Policies that Make People Disappear

I visited Chicago for the first time ever last week to participate in a panel about affordable housing in Chicago and New Orleans.  The comparisons are striking and frightening.

In 1998, the Chicago Housing Authority embarked on its “Plan for Transformation,” a HOPE VI funded, ten-year plan designed to demolish traditional public housing and replace it with “mixed income” housing.  According to the CHA website, the Plan “will improve the appearance, quality and culture of public housing in Chicago.”  From a starting point of 38,000 units, the Plan calls for the demolition of 22,000 units and the replacement of 9,000 units, with an end count of 25,000 units.

Not surprisingly, there was resistance to the Plan. HOPE VI developments are notorious for permanently displacing residents.  But I was particularly struck by one community organizer’s testimony from an older public housing resident who opposed the Plan.  This gentleman had experienced urban renewal decades ago.  He said that he opposed the demolition of public housing buildings because the buildings themselves remind others that people like him exist.

This observation was striking, and I thought of many examples of how post-Katrina policies have literally made people disappear.

In the fall of 2007, I visited the largest post-Katrina FEMA trailer park in Louisiana, cruelly named Renaissance Village.  It was converted into a FEMA trailer park when FEMA covered a cow pasture with gravel.  It was only possible to access Renaissance Village by car- you could not walk to it from anywhere else and public transportation was weekly.  It was surrounded by a high fence and patrolled by a private security company (who also controlled access- I had to obtain previous security clearance to enter).  All residents were poor, the vast majority were black, many had mental and physical disabilities, and a great deal of them were public housing residents before Katrina.  There was no access to jobs or even grocery stores.  I was deeply affected by this visit and the people I met. It literally felt like FEMA dumped the most vulnerable group of Katrina affected people in the middle of a field somewhere to be forgotten.  It was like they disappeared.

In the meantime, local and federal government officials have been busy ensuring that there are no physical reminders of these internally displaced people’s presence in New Orleans.  This includes local governments who have refused to allow the rebuilding of affordable housing.  But perhaps the most dramatic example was HUD’s determination to demolish 4,500 units of New Orleans public housing, much of which wasn’t even damaged by the storm or flood.

When I talk with volunteers who come to New Orleans to help rebuild, I always mention the devastating impact that the flood and subsequent policies have had on our affordable housing stock.  We have lost thousands of units of affordable housing.  Consistently, people are shocked by the numbers, and ask where these former residents are.  And the truth is, I don’t know where they are; nobody really does.  FEMA did a terrible job when it came to tracking people in the diaspora.

When physical structures no longer exist to remind us of people that are displaced and vulnerable, displacement becomes more abstract and esoteric to those of us that are less vulnerable.

Since Katrina, the homeless population in New Orleans has doubled.  There are still upwards of 150,000 people who have not returned to the city.  Yet, the further away we move from August 29, 2005, the easier it gets to forget the people that once lived here and that have not returned home.  We have fewer and fewer physical reminders of them.

There were many problems with public housing in cities like Chicago and New Orleans.  But it did provide basic shelter for the poorest among us.  Further, it served as a very visceral reminder that poverty and poor people exist.  These days, people seem to disappear into thin air.

(Top Photo of Chicago's Cabrini Green, pre-demolition, by TheeErin)

(Bottom photo of New Orleans's Lafitte, pre-demolition, by Karen Apricot New Orleans, who writes the Squandered Heritage blog)