Housing holdout facing lockout
HANO to seal off closed complexes
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
By Gwen Filosa
Times-Picayune Staff writer
Tommie Elton Mabry has the B.W. Cooper public housing complex
all to himself.
"It's like being way in the country," Mabry said on
a recent evening as he gazed out over the courtyard of the
near-empty Cooper, a collection of 1,300 apartments that once
was home to more than 4,000 people. "It reminds me of
staying with my grandparents years ago, before they
died."
From the porch of a storm-battered apartment along Martin
Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Mabry can spot other places where
he once lived.
Past addresses include an abandoned house on Second Street
and a fourplex on North Tonti Street. Truth be told, he also
has spent time living out on the streets, but for the past
five years, home was his aunt's place in the sprawling Cooper
complex, which was built between 1939 and 1941 as New Orleans
became the first U.S. city to benefit under the Housing Act
of 1937, which sought to rescue families from the Great
Depression.
Hurricane Katrina couldn't chase Mabry out, but a business
decision by the Housing Authority of New Orleans is about to.
Citing safety concerns, HANO has hired Las Vegas company
Access Denied to install 16-gauge steel plates over windows
and doors. Only special skeleton-type keys, crafted in
Europe, can unlock the apartments at the B.W. Cooper complex
and other HANO properties.
The agency this month approved spending money to seal off
doors and windows at its vacant complexes, including Cooper,
renting the hardware at $110 per door and $55 per window. At
Cooper, Access Denied was sealing up first- and second-floor
windows, along with the front doors. HANO didn't have a total
dollar figure Monday on how much it plans to spend on
securing vacant units.
"We're doing it as needed," HANO spokesman Adonis
Expose said. "It's open."
No desire to evacuate
Mabry, a reed-thin man of 51 with an infectious laugh and a
chatty demeanor, hasn't left the city since the storm hit New
Orleans on Aug. 29. Today Cooper is without power, hot water
or tenants. But Mabry said the 2 feet of floodwater that
crept inside his aunt's two-bedroom apartment didn't do much
damage.
"A couple other fellas, single males," are living
in Cooper, Mabry said.
But Mabry, who never married and is childless, said he
understands why others packed up and moved away.
"A lot of people got family," he said.
"They're responsible people. They got to go their own
way. I been single all my life."
Asked why he didn't evacuate, Mabry said without hesitation,
"I didn't want to."
Mabry has kept a journal of his post-Katrina life on the
white walls of his aunt's apartment, tracking the days in
black marker:
"Sept. 29: Skinny. Losing lot of weight."
"Sept. 30: Throat still -- -- -- up. I hope it ain't
thyroid cancer."
"Oct. 7: HANO officer told me to move out. I know it is
city property."
Other entries include: "Hangover from Bourbon
Street," and "I got to move. Dam. Dam. Dam."
The black-marker notes fill the living room walls and
continue outside on the bricks. Sheepishly, Mabry smiled and
said, "Oh, I got drunk one night and did that."
He is not worried about his aunt finding her home marked up.
"She ain't coming back," Mabry said. "People
are gone."
'It was like Mardi Gras'
Pre-Katrina, Mabry said, he would do odd jobs for money and
enjoy his off time at a local barroom. He has a string of
convictions for theft between $100 to $500. But even as a
repeat offender, Mabry was never sentenced to more than one
year in prison. He calls himself a "barroom clown"
and said he gets along with most everyone.
"I like to socialize," Mabry said.
Cooper was once a vibrant place filled with people milling
about, he said.
"It was like Mardi Gras every day," Mabry said.
"Music coming from somewhere. What is it? Nov. 11?
Veterans Day. See, people on a fixed income, they ain't broke
yet."
It's quiet now, even as the resident management council has
its workers clear out 1,300 refrigerators from the apartments
and red-shirted Access Denied employees lug steel plates
around.
Mabry lives on "Heater Meals," the civilian
equivalent of MREs, or meals ready to eat, $140 a month on
his food-stamp debit card, and the kindness of rescue workers
who routinely drop off provisions.
He knows he isn't legally supposed to be there. He said he
has been told to leave several times, including by an
out-of-town police officer who snatched his house keys from
his hands one day.
Mabry said he broke into a front window to reclaim his home.
Lockdowns for safety
Citing safety concerns, HANO has closed most of its major
public housing complexes in the wake of Katrina. HANO has
reopened only the Guste complex in Central City, Fischer on
the West Bank, and the former St. Thomas site in the Lower
Garden District, now rebuilt as River Garden.
Access Denied specializes in public housing, having sealed
windows in Chicago high-rises for safety reasons. HANO
officials say they want vacant properties encased in steel to
keep out squatters, troublemakers and looters.
Vivian White returned to her apartment in Cooper with her son
to find their TV and video game system stolen. Other
residents have come back to find bedroom sets, furniture and
electronics snapped up by looters, she said.
White drove back to St. Francisville, where she is staying
with her boyfriend's family since they evacuated from New
Orleans, first by floating on a log out of the Cooper and
then fleeing the nightmare of the Superdome as a shelter.
Mabry is not representative of the city's pre-Katrina public
housing population, which largely comprises children and
single women. Sixty percent of the Cooper complex was made up
of women with children younger than 18, according to the
Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. More than 35
percent of the population was younger than 12.
Three-quarters of households were children living with a
mother only.
Mabry's next-door neighbor, Eula Mae Williams, 77, raised
three children during the 39 years she lived at Cooper. On
Friday she returned for a second time to clear out her
belongings. She said hasn't heard from the city's housing
authority since the storm hit.
"I haven't, but I've been in Atlanta," she said.
In Mabry's apartment, the leaseholder was his aunt, Audrey
Lockmon, 78, who lived there with her grown son, who is
paralyzed and in a wheelchair. They evacuated to Baton Rouge.
Born and raised in Jackson, Miss., Mabry, the oldest of four
siblings, came to New Orleans in 1984. He lost a good job
working for an offshore catering company after a night of
drinking and a fistfight over a woman that left him with a
broken jaw.
"This is one of my downfalls," said Mabry, holding
up a half-full bottle of whiskey.
For now, he tools around the city on a bicycle and makes no
excuses for losing a recent $65-a-day cleanup job on a
Claiborne Avenue house: He had been drinking the night
before, he said, and showed up for work all shaky.
Mabry describes himself as the "black sheep" of his
family. "My brothers have houses," he said.
"I graduated," Mabry said, pausing for the punch
line. "I graduated in the bottom of my class with a D
average."
No Federal Emergency Management Agency checks for Mabry, or
any assistance from the American Red Cross.
"I been a loner all my life," Mabry said one
evening last week. "For the last 20 years, real
lonely."
Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.