PHRF and Tenant Rights Working Group condemn class bias of City Council -Calls for Affordable Housing and the Right of Return

Organization:

Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition [1]

Date Published:

March 15, 2007

People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and

Oversight Coalition (PHRF)

1418 North Claiborne Avenue, Suite 2

New Orleans, LA 70116

Telephone: 504 301 0215

Media Advisory

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For More Information Contact:

March 8, 2007

Kali Akuno, PHRF 504.301.0215

Monifa Bandele, Change the Game 917.407.3018

PHRF and TRW condemn class bias of City Council - Calls for Affordable Housing and the Right of Return for All.

The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) and Tenants Rights Working Group (TRW) strongly condemn the proposals put forth by City Council Women Cynthia Willard-Lewis, Arnie Fielkow and Cynthia Hedge-Morrel to keep working class Black people on Section 8 vouchers out of New Orleans East and Gentily. “Everyone displaced by the storm has the right to come home. Housing is a human right”, says public housing resident and TRW member Stephanie Mingo. “That includes housing for working people, particularly people on Section 8. City Council don’t have no right to tell people who want to come home where they can and can’t live. They’re acting like racist segregationists against poor, working Black people. But, we defeated racial segregation in this country, now we’ll fight against class segregation and beat it too”.

The proposal to put a moratorium on multi-family housing in New Orleans East reflects a class bias of the Council Women that must be pointed out for what it is, a discriminatory act against working people struggling to survive in a city with exploitative rents, limited jobs, a racist and dysfunctional educational system, no living wages, and no union rights and protections for the working class. To counter this discrimination and exploitation, PHRF and TRW are demanding that City Council and the Government on all levels take affirmative action to ensure that all those displaced and effected by the Hurricane are retuned home or made whole where they choose to reside.

On Thursday, March 15^th at 9 am PHRF and TRW will come before the City Council to condemn this proposal and demand that a price gouging and rent control ordinance be implemented immediately to stop exploitative and exclusive rents that threaten to permanently displace thousands of New Orleans working class Blacks. PHRF and TRW will submit a price gouging and tenants rights petition with more than 10,000 signatures from NO residents struggle against high rents and the lack of comprehensive tenant protections.

www.peopleshurricane.org [2]

Link:

http://www.peopleshurricane.org/storage/documents/PHRF_condemns_class_bias.doc [3]