Basin St. Blues: New Orleans Public Housing Rights March

New Orleans, Louisiana

On Saturday, December 3, a band of housing rights advocates gathered at the Iberville Projects on Basin St. Saturday in support of New Orleans residents' right to return to their homes and called for the re-opening of the city's public schools (2 or 3 public schools are open in Orleans Parish now). With 80% of the city flooded from hurricanes Katrina & Rita, and over a million Gulf South residents dislocated from their lives, the housing shortage, rapidly rising rents, and lack of sustainable government supports faces many thousands of people who wish to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. Evictions - both illegal and legal - are epidemic in the New Orleans area and returning home or the lack of ability to return to a home, rain down further struggles on the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In particular, people who needed public assistance to meet basic needs and the right to their home find the rug pulled out from under them as the city makes plans to tear down public housing, closing even livable and marginally damaged housing with little or no dialogue with displaced residents.
Less than 20% of pre-hurricane residents actually reside in New Orleans now, which currently hosts thousands of new building contractors, laborors, developers and gaggles of various military, security and law enforcement personal now set up shop in the no-flood zones, in former arts schools, on monstrous cruise ships and in public spaces in the city centers. With 80% of the city flooded and by devastating hurricanes, evictions, both illegal and legal, happen quickly, often with little or no legal formality with as few as 5 days or no notice at all in this tumultuous housing market and with little or no regard for any notion of housing rights. Residents of the cities extensive public housing wish to return home and reclaim their lives - or at least check on their home; however there is little dialogue with the Housing Aughority of New Orleans and information that HANO housing will be closed and bulldozed circulates fear and anger from displaced survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Despite the fact that less than 20% of New Orleans residents are back in town, a few dozen marchers gathered in front of the Iberville Public Housing projects just outside of the French Quarter to show support for the city's poor and working people and marched freely down Canal Street to the Federal encampment by the Mississippi Riverwalk. The Coalition to Save Iberville, New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NO HEAT), the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, and Common Ground Eviction Defense represented at the march and can be contacted for support of Housing Rights.
Housing Is A Human Right.

A related march, "From Outrage to Action - the Gulf South Survivors' Assembly, on behalf of survivors' rights to self-determination and to return home was attended by thousands on December 10, 2005 and a follow up march in solidarity with Gulf South hurricane survivors' rights is planned for the weekend of January 15th, 2006 coinciding with Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

(This video is approx. 3 and a half minutes, 8 MG and in Quicktime.mov format)