Advancement Project

By yuming on January 22nd, 2008

Over two years after Hurricane Katrina, the displaced public housing residents of New Orleans are still scattered in temporary housing in other neighboring cities. However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to demolish four key public housing projects — C.J. Peete, St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper and Lafitte — and rebuild them into mixed-income residences.

This means that many of the former residents will not be able to return to their homes. Presently, these apartments, if not damaged by the hurricane, are apparently boarded up. What riled former residents is that the budget set aside for rebuilding New Orleans, post-Katrina, is the same money used to kick them out of their own homes.

This is where the Advancement Project comes in: it is a civil rights organization that is suing federal state and city officials on a racial discrimination charges. They claimed that the urban renewal project is a ruse to get rid of poor, jobless African American families. The lawsuit demands a stop to HUD’s planned demolition so that everyone will get the right to return to their old apartments.

A few government officials reportedly released statements like, New Orleans “is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again”, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did” and “We don’t need soap-opera watchers all day”, which fuelled the class action lawsuit according to conspiracy theorists.

Some architectural experts commented the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was minimal and these old apartments could be refurbished quickly and more cheaply, compared to tearing down the establishments completely and rebuilding them. On the other hand, detractors of this lawsuit argue that building mixed-income residences will not isolate the poor in a squalid, crime-and-gang-gripped area.

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