"Horrid" NOLA Public Housing (PICS) -- which the Senate just voted to demolish

[Leopolds Ghost]

By not passing Senate Bill 1668:















The above are images of HUGE, WELL-BUILT, UNDAMAGED Garden Apartment complexes built over 50 years ago filling entire neighborhoods.

Like the similar well-built townhouse project that filled 10 city blocks on Capitol Hill in Washington DC (torn down at the request of Democrats, to make way for a baseball stadium and MILITARY OFFICE SPACE) they were designed to fit into the urban context, scattered site (what the DLC Dems claim to want), housing mostly elderly and single mothers, and -- after the Black Panthers cleaned up Desire in the 1960s -- constantly reviled and militarized by the local police and urban Democratic "moderates".


Point - Counterpoint: AN ENFORCED PASTEL ENVIRONMENT

New Urbanist Hope VI Replacement of Public Housing - St. Thomas

http://lh3.google.com/_UbPjmXNUzA8/RyP5VBgxi2I/AAAAAAAAASQ/ziz9OtoMtGE/s800/New+Urbanist+Hope+VI+rebuilding+of+St.+Thomas.JPG

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/tj72AJFF7b4RzPx-vjiFYQ

Located in an otherwise wealthy neighborhood, this enormous garden apartment district was torn down to make way for "historic" shotgun houses with details designed to appeal to wealthy tenants and homeowners. The historic preservation society pushed to preserve one block of actually historic garden apartments, part of one of America's oldest public housing developments. Like in the days of segregation, most of the remaining affordable units are separated into "apartment only" parts of the development, reserved for the one block of old, undeveloped public housing that was preserved, for architectural reasons, on the site.

The NEW St. Thomas is dominated by WAL-MART, the only one in New Orleans, thanks to HOPE VI.

The developer saw all this available land -- where public housing once stood -- as the perfect incursion on America's oldest urban land, on the banks of the Mississippi river (surrounding houses date back to the 1830s.) The housing project it replaced, as evidenced by the historically designated 5% remainder that was preserved (which constitutes most of the remaining full subsidized housing in St. Thomas) was also old and densely-developed, with no room for a Wal-Mart and no parking spaces for SUVs.

Now there is plenty of open land -- asphalt -- on the banks of the Mississippi once more. Asphalt, as we all know, is free and open, unlike densely developed apartment buildings which are supposedly unsuitable for the poor. ("High-rise living is suitable only for the rich", according to latest reports from urban planning symposia.)

Now, most New Orleanians, including 90% of volunteer relief organizations "fighting for New Orleans redevelopment", buy their food in bulk at Wal-Mart -- on the site of a torn down public housing project -- rebuilt according to the officially endorsed policy of the Democratic Party leadership, HOPE VI -- the only bulk land available in this densely-developed area, where even the public housing is old and built out of hardwood and brick. It had to be torn down to make way for pseudo-historic units whose elegantly carved details (and lack of windows on the side of the building) send a message, according to postmodern architectural theorists, and that message is "these units are for the wealthy. You can feel safe in this neighborhood."

Note that this is required by economic reality, too -- architectural theorists said we need more density on the high ground, not less. Tearing down sound, mid-rise apartment buildings (with gardens and no parking) to make way for neo-traditional, one and two-story duplexes designed to look like neighboring historic homes costs money -- and the rent must be paid.

[Hydra]

1. Eminant domain at it's best

"Hey, that's a nice lot...I'll buy it for a dollar! What?!? You want fair price??? I'll be talking to your "elected official"!"

[Leopolds Ghost]

2. Make No Bones About It: DLC Dems and a Majority of White (and many Black) Democrats want to kill PH.

Just ask your neighbors, ask even the most radical anti-war types, ask half of New Orleans relief workers (many of whom are staunch progressives) what they are doing to save public housing and they will look at you like you are crazy.

Public Housing is bad for the poor and bad for the nation, they say. The poor should be dispersed, and (here's the strange part) elegant, pseudo-historic housing built for the rich, with public money, where their neighborhoods once stood.

Just ask Hillary Clinton, her husband created the program to advance Reagan's agenda of eliminating all publically owned units.

The "Ownership Society" is the goal, even among leftists.

"Let them own condominiums."

[Leopolds Ghost]

30. I should emphasize, I'm criticizing "mainstream" Dems from the left here... how to persuade them?

I fear asking a Clinton Dem to support public housing (the very program their own administration came up with a vision to eradicate, permanently) is like asking Southern Republicans to support Obama.

I don't consider myself a leftist in the conventional sense, but I believe all Americans should fight to save this housing, purely because of social justice -- even if their only beef is with the fact that people have been prevented access to their belongings, and then utility workers have come in and ransacked their apartments, assuming that their personal property (never mind their claim to housing) was now forfeit.

Nagin set the stage for this when he said in a radio address during Katrina, "Get out. The city is no more. New Orleans is no more. You have nothing to return to. You will not be able to come back and retrieve your belongings... there is nothing left for you there. It's unsafe."

While vigilantes were roaming the streets, shooting at people.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. Save Public Housing in New Orleans (link)

Note the lack of replies from participants in the religion vs. atheism thread, or the Bush is killing our nation thread, or the thank God we won't invade Iran thread, or the Katrina convinced me we're doomed thread.

This is because most Dems do NOT support public housing, they were brought up to believe welfare and cheap housing is responsible for the problems of the inner city and lack of integration, etc. No mention is made of concentration of the rich in wealthy "blue" areas, but concentration of the poor is always -- always the government's fault and our responsibility to fix -- by selling off public housing.

Swamp Rat (1000+ posts) Sat Dec-08-07 12:39 PM

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2429960&mesg_id=2429960

"On the 12th day before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to unleash teams of bulldozers to demolish thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans. Despite Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4600 public housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units - an 82% reduction. HUD is in charge and a one person HUD employee makes all the local housing authority decisions. HUD took over the local housing authority years ago - all decisions are made in Washington DC. HUD plans to build an additional 1000 market rate and tax credit units - which will still result in a net loss of 2700 apartments to New Orleans - the remaining new apartments will cost an average cost of over $400,000 each!"

http://www.justiceforneworleans.org

Save Public Housing in New Orleans video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuQv4eAsvGE

http://www.peopleshurricane.org

http://www.defendneworleanspublichousing.org/index.html

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. Anyone interested?

...

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. I will keep kicking this until party activists stop ignoring what is happening now

And start fighting to prevent it.

For those who choose to ignore this:

Don't you DARE reply to a post after all of New Orleans' public housing is
demolished with any "Bush is responsible for this fresh outrage" claptrap.

[uppityperson]

6. k&r with thanks

[Hippo_Tron]

7. I don't see the problem with abandoning public housing for mixed income neighborhoods

If it's a matter of poor people not being able to afford the rent, then the government should subsidize that. Nobody should be homeless.

Mixing neighborhoods based on socioeconomic class is a good thing. Among it's many other benefits, it will help solve the problem of equity in public education.

[EFerrari]

11. While they are fashioning their social experiment, no one is taking care

of the displaced residents of New Orleans.

Mixed neighborhoods are working well in my town. But what is being done to the poor of New Orleans is a crime.

[Leopolds Ghost]

14. Mixed income working well by same metric as welfare reform -- poor are no longer part of the program

And that is by design.

They essentially can't afford to live in the new private developments

(WHICH ARE NO LONGER GOVERNMENT PROJECTS).

The result is a nice little pseudo-historic neighborhood designed to
"reclaim the city" for gentrifiers who wish to live in a traditional
metropolis, with lots of garage townhouses and no crime.

[EFerrari]

16. There is an upside to mixed neighborhoods. It's much harder

to deny them city services because not maintaining them or providing adequate patrols that also aren't abusive have consequences.

[Leopolds Ghost]

17. Because white liberals who move into these areas feel entitled -- even anarcho-punk kids

I've seen it myself IN the lower 9th Ward. There's a little thing there called the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association that gets the lion's share of all redevelopment funding because it is on the highest ground, in the oldest homes. Many of the active participants in HCNA -- representing a SELECTED portion of the Lower 9, a 99% black neighborhood before the storm -- are white. The remaining parts of the Lower 9, considered "undeveloped" or "ripe for redevelopment" (meaning no improvements have been made, even the street signs still lie crumpled on the ground) have no neighborhood association to back them up. Why? No vocal white folks with feelings of entitlement and resentment towards the pre-existing, "unassimilated" population that refuse to allow the area to "diversify" by packing up and leaving. Oh, and did I mention increased density -- accommodating ALL of the desperately poor folks AND an additional large population of wealthy white folks -- is not an option for them? I can cite statistics from a developer why density on former housing projects is not allowed. The banks won't allow it, the residents of surrounding gentrified areas won't allow it. People with money REFUSE TO LIVE in the same building as public housing residents, according to EVERY AVAILABLE STATISTIC. Developers have tried. They've given presentations on how everyone -- from state to local residents -- fought to prevent more than a small percentage of "thugs" -- carefully selected via credit check -- from returning to their community.

[EFerrari]

19. I think you're preaching to the choir here.

And, it doesn't matter what kind of delusions you have if you get results for your neighborhood.

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. Who's deluded? They are?

The city knows perfectly well which side its bread is buttered on.

If you want to live in a society where the only way to improve a
poor neighborhood is to remove 80 to 90% of the poor people and
pretend that they've been relocated to an already improved area
someplace else, simply in order to introduce residents who are
"adequately employed enough to have a voice", count me out.

It is possible to introduce residents who have the resources
to advocate for city services -- often BLACK residents -- WITHOUT
advocating for the removal of ANY existing RENTAL UNITS --
numerically or otherwise.

In fact, that's just what the Black Panthers did in the Desire
project in the 1960s. They brought in university educated
activists who lived and worked in the housing projects to set
an example. They advocated for increasing the number of
decent, affordable units for ALL incomes, NOT decreasing it.

They were'nt just vilified for doing this -- they were shot at.

The City sent in TANKS, the headquarters was demolished with
machine gun fire with 50 people holed up inside, and the women
and children set up a human chain around the machine guns to
prevent anyone from being killed. If you don't believe me,
ask Mack, the director of a Lower 9th Ward community organization.
He was one of the children...!

A white person moving into the same neighborhood is more
well-respected because it is ASSUMED he wants his less-affluent
neighbors gone.

I have had this assumption directed at me, because I am white --
and live in a (formerly) integrated neighborhood. They feel
betrayed when I used their words against them to advocate for
a re-introduction of affordable housing to an already gentrified
area. I was singled out and denounced as a firebrand, a naive
activist who had much to learn.

And this is in line with what the business
community wants. They don't want tear down and rebuild a
neighborhood unless it is fully depreciated. Gentrification
is part of that cycle. The poor people are ultimately
expected (by lenders and the housing authority) to move to
ANOTHER community with worse cap rates where the housing stock
is not yet fully depreciated. It is called "ratables".
If you want to become a city administrator you'll be expected
to do the math on limiting the number of affordable units
in order to increase ratables.

[EFerrari]

25. You have now been antogonistic enough to make this long time

homeless and affordable housing advocate to just hide this thread. You choose your own adventure.

I have no time to spare for people who want to form a circular firing squad.

[Leopolds Ghost]

28. I guess you've no time for a thread urging passage of S. 1668 or honestly about who's blocking it.

So... I wonder how many people have put this thread on "ignore" because I support public housing... thereby proving... that nothing will be done. :grr:

[Leopolds Ghost]

29. It's weird that you feel antagonized, BTW -- I am simply describing my experiences

I would not presume you disagree with me, or else I wouldn't be discussing stuff like Desire,
which most Americans outright do not sympathize with at all. I think you'll find most Americans
wanted Desire and St. Thomas gone and they'll want the rest gone, which they will be in short
order while you put threads like this on "ignore" because I am being too confrontational.

The people fighting this are telegraphing the fact that they'll get arrested. They think
show arrests in front of the bulldozers -- like die-ins -- will rouse public sympathy and
INDIRECTLY stop demolition and ensure passage of S. 1668.

Threads like this one show that only some of us will know or care that these "die-in"
demonstrations ever happened. Only the demonstrators themselves have the power to
physically stop the bulldozers, unless of course we can do their work for them by
bombarding the Senate with mail until they pass S.1668. I don't even know where
to begin on doing that. Is it even possible? This is the sort of thing where it
would be nice if organized church groups were working on our side. It will be like
pulling teeth to start a campaign to save public housing on the Internet, because
there is a sizable minority (including 9 out of 10 elected officials) against the
very idea of government owned, centralized public housing, integrated or otherwise.

[ikojo]

12. Delete

[Leopolds Ghost]

13. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. To quote Jack Sparrow, there is only what a man can do or can't do.

"Now I could --- let you drown.

But what I can't do is pilot New Orleans as a Democratic city all the way
to the next election all by me oneself. It takes people for that. Savvy?"

I could also let your homes -- with all your belongings in them -- be boarded up and sealed off with concertina wire to prevent them from being "illegally" reoccupied in service of a Platonic, Olympian social vision of dispersing the poor into the suburbs -- with or without their consent.

After all, as the article in the Washington Post said three days after Katrina, survivors whose entire families drowned in the flooding "were granted a silver lining" because their remaining kids got to go to mostly white schools and hold down jobs in a suburban big box store in Fayetteville, Ark. for the very first time -- compelled by Federal relocation in buses -- baby steps into a new world of suburban prosperity and inevitable transition away from the barbarity of living in the inner city, which noboody but the very rich should be forced to do.

[eyesroll]

26. There's a shortage of any kind of affordable housing in New Orleans right now.

Economic diversity is a laudable goal when everyone has access to housing and it's a matter of where...but why tear down structurally sound buildings? They weren't destroyed by Katrina--they are certainly salvageable (or were, had they been salvaged two years ago--I don't know what two years of being boarded up and festering will do).

I was down there in March working on some housing-related legal projects--two-bedroom apartments that would go for $500-$600 before the storm started fetching $1,000 or more after, because so much affordable housing was destroyed or severely damaged. We shouldn't be talking about tearing down buildings that could become inhabitable when there's a shortage of housing overall. You can't offer rent subsidies when there's nothing to rent.

[Leopolds Ghost]

27. "You can't offer rent subsidies when there's nothing to rent." -- Excellent point.

I had a working class, black activist from the L9 explain to me that in New Orleans "people don't get along. This is the South. That's why everyone here owns guns. You're an idealist, going on about co-ops and apartment buildings. We don't want none of that. There's a reason there's no apartment buildings in New Orleans. People here prefer to live in separate houses, even if it's shit houses, because we don't live in a cooperative society down here. This is NEW ORLEANS you're talking about. How're you going to convince people from the South to get along with one another and live in the same building?"

His question saddens me because the only answer I know is -- tear down all of New Orleans remaining public housing and you cement the problem permanently. New Orleans becomes one vast "owner occupied" barrio where slumlords control the redevelopment of entire neighborhoods into artist villages surrounded by servants quarters and empty lots.

[Hippo_Tron]

32. I am from New Orleans, so I am aware of these problems...

I'm just not in agreement with the OP that working toward mixed income neighborhoods is a bad thing, if it is done right.

Unfortunately it has been fairly obvious for quite some time now that many of the city's poor residents won't be able to return. A good bit of that is certainly intentional. The rich simply don't want them back. Another part of it is slow and extremely poor planning by all levels of government. Then, the national media won't shut up about how bad crime is, making New Orleans look like the scariest place on earth.

IMO, with competent leadership and political will, there could have been a housing plan that addressed all of these issues.

[Leopolds Ghost]

34. But you make it sound like we cannot convince people to "allow" them their right of return

I am sick of hearing how New Orleans will "inevitably be a whiter city"

This is the meme that people in power are trying to spread.

Their attempted demolition of public housing has an "air of inevitability" driven by apathy.

Build mixed-income housing elsewhere, not on the site of New Orleans' only apartment buildings. (there is no impoverished suburban hinterland for the "extra" residents to disappear to, like there is in NY and DC. Unless you want East New Orleans, an area 10 feet below sea level, to become even more heavily populated.)

otherwise you are saying we need less public housing for the poor.

Mixed income in New Orleans does not mean high rises housing all the existing residents plus new ones.

Developers, homeowners, lenders and Mayor Nagin himself explicitly forbid that.

Only a token percent of the "deserving" poor (with good credit) are allowed to live in any HOPE VI development.

The metric for success with HOPE VI has ALWAYS been the number of people with good jobs who are willing to move in to the neighborhood,

not positive outcomes for the former residents.

The same is true of welfare reform (success in getting people off the rolls is the metric used by even liberal commentators).

[sandnsea]

38. I didn't either, until I saw the income to be made

A lot of these old housing projects are sitting on very desirable land. How clever to say it's a poverty solution instead of the truth of it being a money maker for some rich developer. That's the kind of crap the Clintons did all the time. It's one thing to create mixed housing neighborhoods (not income, just housing types), provided you make enough of them to care for ALL the people you displaced. They aren't doing that and I can see why more people are in poverty and homeless.

[zabet]

8. k & r nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

9. This is a classist society. The rich have more rights in the U.S.

But we're supposed to believe this is a fair country of equality.

[EFerrari]

10. I hate these motherf#ckers.

I saw Greg Palast's report from what looks like this community.

[Mnemosyne]

31. Seconded.

:hi:

[pitohui]

15. it's a case of how to lie with photography, isn't it?

we had a different type of storm in new orleans, because the water rose slowly, buildings that
cannot be repaired -- buildings where people actually drowned and died -- can look deceptively good on the outside in a photo even tho they are not repairable

compared to gulf coast mississippi where you have a hard time even finding the durn slab

the truth is, the situation is not as it was, the population has stabilized, and now there are apartments and rental units standing empty, it's a little scary now that on my street i'm surrounded on two sides by empty homes

we no longer lack for housing, we lack for population willing to live in a hurricane zone and maybe that's for the best for those who didn't come back, i wish we weren't stuck here for economic reasons

those who would lure people back into a hurricane zone while we're still in the peak side of the atlantic hurricane cycle should look at their conscience and ask if they would allow their mom to live here -- or if they would live there themselves

given a choice, i'd be out of here, unfortunately i don't have a choice

and even MORE cheap housing isn't going to help, if you want to help, do something about the fact that many of our homes can't be insured and thus have no resale value

if you think it's safe to live here, live here yourself, don't condemn a poor person to live here

NO ONE should live in this region who can't afford to maintain a safe reliable vehicle for evacuation as needed


if i'm not mistaken and i don't think i am, leopold's ghost lives in covington, one of the richest areas -- and one of the highest

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. No you're thinking of someone else.

I live in DC and just spent 4 months working for a relief organization --
some of whose members think as you do. As I've said before my relatives
are from Louisiana and I just got an earful when I visited (an earful I
will not repeat here.)

But in general they understand that the rents have skyrocketed in NOLA
precisely BECAUSE poorer families are not allowed to enter those vacant
buildings.

And the public housing units -- hell, ALL the brick buildings in NOLA,
including very many tract homes in the 9th ward the Road Home is paying
to restore -- UGLY UGLY UGLY large, single family tract homes that
highlight the comparative BEAUTY of these old garden apartment units,
which unlike most suburbs have actual gardens -- WERE relatively
undamaged, easy to salvage.

It's the HISTORIC HOMES -- the post-1920s double shotguns
built of pine, not cypress -- that got swept off their foundations
and/or smashed to flinders because they were (a) OLD (despite being
much more well built than new, post 1970 construction!) (b) TERMITE
damaged and (c) FLOAT on a raised foundation (the surviving homes,
the ones we're refurbishing, survived because they are BRICK FACING,
SLAB ON GRADE and thus even more flood prone!)

The public housing units are well-built and well-designed, nothing like
the post-1960s towers in Chicago or St. Louis, nowhere near as UGLY and
LOW-LYING as the ahistorical BRICK MANSIONS that are now being REBUILT
and refurbished in areas MUCH LOWER than the "Lower" 9th ward.

For instance, "Upper" Gentilly and Lakeview / Lakeside -- two of the LOWEST parts of the city, 10 FEET LOWER than the lower 9th ward -- are being extensively RENOVATED,

Despite the fact that these areas aren't even part of the historic city
and were built after the 1950s,

to make way for a mix of WEALTHY mansions and GROUP HOUSES FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS who are the only people employed to do the work.

These low-lying, redeveloped areas even LOOK like a Carribbean country,
with their big houses and 4 car garage tract shacks and snout houses
used as servants quarters -- which their economy -- Bush's economy
(and Mayor Nagin's DLC economy) -- increasingly resembles.

Mexico City or Manaus, Brazil. That is the new urban paradigm.

(there are ample checks subtly employed to prevent African Americans
from being hired for traditionally "white" occupations in the area;
for instance, all employees are expected to own their own vehicle,
even if they live in the city, or be driven to work by "hiring hands"
from Able Body Labor; and these jobs are being taken by immigrants
for economic reasons thanks to the deferral of the Davis-Bacon Act.)

[Hippo_Tron]

33. I understand your view...

But I certainly wouldn't call this condemning a poor person to live in New Orleans. They want or at least wanted to return and many of them are being denied that.

[Leopolds Ghost]

36. Apparently pitohui believes no one but the rich, who have their elegant mansions, should be "forced"

to live in New Orleans.

This is not unlike the consesnus among urban planners that no one but the rich should be "forced" to live in downtown high-rise apartments/condos -- they have an actual untested theory, widely stated, that high-rises are unsuitable for anyone else. And therefore we should tear down high-rises for the poor and build more of the high-rises for the rich... because the rich help the tax base.

In fact, explicitly a according to this theory, downtowns should be no more than a playground for the rich and powerful because, if you look at the high prices, only the rich and powerful seems to "want" to pay the premium needed to live there. No joke -- that is the theory.

As you can tell, urban planners are not economists. And most economists, being right-wing, do not object to the fallacy.

[Leopolds Ghost]

18. For those who believe scattered site housing is the answer, do the math

Let's break it down, shall we?

Your average New Orleans lot -- non-apartments, mind you! -- 45 feet

Population -- minimum 2-4 units -- that is 2 side-by-side
10 to 20-FOOT WIDE SHOTGUN UNITS in a duplex or quad configuration

Replacement lots -- 100 foot lots (city program subsidizing empty
lots to be purchased by neighboring homeowners to enable large lot
zoning, CAR ORIENTED, and more greenspace) -- divide overall returning
population by 1/2

Replacement units -- single family only, with multifamily confined
(due to lender regulations) to a portion of the new development,
not intersepersed throughout -- divide overall returning population
AGAIN by 1/2

"Neighborhood based" nonprofit relief organizations -- institutional
nonprofit -- create city plan to reserve 1/2 of all abandoned or city confiscated property for "green space" -- embraced warmly by mayor --
divide overall returning population AGAIN by 1/2

"Neighborhood based" nonprofit relief organizations -- institutional
nonprofit -- create city plan to reserve 1/2 of ACTUAL REDEVELOPMENT
on REMAINING abandoned or city confiscated property for "owner occupied,
market rate units" -- either condominiums in a private HOA development or detached single family homes -- embraced warmly by mayor --
divide overall returning population AGAIN by 1/2

"Neighborhood based" nonprofit relief organizations -- institutional
nonprofit -- create city plan to reserve 1/2 of SUBSIDIZED UNITS on
REMAINING abandoned or city confiscated property for "owner occupied,
affordable units" -- rental units slightly below market rate, i.e.
below 50 percent of the AVERAGE CITY-WIDE is considered affordable --
embraced warmly by mayor -- divide overall returning (poor) population
AGAIN by 1/2

Remaining units reserved for "needy families" in HOPE VI developments -- require the total demolition of all existing public housing units with
replacements partially calculated to be "made up for" in the suburbs,
allowing for a "more fair distribution of the region's poor people" to
allow New Orleans (and other cities, such as DC and SF) to have less --
this is a stated goal -- SUBTRACT 10-20,000 returning (poorest) people

10% of replacement units reserved for the very poor -- MUST HAVE CREDIT
and be GIVEN VOUCHERS in order to re-apply for homes in the exact same
specific sites they used to live in -- the government
explicitly denies public housing residents the "right to return" --
divide the remaining total by the percentage of New Orleanians
(including homeowners with no mortgage, whose grandparents inherited
their house) who have no credit.

Stated goal -- everyone in New Orleans must join the new economy and get
a mortgage, therefore becoming part of the credit economy and entitling
them to a leg up in the modern work-force, at agencies such as HARRAH'S
CASINO and WAL-MART where much of New Orleans' grocery shopping is now
done and where credit checks on employees are common.

Oh yeah, one last thing:

DLC and SCL Democrats in the nation's capitol -- ON CAPITOL HILL --
recently voted to tear down ALL of DC's "scattered site" housing --
THE VERY THING YOU GUYS CLAIM TO WANT.

The citizen architect of this policy -- which resulted in the emptying
out of five elementary schools and their conversion into PRIVATE ACADEMYS
and a GOLD'S GYM -- was rewarded with a seat on the DC City Council --
as a solid Democrat -- where he led the vote to tear down 10 square
blocks of LOW DENSITY, TOWNHOUSE STYLE public housing -- with LITTLE
crime, almost entirely occupied by the ELDERLY -- to make way for a
MARINE BARRACKS and a BASEBALL STADIUM.

[Leopolds Ghost]

20. Did I mention the City Council passed a bill to confiscate poor people's homes

If the grass is not mowed?

Google "Good Neighbor Act".

There's your "color-blind, ownership society".

The one in which (led by urban, moderate Dems)
developers and citizens work together to ensure very poor
public housing tenants are well provided for (in the suburbs);
to ensure they work to become homeowners and existing poor
homeowners are encouraged to join the wonderful world of credit
by having their insurance denied to them, building permits
denied unless they sell, and their property siezed.

[countryjake]

21. kick and recommend

[Orwellian_Ghost]

24. Where people live

Killing them softly....

K&R

[Leopolds Ghost]

35. Bump. It is not too late to Pass 1668

Say! That rhymes!

[Leopolds Ghost]

37. Still no interest?