair to residents.
“I think they can take as long as they want to come back,” she said. “It’s their house; they own it.”
She said that she knows many people that want to return but are unable to secure FEMA trailers or hotel rooms.
“You don’t have anywhere to live,” she said. “How are people going to come back if they don’t have anywhere to live?”
But others said the recommendations just try to ensure that the city isn’t composed of restored houses surrounded by blighted ones.
“Without a practical, clear-eyed plan, some homeowners could find themselves alone amid blocks of rubble and blight,” The Times-Picayune wrote in a Sunday editorial. “The city will not be able to afford to provide services to sparsely populated neighborhoods. Nor is it wise to allow hundreds of damaged houses to sit and rot.”
Ann Yoachim, program manager at the Loyola Center for Environmental Communications, said she thought the plan was a good compromise between homeowners and the city.
“I think the committee is trying to find a way to balance the needs of the landowners that want to rebuild as well as making sure that the footprint of the city is not larger than the ability to provide services, whether it be electricity or water services,” she said.
“It’s a compromise between the one-to-three year moratorium that they were calling for earlier, and so, to me, four months is a compromise,” she said.
The committees – researching aspects of New Orleans’ civic life from the cuisine to governmental efficiency – have been at work since mid-October developing plans to restore the area. The reports are only recommendations; Nagin, with the input of the community, will make final decisions about which policies to adopt.
Kelly Brown can be reached at [email protected].
