New Orleans: Some black areas may not be rebuilt, HUD chief says

[elehhhhna]

New Orleans' racial makeup up in air
Some black areas may not be rebuilt, HUD chief says
By LORI RODRIGUEZ and ZEKE MINAYA
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle


It will be years before New Orleans regains the half-million population it had before Hurricane Katrina, and the population might never again be predominantly black, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said Wednesday during a visit to Houston.

"Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time," he said. "New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."

He said he isn't sure that the Ninth Ward, a predominantly black and poor neighborhood devastated by flooding, should be rebuilt at all. If it is, the new construction should be designed to withstand disaster, he said.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3374480

[ret5hd]

1. told ya' so.

[Lerkfish]

4. yup, I was also saying the same thing. If one assumes the absolute

most reprehensible outcome to anything touched by republicans, one is always proved correct eventually.

[acmavm]

2. Gee, anyone see a plan here?

Fat, rich, white, corporatists. What are they good for? Absolutely Nothing.

[tanyev]

3. Nobody wants to see a rich, white, fat cat dancing in the second line.

They think they've thought this through, but they haven't.

[raccoon]

21. Gator meals? nt

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. With all due respect...

You couldn't pay me to live in the 9th ward, even if it were like Amsterdam crossed with London and Prague. Not until they rebuild the fucking levees.

[vptpt]

6. Wow, what a shock

Replacing ghettos with condos...never saw that coming.

Of course that's sarcasm.

[MildyRules]

7. What do you want them to

do, rebuild the effing ghetto? As a native New Orleanin (sp?)I'd like to see some NICE low-income housing built for ALL races to live in. Let's make NOLA a model for urban renewal. It CAN be done.

[bpilgrim]

9. I'd like to see some NICE low-income housing built for ALL races

though it sounds like they got OTHER plans for the blacks


more...
http://GlobalFreePress.com

peace

[MildyRules]

10. Huh?

[bpilgrim]

11. you asked what do we think they should they do

and i told you - in your own words

peace

[MildyRules]

12. I was talking about with respect to rebuilding

NOLA. Though you have a vaild point, I was trying to stay on topic.

[KamaAina]

20. It can be done and it MUST be done!

otherwise America will have lost a large chunk of what makes it the greatest nation on Earth, despite it all.

I managed to make contact with an old buddy of mine who is a judge in NOLA. He is kind of a DLC-type, but I just love the guy. Now I can feed all my suggestions to him (if his inbox is big enough!), like the one in which flood-prone Lower Nine (it flooded hard in Betsy, too) is rebuilt along the "Venice of the South" model, with the canal-streets (pun intended) serving as drainage as well as transportation.

Message to Halliburton or anyone else wishing to impose a top-down, one-size-fits-all model on individualistic New Orleans: Watch your back.

[mike_c]

8. yup-- gee, if we have to divert money from war profiteers...

...and the MIC to rebuild a city we certainly don't want to do so for the benefit of poor black people-- that would just be wasting the money.

:sarcasm:

[rodeodance]

13. low income housing are those trailors in FL.

[qanda]

14. Now we see why he is in that job

What he said wouldn't go over very well being said by someone who is white. So they send out a self-hating black man to continue the war on his own people. SHAME ON HIM!!!!!!

[hatrack]

15. Yes, to quote Leslie "Wolf" Blitzer . . .

Those areas of New Orleans are so poor, and so black that they should probably never be rebuilt. :sarcasm: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[Lerkfish]

24. I am loathe to defend wolf, and hate that you make me do it, but..

you've taken that completely out of context and slapped erroneous ending onto it.

The context was Cafferty was having an email segment coming up, and Cafferty raised the question of whether the lack of urgency on the administration's part was because the victims were poor or black, THEN wolf said:

And they were so poor, and so black.

that's it. He didn't tie that to whether the are should be rebuilt, and that wasn't even the topic. The topic was an indictment of the Adminstration's incompetence and whether there was a racial or class component.

I watched him say it, and I know you are wrong here.

[Octafish]

16. Ethnic Cleansing -- American Style

Natural disaster, today.
Terror, tomorrow.
The NAZIBush method of urban renewal.

[peacetalksforall]

17. Here we go. We have more proof each day that the think tankers

stayed up all night working out the profits for them and life and vote destruction for Black-Americans. This can't be allowed. Who is HUD anyway - a Dept that 'lost' billions of dollars. Poof! If you don't see nazism in all this, we are lost.

[Terran]

18. Alphonso Jackson is an idiot

He's well known in the circles I work for having said publicly a few years back that people who are poor are poor because they choose to be.

In any event, I'm not too sure what HUD has to say about how NO is redeveloped. The residential areas that need to be rebuilt are still owned by the same people who owned them before. Even a lot of those poor African-Americans who lost their homes still owned those homes and the land they rested on. HUD is not in the business of building houses--all it does is fund people who want to build houses. Jackson seems to think that the people who lived in NO will just roll over and give up what they own. To an extent, he may be right; those who *didn't* own land may never come back because it will be too difficult to re-establish themselves, and that will change the demographics of the city somewhat. But I don't see the people who have a stake in their home town just shugging and giving it up.

[flyarm]

19. AND "ANYONE" HAD ANY DOUBT OF THIS???

casinos will be on their property!! mark my words!!

or more wherehouses for folgers!!

as i listen to senator Warner talk of global terror..i think we should make him realize the worst terror to this nation is here in this white house!! This white house and administration is the worst terror i have seen in my 53 years!

fly

[mtnester]

22. Can I tell you how offended I am that someone is actually using the words

"black areas" like it is a type of farm, or camp, or, when some of the MSM say it, a disease?

I mean, how do people ingnore what is coming out of their own mouths?

I don't know, it rubs me the wrongest of ways.

[enid602]

23. piers

Why can't they rebuild 9th Ward homes on piers? Very common building practice in the Gulf region.

[ck4829]

25. So, they get to live in FEMA camps for the rest of their lives.

How fun.

:sarcasm:

[One_Life_To_Give]

26. Use the same rules as in previous floods around Fargo etc.

There is not anything good about rebuilding an area that will be wiped out again in the next big storm. If the area is tooo vulnerable to be protected, then leave it as open space flood plain.

These decisions should be based upon the topology of the land and not the racial makeup of the people though.