Variation on a theme. Site connection below. NK BUSH AGENT ORDERS DEMOLITION OF 4,500 NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC HOUSING UNITS
WASHINGTON POST - Public housing officials decided Thursday to proceed with the demolition of more than 4,500 government apartments here, brushing aside an outcry from residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina who said the move was intended to reduce the ability of poor black people to repopulate the city. Residents and their advocates made emotional, legal and what they called common-sense arguments against demolition at the housing authority meeting. "The day you decide to destroy our homes, you will break a lot of hearts," said Sharon Pierce Jackson, who lived in one of the now-closed projects slated to be razed. "We are people. We are not animals." She and others questioned why the Department of Housing and Urban Development would destroy affordable housing in New Orleans, saying it is essential to the city's recovery. C. Donald Babers, the federally appointed administrator running the Housing Authority of New Orleans, did not respond to that question in tersely approving the demolitions. . . "This is a government-sanctioned diaspora of New Orleans's poorest African American citizens," said Bill Quigley of Loyola University's law school, who is representing the displaced. "They are destroying perfectly habitable apartments when they are more rare than any time since the Civil War." http://tinyurl.com/y7hwo7 _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
