Date Published:
March 8, 2008
Government reports confirm that half of the working poor, elderly and
disabled who lived in New Orleans before Katrina have not returned.
Because of critical shortages in low cost housing, few now expect tens
of thousands of poor and working people to ever be able to return home.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals
(DHH) reports Medicaid, medical assistance for aged, blind, disabled
and low-wage working families, is down 46% from pre-Katrina levels. DHH
reports before Katrina there were 134,249 people in New Orleans on
Medicaid. February 2008 reports show participation down to 72,211 (a
loss of 62,038 since Katrina). Medicaid is down dramatically in every
category: by 50% for the aged, 53% for blind, 48% for the disabled and
52% for children.
The Social Security Administration
documents that fewer than half the elderly are back. New Orleans was
home to 37,805 retired workers who received Social Security before
Katrina, now there are 18,940 – a 50% reduction. Before Katrina, there
were 12,870 disabled workers receiving Social Security Disability in
New Orleans, now there are 5350 – 59% less. Before there were 9425
widowers in New Orleans receiving Social Security survivor’s benefits,
now there are less than half, 4140.
Children of working class
families have not returned. Public school enrollment in New Orleans was
66,372 before Katrina. Latest figures are 32,149 – a 52% reduction.
Public
transit numbers are down 75% since Katrina. Prior to Katrina there were
frequently over 3 million rides per month. In January 2008, there were
732,000 rides. The Regional Transit Authority says the reduction reflects that New Orleans has far fewer poorer, transit dependent residents.
Figures from the Louisiana Department of Social Services
show the number of families receiving food stamps in New Orleans has
dropped from 46,551 in June of 2005 to 22,768 in January 2008. Welfare
numbers are also down. The Louisiana Families Independence Temporary Assistance Program was down from 5764 recipients (mostly children) in July 2005 to 1412 in the latest report.
While there are no precise figures on the racial breakdown of the poor
and working people still displaced, indications strongly suggest they
are overwhelmingly African American. The black population of New
Orleans has plummeted by 57 percent, while white population fell 36
percent, according to census data. The areas which are fully recovering
are more affluent and predominately white. New Orleans, which was 67
percent black before Katrina, is estimated to be no higher than 58
percent black now.
The reduction in poor and low-wage workers
in New Orleans is no surprise to social workers. Don Everard, director
of social service agency
Hope House , says New Orleans is a much tougher town for poor people than before Katrina.
“Housing
costs a lot more and there is much less of it,” says Everard. “The job
market is also very unstable. The rise in wages after Katrina has
mostly fallen backwards and people are not getting enough hours of work
on a regular basis.”
The displacement of tens of thousands of
people is now expected to be permanent because there is both a current
shortage of affordable housing and no plan to create affordable rental
housing for tens of thousands of the displaced.
In the most
blatant sign of government action to reduce the numbers of poor people
in New Orleans, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) is demolishing thousands of intact public housing apartments. HUD
is spending nearly a billion dollars with questionable developers to
end up with much less affordable housing. Right after Katrina, HUD
Secretary Alphonso Jackson predicted New Orleans was “not going to be
as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.” He then worked to
make that prediction true.
According to
Policy Link ,
a national research institute, the crisis in affordable housing means
barely 2 in 5 renters in Louisiana can return to affordable homes. In
New Orleans, all the funds currently approved by HUD and other
government agencies (not spent, only approved) for housing for
low-income renters will only rebuild one-third of the pre-Katrina
affordable rental housing stock.
Hope House sees four to five
hundred needy people a month. “Most of the people we see are working
people facing eviction, utility cutoffs, or they are already homeless”
reports Everard. The New Orleans homeless population has already
doubled from pre-Katrina numbers to approximately 12,000 people.
Everard
noted that because of FEMA’s recent announcement that it was closing
35,000 still occupied trailers across the gulf, homelessness is likely
to get a lot worse.
United Nations officials
recently called for an immediate halt to the demolitions of public housing
in New Orleans saying demolition is a violation of human rights and
will force predominately black residents into homelessness.
"The
spiraling costs of private housing and rental units, and in particular
the demolition of public housing, puts these communities in further
distress, increasing poverty and homelessness," said a joint statement
by UN experts in housing and minority issues. "We therefore call on the
Federal Government and State and local authorities to immediately halt
the demolitions of public housing in New Orleans." Similar calls have
been made by Senators Clinton and Obama. Despite these calls, the
demolitions continue.
The rebuilding has gone as many planned. Right after Katrina,
one wealthy businessman told the Wall Street Journal ,
"Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a
completely different way: demographically, geographically and
politically." Elected officials, from national officials like President
Bush and HUD Secretary Jackson to local city council members, who are
presumably sleeping in their own beds, apparently concur.
Policies
put in place so far do not appear overly concerned about the tens of
thousands of working poor, the elderly and the disabled who are not
able to come home.
The political implications of a dramatic
reduction in poor and working mostly African American people in New
Orleans are straightforward. The reduction directly helps Republicans
who have fought for years to reduce the impact of the overwhelmingly
Democratic New Orleans on state-wide politics in Louisiana.
In
the jargon of political experts, Louisiana, before Katrina, was a “pink
state.” The state went for Clinton twice and then for Bush twice, with
U.S. Senators from each party. The forced relocation of hundreds of
thousands, mostly lower income and African-American, could alter the
balance between the two major parties in Louisiana and the
opportunities for black elected officials in New Orleans.
Given
the political and governmental officials and policies in place now, one
of the major casualties of Katrina will be the permanent displacement
of tens of thousands of African Americans, the working poor, their
children, the elderly, and the disabled.
Those who wanted a
different New Orleans rebuilt probably see the concentrated
displacement as a success. However, if the test of a society is how it
treats its weakest and most vulnerable members, the aftermath of
Katrina earns all of us a failing grade.
Bill Quigley is a
human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University College of
Law in New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley77 [at] gmail [dot] com Interested
persons can contact Hope House through Don Everard at
deverard [at] bellsouth [dot] net.