Rubble in the Lower Ninth Ward New Orleans, Louisiana David Metraux davidmetraux.com |
Today we are moving from urban planning and police violence to battling blight in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Since the devastating storm in August 2005, New Orleans seemed to be stuck in some sort of inertia. Thousands of homes were abandoned. left to rot; overtaken by weeds. Eric Velasco's article for Politico, titled, "The Battle for New Orleans," examines Mayor Mitch Landrieu's initiative to get rid of the blight and return the "Crescent City" to its glory.
When Mayor Landrieu took office in 2010, five years after the hurricane, he took a good look around the city and got furious. Mayor Landrieu told Mr. Velasco, basically property owners walking away from their responsibility and leaving for the rest of the public to clean up their mess. It was not like the city had done nothing toward cleaning up the rubble and aiding the displaced residents rebuild. Mr. Velasco writes, "Many of home and business owners had rebuilt. The public and private sector had helped other displaced residents comeback." The government purchased and demolished abandoned properties from absentee landlords and owners. Regardless, New Orleans was still first in blight, when Mayor Landrieu took office, beating out Detroit, Flint, Cleveland, and Baltimore.
New Orleans, Louisiana montage en.wikipedia.org |
I told my team we have have to go everywhere in America where they're solving difficult problems...we have to figure not only what they're doing but how they're doing it. And then we have to bring best practices here.
City officials did go everywhere in America where they were solving difficult problems. The city implemented ideas from cities such as Boston and Philadelphia-everything from dedicated "...telephone hotlines for reporting blight to market studies that helped planners understand where best to focus efforts." New Orleans added new tools to combat blight: it created a state-of-the-art database to follow the status of each blighted property; passing laws that strengthened the city's ability to quickly enforce blight codes; targeting specific neighborhoods that were on the brink of collapse because of the additional blight induced crime and instability.
Jackson Square, French Quarter New Orleans, Louisian bugbog.com |
The blight battle has been aided by a resurgence in the city's pre-Katrina population. The foodie-heaven city now boasts 1,400 restaurants. Technology companies moving into New Orleans have helped diversify the economy. Tourism, New Orleans's top employer, has all but returned-"...9.5 million visitors spent a $6.8 billion in 2014, drawn by Mardi Gras, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Sugar Bowl college football game, convention, cruise ships and myriad parties the city and its neighborhoods throw on any given week."
Buildings and Structures in New Orleans Amusement Parks snipview.com |
Once upon a time, the Lower Ninth boasted the highest rate of African-American homeownership in New Orleans. When the hurricane made landfall, 18,000 people lived in 5,400 houses and apartment in the community. In 2014, a paltry 1,800 residences received mail-an indicator of just how many people have not returned to the community, resuming their lives elsewhere, and just how little the neighborhood has recovered. In a Hollywood shout out, Eric Velasco mention's actor Brad Pitt's organization Make It Right (http://www.makeitright.org) has built 100 homes in the Lower Ninth and have plans to build 50 additional units. New Orleans has spent millions to build new community centers and fire stations.
Garden District New Orleans, Louisiana neworleanscondotrends.com |
Next, he points to the dilapidated property around the corner.
See that house...They ain't torn it down yet
He points to another building on Flood Street, abandoned and falling apart.
The owners?...They're in Ohio
Solar powered homes in the Lower Ninth Ward news-archive.solarenergy-usa.com |
Sad but true. In what seems like some foreshadowing, Mr. Velasco notes, "A national nonprofit prepared a study on how to address the problem, its report due on September 1, 2005. Katrina hit New Orleans two days earlier, creating even more blight in even more places." The population dramatically dropped and 105,000 suffered near-to-catastrophic damage or were just destroyed. Several co-authors of the pre-Hurricane blight study were enlisted to develop Mayor Mitch Landrieu's strategy. The goals were simple according to Jeff Hebert head of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, Preserve houses that needed to be preserved, demolish houses that needed to go and maintain vacant lots.
Homes in the Lower Ninth Ward nytimes.com |
First on the agenda was creating a method for efficiently counting the number of blighted properties and tracking code enforcement. This task is easier in theory than practice. The chief obstacle in quantifying the data was compiling information from twelve city departments who are involved in the bight flight was excruciatingly difficulty because they were not linked.
Jungleland? americaswire.org |
The inspiration for this type of tracking software was found on a fact-finding trip to Baltimore and Philadelphia. Back in New Orleans, civic officials began to craft software specific to their own lot-by-lot system that would provide the necessary information needed to combat blight and assist in the creation of efficiency performance standards. All the data is available online at:
https://data.nola.gov/browse?tags=blight and blightstatus.noa.gov/. The availability of this information is part of ongoing efforts to engage the citizens of New Orleans in the recovery process and mend broken public trust.
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