Group lays foundation to rebuild Lower 9th
Iareadealistic youth are committed to
Monday, May 1, 2006
by Gwen Filosa
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Across vast stretches of the Lower 9th Ward, there is only
silence among the ruins. The floodwaters that tore through a
faulty levee are long gone, but the residents who survived
them have yet to return.
Eight months after Hurricane Katrina, nothing in New Orleans
looks quite like the Lower 9th. The collapsed houses,
mud-wracked cars and ubiquitous debris are only the most
evident symptoms of a community's brush with death.
Other symptoms are invisible: The water is not safe to drink
or even bathe in. Electricity is spotty at best. A few houses
have been red-tagged and demolished. The streets have been
cleared.
But for the most part, birds and late spring breezes provide
the soundtrack for this urban neighborhood, not the hammers
and heavy equipment that have begun to rumble in other areas.
The sorry state of the Lower 9th Ward post-Katrina is not for
lack of residents who want to return.
"It's for an absolute lack of resources and government
facilitation in return," said Michelle Shin, director of
the Common Ground Lower 9th Ward Project, a volunteer effort
that has taken root in the heart of the storm-scarred
neighborhood. "You can't gut your house if you live in
Houston. I've seen people sleeping in their cars here, in
order to work on their houses."
Shin works out of a bright blue house at the corner of
Deslonde and North Derbigny streets, within a stone's throw
of the newly installed concrete floodwall atop the breached
Industrial Canal levee.
Someone has planted fresh flowers in the front yard to greet
the scores of volunteers who arrive daily to rebuild the
Lower 9th, one house at a time. The Common Ground Lower 9th
Ward Project, as the effort is called, is one of several
efforts by Common Ground, a nonprofit agency created in
Katrina's aftermath that has drawn the young and the
idealistic -- and substantial philanthropic dollars -- from
all across the nation.
Common Ground marries can-do idealism with a
give-it-to-the-man political bent. But in this ruined
neighborhood, where search crews are still unearthing the
remains of storm victims, volunteers exhibit a respectful
reverence for the residents. Those residents were chased out
of their homes first by the disaster and then by the
so-called recovery's tangle of government red tape,
inadequate insurance and unalleviated poverty.
A youthful romance
"In the Lower 9th Ward, the needs are so great that
working here requires a lot of sensitivity, a strong work
ethic and respect," said Shin, 29, who arrived in New
Orleans four months ago.
For her long days and administrative burdens she, like every
other volunteer, is rewarded with decent meals and a place to
sleep. There is a youthful romance in helping New Orleans
rebuild, but Shin is determined to keep the effort from
turning into a playground for privileged dilettantes on a
break from colleges and careers. "I'm absolutely
committed to the Lower 9th Ward not turning into a
counterculture," she said. To that end, "residents
are involved in every aspect."
The Lower 9th hit rock-star status after Katrina. Members of
the news media seized upon the mostly black, poverty-stricken
neighborhood as an icon of inner-city malaise. The very name
of the district suggested it was a sort of geographical nadir
in a city below sea level, an area that probably shouldn't be
resettled. But in fact the "Lower" in Lower 9th
refers to its downriver location, not its altitude.
The widespread misperception is that the Lower 9th Ward is
the lowest-lying land in the region.
"Not even close," said Roy Dokka, a geologist at
Louisiana State University. "It's typical New Orleans.
It's similar to Kenner and Metairie." Indeed, parts of
Lakeview, a white, middle-class neighborhood that was also
inundated after levee breaches, sit farther below sea level
than the homes across from the Industrial Canal.
Moreover, the Lower 9th was not as impoverished as media
covering Katrina found it convenient to assert. The economic
reality was more complicated. The district's disproportionate
share of elderly homeowners gave the area a 59 percent home
ownership rate, substantially higher than the citywide
average of 46.5 percent, according to the Greater New Orleans
Community Data Center.
Slow revival
Yet 14 percent of the 5,600 houses in the Lower 9th were
vacant -- 1.4 percent higher than the citywide figure -- and
more than three-quarters of the housing was built before
1970. The neighborhood had a 36 percent poverty rate,
compared with the 28 percent figure citywide. The average
household income was a little less than $25,000 a year, while
the city's overall average was more than $43,000.
The depiction of the area as hopelessly ravaged by drug
dealing and addiction is gainsaid by the substantial crowds
drawn to Saturday morning meetings of the Lower 9th Ward
Homeowners Association, a group formed by state Rep.
Charmaine Marchand, D-New Orleans, who also lost her home to
the flooding.
But the association got around to choosing officers only in
March, a measure of how slow the Lower 9th's revival is
proving to be. Trailers don't line the lawns and neither do
construction crews. Instead, a half-dozen or so residents are
camped out in tents on the lake side of North Claiborne
Avenue. The city never lifted its "look and leave"
order from December, when residents were first allowed entry
to the Lower 9th -- and forbidden, on paper at least, from
moving back into the few homes that were structurally sound.
But as with so much about New Orleans in the post-Katrina
era, the rules are not clear. People, including Shin, do
sleep in the Lower 9th. Common Ground recently opened about
30 beds, in scrubbed-out houses, as temporary housing for
displaced residents.
Shanicka Reaux, 26, has lived for about a month on Deslonde
Street with her husband and some of their eight children.
Reaux is separated from relatives, and some of her older
children -- her brood ranges in age from 5 months to 10 years
-- are in schools out of state. But she wants to call New
Orleans home.
"People are so mean in other states," Reaux said,
while volunteering at the Common Ground distribution center,
where clothing, food and tools are available. "They
don't want you there. They were calling me a refugee. People
said, 'You're here to take our jobs.' "
Reaux, eight months pregnant when she evacuated New Orleans,
lost everything she owned to the flooding. "I get by day
by day," she said. "It's good they're here,"
she said of the Common Ground volunteers working with her at
the distribution center. "They can probably get some
justice done."
Cleaning up
Outside the temporary homes in the 1600 block of Deslonde
Street, Common Ground volunteers have removed the top layer
of flood-ravaged lawns, on the assumption that they remain
contaminated from the toxic floodwaters. They have planted
mustard greens and sunflowers, which draw poisons from the
soil, Shin said.
Common Ground hands out bottled water and other necessities.
The temporary light poles and meters on the block were
installed by Common Ground workers. They operate the
community kitchen that serves free dinners almost every day
at 5 p.m. Shin's team is also working on bringing in a
filtration system to provide clean drinking water.
Shin considers herself a guest in the Lower 9th. She is there
serving at the pleasure of the residents, she says often, and
will leave only when they tell her she isn't needed anymore.
Shin, who has a master's degree in international relations,
has launched a nationwide effort to track residents, in order
to call them whether their home is one of the estimated 2,100
houses on the demolition list. Residents may register by
e-mailing
commongroundlower9@gmail.com or calling toll-free, (866)
611-9795.
The registry has about 600 residents so far.
In March alone, Common Ground had 2,800 people gutting and
cleaning houses citywide. But Common Ground's do-it-yourself
ethic does not preclude professional assistance. They bring
in licensed electricians to rewire homes, for example, and
other skilled craftsmen.
Genevieve Hirschmugl, 22, from Jersey City who coordinates
the work crews, has a degree in structural engineering from
Rutgers.
Common Ground volunteers have gutted more than 100 homes in
the Lower 9th, as well as three churches and the Martin
Luther King Jr. Elementary School -- all at the urging of
residents, Shin said. The school gutting, which prompted the
Orleans Parish School Board president to call the police, was
the idea of residents, Shin said, and saved the city an
estimated $500,000.
"We took an inventory of everything removed," Shin
said. "A box of pencils. Everything."
A study in devastation
The blue Deslonde Street home, where Shin and her team have
computers and Internet service available for residents, was
loaned to the group by the homeowner.
"We have tons of properties available to us," Shin
said. "People say, 'I can't come back right now,' or, 'I
can't be without electricity,' or, 'I'm stuck in an 18-month
lease, so use the house.' "
In return, Common Ground guts, cleans, mold-treats and
essentially rebuilds the houses.
For all the effort invested in the area by the likes of
Common Ground, the Lower 9th Ward remains a study in
devastation evidently irresistible to members of Congress and
other dignitaries who want to memorialize their visit to
post-Katrina New Orleans with a photo op.
"It's always show-and-tell, but where is the money
going? Where is the action?" asked Stuart Moses, 33, a
lifelong resident of the Lower 9th now raising his
14-year-old son in Gonzales and returning when he can to work
on his damaged two-story house on Flood Street. He plans to
start hanging new wallboard in a week or so.
But returning to live in the Lower 9th is another story.
Moses collected just about enough flood insurance to repair
his 2,400-square-foot home, provided he does most of the work
himself. Common Ground gutted the place, as it did Moses'
father's house on Choctaw Street, saving the family several
thousand dollars.
"They are the front-runners," Moses said.
"They're doing more for residents than any of our
politicians or state representatives. These people like
Michelle have no real interest other than helping the
residents."
Like many of his neighbors, Moses isn't giving up on the
Lower 9th, in spite of all the obstacles and lack of
government assistance.
"I'm optimistic because it's my nature," Moses
said. "But what I see in six months is my house being
finished, but it's pitch black (for lack of electricity) and
there is no one around. I don't think it's because people
don't want to be there."
. . . . . . .
Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com
or (504) 826-3304.