Love this story!

How do we accomplish something like this down Malcolm X Boulevard to Grand Avenue and beyond?  

Hard?  Yes!

But I refuse to use the word "impossible."  

There's got to be a way without a hurricane. . .but we'll need an investment partner like New Orleans found.  

Futuristic Housing New Orleans Style

Back in the November 2009 issue of The Atlantic, Wayne Curtis offered a great report on housing renewal in New Orleans since Katrina.  Worth taking a look.  Could be lessons for the entire country. 

Reactions invited!

Houses of the Future


Four years after the levee failures, New Orleans is seeing an unexpected boom in architectural experimentation. Small, independent developers are succeeding in getting houses built where the government has failed. And the city's unique challenges—among them environmental impediments, an entrenched culture of leisure, and a casual acquaintance with regulation—are spurring design innovations that may redefine American architecture for a generation.

To read the entire essay click here.

CDM to New Orleans???

Central Dallas Ministries and our great partners from building communityWORKSHOP are applying for $1.47 million from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) during the current 'National Direct' competition for AmeriCorps programs.

The legal applicant is CDM and we are considered a new program, CNCS has set aside 15% of funds for new applicants.

The $1.47 million in federal funds will be matched with $750,000 in local funds and will support 193 AmeriCorps members in Dallas and 135 members in New Orleans!

In Dallas, the grant will support the CDM food distribution expansion and building communityWORKSHOP's Dolphin Heights project.

Few realize that our Dallas service area as defined by congressional districts is the 2nd hungriest in Texas and 29th nationally?   Our metro area remains one of the most affluent in the U. S.  Amazingly, in a recent survey, 26% of residents said yes, they had been unable to obtain needed food at least once in the last 12 months.

The state of Louisiana ranks 5th in the nation in hungry residents and New Orleans stands at 8th among 100 major metro areas.

If we are successful, under this grant, The Feeding America food bank of New Orleans will place 35 AmeriCorps members throughout their 23 parish area to increase capacity at local food pantries, 20% of whom rely solely on volunteers. 

Also, our grant will support the Tulane City Center at Tulane University (I'm proud to say I am Class of 1986!) to bring their GREENbuild program to scale, a program that works to build sustainble housing in the city.  A properally weatherized home can save a poor family $850 in energy costs annually.  This inner city effort will recieve 5 year round and 70 summer AmeriCorps members.

We are anxiously awaiting word about the outcome of our grant proposal.  CDM could be expanding to New Orleans!  Exciting prospect!

Who Dat? Saints bring win home to New Orleans!

The New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl XLIV over the Indianapolis Colts 31-17. 

The game turned out to be a hard fought, entertaining affair for all who watched.  Both teams played well enough to win. 

As far as the game itself, I wouldn't have been too upset to see another son of New Orleans, Peyton Manning bring the trophy home for the Colts. While living in New Orleans, we'd see the Manning family eating at a local cafeteria after church on Sundays.  Peyton and Eli were just little boys at the time.  Archie quarterbacked the Saints. 

But, this Super Bowl was much more than just a football game. 

You could see it on the faces of all of the Saints players. 

Tears flowed all around. 

Grown men crying. 

The post-game comments quickly turned to bringing home a win to their city, a city badly in need of a boost, of a win. 

The Saints' owner declared that the win meant that New Orleans and all of Louisiana was back!  I'm not sure about that, but I do know that watching the game from start to finish hooked my emotions way beyond the game or the venue or the event.  I thought all the way from kickoff to final whistle mostly about a great American city still in need of my concern and richly deserving my devotion and loyalty. 

Something about that crazy, wonderful city. 

Once you've tasted its rich life, its wonderful people and its historic culture, you just can't get it out of your system. 

Thanks, Saints!  Your city needed that, and so did the rest of us who love it just like all of you do.

Brad Pitt. . .where to work most effectively

What follows is a letter from Andre F. Shashaty, Editor of Affordable Housing Finance, a trade journal of affordable housing developers and financeers. The catchy title got my attention. The essay is vastly more important, and the advice he gives Mr. Pitt is priceless.

No one can criticize Brad Pitt for what he has been doing in New Orleans. The only problem with his approach is that it simply isn't enough. While private, personal and group charity will always play an important role in community renewal, the scale of our problems in New Orleans and in every other urban center in the nation demand much, much more.

We need change in the worst way in terms of a national housing policy.

After you've read the letter, let me know your reactions.

______________________________________

Who needs Brad Pitt?
BY ANDRE F. SHASHATY
AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE • MARCH 2008

NEW ORLEANS—Visiting this city for the first time since Katrina, I was not that shocked by what I saw. After all, I’m from Youngstown, Ohio, which suffered a storm of its own, only an economic one.

In the Lower Ninth Ward, where actor Brad Pitt says he plans to build 150 homes, I felt New Orleans had a slight advantage over my hometown. It had the Army Corps of Engineers on hand to tear down all the dangerous hulks that used to be homes.

The problems this city faces are not that different than those of Cleveland, Youngstown, Detroit, or other cities that have been facing decay and decline for years. And if the home mortgage foreclosure disaster keeps getting worse, as it appears it will, other recently healthy urban areas will soon join this unfortunate club.

Sure, presidential candidates and congressmen are playing at housing policy as they realize the economic impact of the housing market slump, but they are tossing out possible solutions like baseball mascots tossing Cracker Jacks into the bleacher seats.

A year or three ago, those of you in the tax credit business could stick to your knitting and ignore the huge gaps in American housing and urban policy. Many of you wrote off the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and stopped dealing with that hellhole years ago.

But guess what? Your comfort zone is no longer a safe hiding place. Tax credit deals have been getting harder to put together for a while, but now we are reaching a critical phase as equity repricing continues for a second year and costs and allocating agency mandates keep increasing.

It’s time to wake up and smell the formaldehyde. We are at a crisis point in housing and urban affairs in this country. It’s no longer about complaints that our progress is too slow. Rather, as former Enterprise Chairman Bart Harvey told me, we are at risk of watching much of the progress we have made over 20 years disappear.

In 10 months, a new president takes office, and he or she will have a thousand things to worry about. We all know the fundamental nature of the nation’s housing woes and how an effective housing policy could help the economy, our children’s health and education, our transportation systems, and on and on.

But we also know that the folks in Washington and the folks advising the president-to-be have no idea what to do about any of this. It’s our job to tell them.

You have fought on the front lines of housing development. You’ve confronted NIMBYism. Now it’s time to go out and fight on the political front lines to elevate housing to be a key election-year issue and a top priority for the first 100 days of the next president’s term.

I wish Mr. Pitt good luck in his venture, but if he really wants to help New Orleans, he’d be in Washington, not the Ninth Ward.

He’d recognize that what’s needed is a new national housing commitment, and he’d lead a march on Washington. Imagine what might happen if he traveled across the United States, stopping at troubled neighborhoods and highlighting the scope and breadth of our housing and community development problems, arriving in Washington just in time for the inauguration of the next president.

Maybe that is too much to hope for, but we have to think big and act boldly to make the need clear. There hasn’t been a chance like this since the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and it’s up to us to take advantage of it. Read our story on what the next president needs to do about housing on page 24. And then get out there and take political action.

The time you invest in the next 12 months will determine what happens to this industry and the people it serves for many years to come.

[For more, visit http://www.housingfinance.com/.]


.

The third Christmas

Our dear friend, Ann Arnold called last week. She learned of the death of my father and needed to touch base to make sure we were alright and to express condolences.

Ann and Wayne Arnold have lived in New Orleans, Louisiana for over 40 years.

Their daughter, Missy Arnold Wilson, and our oldest daughter, Jennifer, have been good friends since they were little girls.

We met the Arnolds when we moved to New Orleans in 1975. During our five years in that wonderful old city, Ann and Wayne showed us the ropes in more ways than one!

Wayne and Ann are heading into their third Christmas since Hurricane Katrina ravaged their city. Nothing much has changed or been done to address the disaster left in Katrina's wake.

I've been watching Brad Pitt on television over the past couple of weeks. Last Friday evening, Larry King interviewed him. He's been on all the major networks promoting his "Pink Project" as a part of his "Make It Right" campaign (http://www.makeitrightnola.org/).

I wonder how our government would have responded had a major earthquake hit Los Angeles or San Francisco or Seattle and caused the same scale of damage and destruction? How about a massive nor'easter storm along the coast of New England? Or a devastating series of tornadoes ripping through the heart of Dallas? How would you feel if it were your hometown? Your house? Your children's school?

Last week we watched news reports from New Orleans that pictured irate residents of public housing protesting the demolition of several thousand units of housing that had been their homes. I know we can argue about plans and strategu. I might even agree with the developers who apparently intend to use low income housing tax credits to rebuild a portion of the city with a focus on mixed income neighborhoods. But, the point here is the understandable frustration of the people of New Orleans.

Nothing has happened to give residents even a glimmer of hope.

So, the city is now depending on private efforts. Brad Pitt is the best thing going in New Orleans these days.

Isn't there something wrong with this picture?

Don't get me wrong.

God love Brad Pitt.

But individual, grassroots only efforts will never be enough.

Forget the past lack of responsiveness. Don't even go down the path of who's to blame for the incredible lack of progress--believe me, it's hard to heed my own directive here!

Here's the point: What can be done going forward? How can the American people help Brad Pitt and our fellow Americans living in New Orleans?

New Orleans provides a case study in a major national disaster in an urban area and how it should be attacked.

1) The President of the United States should appoint a "Director of Recovery for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast." This new appointee must be a very strong and proven leader and should sit with the President's Cabinet and be authorized to marshal the resources of every government agency around the table.

This Director's job would be to develop a plan for rebuilding the city of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. He or she would certainly devise a strategy for working closely with the residents in the process, but the ultimate responsibility would be the Director's for bringing about the reconstruction of the city using every resource available. Every Cabinet agency and department would likely find a place in the massive effort.

2) Working with the Congress, the President should lay out an aggressive appropriations plan for funding the rebuilding process. The Director would coordinate and inform the funding strategy that would also draw in local, state and private investments in the entire plan. A nation that can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on war should be able to spend whatever is necessary to restore a major American city.

3) The President should make the renewal of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast a priority and he should challenge both major political parties to make the city's rebirth a key part of their respective party platforms in this election cycle. The challenge of New Orleans offers our leaders a wonderful opportunity to rediscover the strength of bi-partisan approaches to difficult national problems.

4) Any plan should contain clear benchmarks and measurable outcomes for judging progress and measuring success.

5) The plan would involve private, national, regional and local sources of funding, volunteerism and community development but only as complimentary to the larger, public effort.

Three Christmases in "the city that care forgot." Tragic how that well known phrase of celebration has turned in a horrible way to be a summation of the national response to its time of greatest need.

W must act to restore the care to this amazing national treasure. If we fail the "care test" here, we may fail in other cities in days to come.

.

Two years

Two years ago today Hurricane Katrina roared across the Louisiana coast and into New Orleans.

What wasn't blown away drowned in the flood that followed. The levees failed. The city was devastated, with entire neighborhoods completely demolished.

I was in New Orleans on November 30, 2005--three months after the storm. What I saw, I still cannot describe.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with a young friend who grew up in New Orleans. Her parents still live in the city. They are among our dearest friends. Their home was destroyed. They had insurance. They want to rebuild, to reclaim what was lost. They don't want to give up.

But, now two years later, nothing has happened for them. Absolutely nothing. No funds have been provided from either the private or the public sector to help with the rebuilding they want to undertake.

No movement. No action. Only maddening stalemate. Only mixed and. often, conflicting information, and this for good citizens, brave people who want to restore a great American city.

For the sake of this discussion, and in anticipation of what I know will be the reaction of some, let's make some assumptions.

1) The Mayor and the entire city government from top to bottom in New Orleans are ineffective, corrupt and incapable of doing anything to help the situation.

2) The state government--from the state capitol, to the governor's office, to every agency--is inept, ineffective and unable to do anything worthwhile for the ravaged city.

3) Crime is rampant. The schools are in real trouble, and in danger of failing.

Okay. Now what?

The facts: A major American city lies in ruins, its citizens left largely to fend for themselves. A bureaucratic logjam paralyzes the entire city and surrounding region. No one seems to be doing anything that is able to gain any traction leading to renewal.

Here is a challenge tailor made for new, creative action by our federal government. The scale defies the capacity of local only or private efforts.

But the U. S. government takes no meaningful action.

Where are the congressional hearings?

Where is the "New Orleans Czar"--you know, the equivalent of the Director of Homeland Security? Maybe a "Director of Destroyed City Recovery."

Where is the systematic, methodical, "Marshall Plan" for this great American city? Who can bring us the new action strategy that would cut through all of the red tape in view of the terrible and continuing circumstances?

I refuse to believe that our nation cannot mount a coordinated effort to rebuild this city. Or, does the United States we have today simply walk away from an entire community that has been devastated?

I wonder what our reaction might be if New Orleans had been destroyed by an act of foreign terror? I have this feeling more would be underway today and I think I know who would be in charge.

But those in charge in Washington right now evidently don't believe the federal government can solve the problem or lead us toward a better day in a city in need of coordinated national attention. Movie stars and entertainers are more concerned about the city than our national leaders.

There is no doubt in my mind that we can do better. New Orleans should be in the midst of the greatest rebuilding effort in our nation's history. The disaster should be turned into one of the grandest opportunities for employment, economic development and community renewal in our nation's history.

Here's an idea. Why not allow undocumented aliens to earn "legal" status by taking jobs associated with rebuilding New Orleans? No slave wages. Good jobs, paying market wages, employing skilled and unskilled labor, including those needing documentation. At the end of a predetermined period of time, those who worked hard and evidenced "good moral character" could be given legal status. Why not?

Nothing happens without leadership.

Where is it today for a city I grew to love during the five years I lived there?

Do we have no shame as a people?

Has imagination and heart simply departed us?

Where are the patriots today?

Where will New Orleans be on this day in 2008?

Unity and the hopeless

Anyone thought of New Orleans lately? You remember, right? That city that blew away and then drowned?

You want to know the ugly truth?

Not much has happened there since the storm two years ago.

What is true of the city as a whole is even more evident among the poor--those hit hardest, both before and after the storm's arrival.

Anyone surprised?

Where is the national uprising for New Orleans? Where the outcry for a unified national response?

I kept hoping that the President would appoint a Czar for the rebuilding of the Crescent City.

It is not to be, I suppose, what with us on our way to spending a trillion dollars on a war half-way around the globe.

Duncan Murrell published an amazing essay in Harper's Magazine (July 2007, pages 35-51), "In the Year of the Storm," that chronicles his life in the city following the tragedy of Katrina.

Murrell's work is fascinating, inspirational and frightening all at once. Everyone who cares about New Orleans should read it. Murrell's insights are instructive about this one American city laboring under the burden of this particular natural disaster and the public neglect that preceded and followed it.

But there is more here. Murrell's insights speak to and about sections of every American urban community today.

Take for example what he writes as he describes a parade of local "marching societies," a New Orleans tradition:

"What's left is a second line, forming up in front of the church. Brass bands tune up, the old men of the social and pleasure clubs straighten themselves, and the rest fall in behind, shouting out to old friends and hugging the necks of family back for a time from Atlanta and Memphis. It's no ordinary second line, either, but a city-wide summit of neighborhood marching societies and brass bands parading for unity. Unity, that state of grace known by few yet expected of the hopeless."

It is true, you know.

We expect so much of the people who have the least.

We expect the poorest, those most pushed down and away and to the sides of our society to be untied in an unshakable hope that "things will work out alright eventually" or in the end. If they will only keep believing, keep trusting, keep praying, keep working hard and behaving properly, then just maybe things will turn around.

Ironically, and tragically, the poor aren't nearly united enough around the forces and the decisions that could actually birth legitimate hope, authentic renewal and a new day for the great urban areas of this nation. Something at work in the way power plays out in cities usually prevents any genuine "uniting" or organizing for effective, systemic change among the urban "have nots."

I know one thing. If and when this new brand of unity arrives, a city like New Orleans will not be neglected or ignored ever again.

"New Orleans" just beneath the surface. . .many places

My trip to New Orleans on November 30, 2005, will be an experience I will always remember. The devastation of Katrina defies adequate description.

From what I hear, the city remains largely in disarray today. This is tragic.

As everyone admits, the storm pulled back the curtain on the poverty of the city. The storm set us up for a national embarassment.

The fact is many urban areas in our nation today contain a "New Orleans" just beneath the surface. Poverty in our cities is persistant, pervasive and perilous.

The J. McDonald Williams Institute, the research arm of the Foundation for Community Empowerment, has published a comparison of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward with the Frazier community here in Dallas. Katrina wiped the Lower Ninth Ward off the map, a section populated by the city's poorest residents. The Frazier community here in Dallas rates as one of our poorest areas.

How do the two neighborhoods compare?

Take a look:

Racial/Ethnic Diversity

The Lower Ninth Ward (LNW) 98.4% African American
City of New Orleans (NO) 66.6% African American

Frazier Community (FC) 71.8% African American
City of Dallas (DAL) 23.8% African American

Homeownership Rates

13% less for FC than for city of Dallas
10% higher for LNW than for NO

Poverty Levels

Families below poverty line LNW 32.77%
Families below poverty line NO 24.23%

Families below poverty line FC 33.25%
Families below poverty line DAL 12.53%

Joblessness

58.6% for LNW
62.6% for Frazier

Education

40% of LNW adults lack high school diploma
25% of NO adults lack high school diploma

60% of Frazier adults lack high school diploma
26% of DAL adults lack high school diploma

Viewing the situation in Dallas through this data, it is clear that our problems are every bit as challenging, and then some, as those facing New Orleans before the hurricane struck. Further, the gap between residents of the Frazier community and the general populace in Dallas is greater than the gap between residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and the general poplulace in New Orleans prior to the terrible storm.

Poverty in America is a real problem across our urban landscape.

"New Orleans" is everywhere.