Progress For New Orleans

One of the things I have found missing from the post-Katrina recovery landscape is a unified media message about the importance of rebuilding and a sense that our efforts are being cheered on by our fellow citizens. I always thought that the World War II US propaganda poster was a good model for creating both a unified message and crafting a consensus. Some would be cautionary, others would exhort citizens to productive measures and still others would be of a celebratory or mission defining nature.

So, I started creating posters. They were on the previous incarnation of this website, and while some of them are clearly post-storm in their focus others tackle larger issues. Some of the issues of the previous posters have been settled for the most part.   Eventually, I’d like to get together a budget to produce these and bring them to the city.

Putting this site together has reminded me of the stuff I was writing in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and how those thoughts have either remained the same or evolved over the past 4 years. This was a letter to Congress that I personally delivered to all of the Senator’s offices (and tried to deliver to the House offices before being kicked out) along with a pair of Mardi Gras beads, in October of 2005. I assume that the House members got the message but I never heard from any of them.

Rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

Why should we help New Orleans?

Because New Orleans is still one of the most strategic cities in the country. Because New Orleans is the port by which the goods for the great mid section of the country go out to the world. Because it is the right thing to do. Because it is the economic engine which drives the economy of almost everything within a 100 miles of it. Because we have 400 miles of devastated coast from Ocean Springs, Mississippi to Orange, Texas and this is one of the largest natural disasters to hit the United States and if the Federal Government can’t or won’t respond then it will be seen as some sign of the United States ineffectiveness in dealing with its own problems. If you can’t do it for love of a great city and region, do it for pride in a great country

Is rebuilding the Gulf Coast something that the Federal Government should be involved in?

If not the U.S. Federal government then who? We are still part of the U.S. We still pay taxes. We live in a place that might be a little more hazardous, doing jobs that other folks might not want to do (like loading ships and refining oil) so that the country can trade with the world and have energy to operate.

One of the basic responsibilities of government is protection and mutual aid. If the Federal Government can’t even participate at that basic level then why be a country at all. If we have to assist other regions in their disasters and not get the same courtesy then why even be part of the U.S? If you weren’t going to help rebuild our city then why did you buy us from the French. The U.S. bought New Orleans and got Iowa (and 10 or so other states) for free. I’d say we were well worth the price and well worth fixing now that we have a bit of trouble.

But isn’t New Orleans and the Gulf Coast just one of those places that humans shouldn’t be living?

This country was built by people who lived in places where it was hard to live. If our forefathers hadn’t done the hard work of living in places that were hard to live in most of us would still be in Europe. There is no place in this country that is completely safe from natural disasters. San Francisco, Los Angeles and the west coast is awaiting an earthquake. No one suggested we write off Florida and return it to the Seminoles after the 4 hurricanes that swept through it last year. Oklahoma and other parts of tornado alleys have small town regularly wiped off the map. Even Nashville, TN, with some of the most benign weather in the country had a tornado hit its downtown a couple years ago.

We have the technology that the original settlers couldn’t have even imagined in protecting the places we live from natural disasters. We can rebuild the levee system, move the pumping stations to the lake for greater perimeter control and keep the city from storm surge flooding. They are doing it in the Netherlands. Are we less committed to one of the most strategic cities in the country than the Dutch are to their cities?

Can you put this in a way I can tell to my constituents that will make them realize how important New Orleans is to the nation?

If a tornado hits a small town and all that is destroyed is the bar then everyone breathes a sigh of relief and while there is some detoxing from the winos, life goes on. However, if that same tornado hits the general store, or the grocery store or the feed store or all three and the grain silo then people are in a world of hurt and everyone tries to figure out what they can do. I am frustrated that folks just think it hit the bar. The place where people go to have a good time and… well, they can go to Vegas instead. No! It hit the grain silo. The place where all those mid-western farmers that ship the grain down on barges to get loaded onto ocean going tankers bound for the rest of the world. It hit the general store. A large port that imported steel and rubber and other materials from around the world for US manufacturing. It hit the grocery store. New Orleans is one of the largest coffee ports in the country and had some of the largest roasting and packaging facilities. Gulfport, MS is one of the largest banana ports in the country. Everyone wants to focus on the French Quarter but there is so much more to the city than that.

Who are you and why are you doing this?

I’m Anthony Favre. Just a guy from New Orleans. Normally I work on Conventions in New Orleans. (Antonin Scalia might not remember me but I just did the sound and lights for the 5th Judicial Conference this spring at the Sheraton in New Orleans), but there aren’t many conventions in town and I was in the neighborhood and figured I’d let Congress know how important it was to get Rebuilding and Recovery money down to the Gulf Coast. I’m 4th Generation New Orleanian in ways that I count, Great Grandpa Ciaccio from Sicily, probably more than 4 in ways I don’t (like my grandfather’s mother was a Brunet, a French Family that has been around the city for centuries). On the Gulf Coast, one side of my dad’s family has been there since the French got off the boat and the other side, being Choctaw and all, was there before that. My dad grew up in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi and my cousins were living all over the coast.

What about corruption and incompetence?

You want oversight? I want oversight. I think we have a couple of people in our current governor and mayor who aren’t out to enrich themselves and are working as hard as they can to make it right. Also, don’t you think we learned a powerful lesson with this storm that the state of our local government matters? Don’t you think we will be watching out for what officials do at all levels of government? But, if it makes you feel better to have someone trustworthy and respected doing the auditing of the funds, then it’s alright with me.

But your representatives put in things like alligator farms in their bill. What about that?

At least we didn’t ask for something really silly like a snow shoe repair facility or a ski lift. Yeah, it’s a little extreme but, I know it seems exotic but an alligator farm in Louisiana is something that people actually do for a living. And everyone knows that if you don’t ask for something in Congress you will not get it. Don’t be irritated at us for asking. And if this seems a little excessive to you, don’t fund it. We still have many, many other things that were destroyed in our 400 miles of storm ravaged coast.

Oh, and your (governor, mayor, paper) said bad things about our (FEMA director, admiral, president) and we are irritated…

People get frustrated when they are in a desperate, life and death, situation. They say things they probably shouldn’t. It would be extremely petty to hold that against an entire region.

What are you gonna do if we don’t help you out?

We are going to do what we can. We will try to fix our houses and move on with our lives. But it will be tough. And without the money to fix the flood protection and the coastal erosion it is going to be tougher still to get anyone interested in helping us rebuild.

How do we pay for this?

A couple of years ago, back when there was a surplus, Congress passed a bill that provided tax cuts to people getting dividends and capital gains. Well, now that a lot of things are going on the National Credit Card, it might be time to look again and see if that was such a good idea

What kind of things do you think would help?

A Category 5 levee system built in 5 years. The extension of Interstate 49 speeded up to help with evacuations. Some help with paying the NOPD and other police forces in the region. Coastal erosion help.

Anything else you want to tell us?

Yes.. Please hurry. The entire tax base of Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquamines Parish, as well as Hancock County, Mississippi has been destroyed. These folks can’t meet payroll for essential public services. We need some short term help and long term rebuilding, and we need to start this process as soon as we can.

Also.. it’s my home and I love it. Don’t make me move from my home. I might be really irritated and end up in your district.

Prior to Katrina New Orleans had a housing crisis.

It may not have seemed like a housing crisis but it was. And it all related to our population numbers and our economy.

At the peak of our population we were close to 650,000 people. This was prior to most of New Orleans East being developed. Since those times in the early 1960s we have continually lost population and in the meantime we built probably a third more houses and apartments in the 1970s and 80s.

Add to this a form of housing, the shotgun, that dominates many older neighborhoods, that has proven itself extremely unpopular with a modern American family that wants bedroom doors that close. Finally moving out of a shotgun house was for many lower middle class New Orleans families proof that you could sustain yourself in some fairly comfortable manner.

The rents, pre-Katrina, were fairly cheap and based upon two things:  An owner who didn’t need to pay off a mortgage but didn’t really spend that much on upkeep and tenants who couldn’t afford much working in the low wage, tourism based economy.

The storm, and the subsequent housing shortage in the immediate aftermath, drove up rents, but we also saw wages rise to meet the new financial reality.

Now both wages and rents are falling.

More and more apartment complexes are coming online, many of them financed by disaster recovery funds.  This in turn is driving down rents for the small landlord.

The small landlord, in contrast, has new debt and new and prohibitively expensive insurance. If the rents reach pre-Katrina levels, and in many places they are approaching that, there will be no incentive to maintain these houses.

Meanwhile, the population has not kept pace with the growth in housing and the economy  is failing to produce the jobs for the citizens so that they can afford rent.

The growth in new housing development undercuts the need to save any marginal old houses that dot our city streets with blight.

But, even now we have two city agencies fighting over whether we keep blighted houses or remove them.  The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) has been continually stymied by the Neighborhood Conservation District Committee (NCDC) in demolishing houses.

So, here’s the question? Just when can we get rid of houses that no one wants to live in, that have been empty for years, when it is likely we won’t have a population to fill all of the houses we have unless we significantly remake our economy into one where people have the resources to take on expensive projects like renovations of blighted property?

It’s clear to me that we are going to have to reimagine a New Orleans that perhaps doesn’t have the street density it once had. Or one that mixes new construction and design in with older buildings. But we can look at a block that in the future has 10 stellar houses with side yards rather than 15  half fixed/half blighted houses.

We have to adjust our thinking. Vibrant cities change constantly. But unless we attract more people on the basis of economic development, there will be little reason and fewer resources to address blight by any other mechanism except demolition.

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, the levee failures and the subsequent flooding there was lots of talk amoungst the uneducated about abandoning New Orleans and not rebuilding. Unfortunately for the city one of these fools was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert.

Smarter people prevailed, but the persistent notion of not rebuilding found its way into conversations that continued into 2006. The Bring New Orleans Back Committee (BNOB) in conjunction with the Urban Land Institute floated this idea and it proved to be some of the most contentious meetings in the post-Katrina landscape. 2006 was simply too early to discuss the viability of neighborhoods.  This conversation needs to happen now, but that is a whole ‘nother topic.

I feel that the infamous “Green Dot” debate stalled the impetus towards recovery in many of our neighborhoods. And it also gave rise to the premise of New Orleans as a “boutique city”.

Green Dots over our neighborhoods

The “Boutique City” was the idea that New Orleans was going to have fewer people and be happy about it. That those fewer people would be richer, probably, and therefore, theoretically shop at boutiques.

The concept of the “boutique city” and the fight against the concept, probably led in part to Ray Nagin’s infamous and divisive  “Chocolate City” remarks. Ironic, since it was his BNOB committee that pushed the concept forward and gave it its audience.

Well, the “boutique city” is a mistake.

It ignores the geographic strength of our location and exchanges it for the concept that we can live on our “charm”.  It is a concept that says not only will New Orleans not work to it’s potential but will deliberately short circuit progress to ensure that it is unable to thrive.

It is a failed vision, and unfortunately it is something we have been heading towards with each development that puts parks over productivity, quaintness over commerce, preservation over progress.

We should aim for a city that has a million hard working people all with good jobs. A city that attracts people on the basis of economic opportunity and holds onto its college graduates. A city that uses it’s geographic advantage astride the Mississippi River to create the growth necessary to sustain the city and its institutions.

Cause here’s the story. The investments necessary to protect New Orleans from the hazards of water are so costly that they will only be feasible if there are good financial reasons to do it. Being a major port with a population that has great jobs that is a vital player in the national and global economy is a good financial reason. Spending that money to protect a bunch of old buildings and unproductive folks either living on government assistance or on the money of their great-grandfather’s labor, is not a good financial reason.

Put simply: The “Boutique City”, in addition to being an enourmous waste of our city’s potential, will surely fail to be able to protect itself because the resources will not be allocated simply because we are striving to make ourselves “quaint” and “charming”.

The “Boutique City” pretty much guarantees we end up the next Atlantis. Growth and demonstrated financial strength and a critical and vital population means that we can live on perpetually.

Like everyone in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding affected my thinking about my city and my relationship with it.

Prior to the storm I had very little interest in local politics and the policies and personalities which ran the city. I was more focused on national issues.

But you can’t see your city in ruins, your fellow citizens either suffering or running wild in the streets, on national television for a couple of weeks without thinking that we must have been doing something seriously wrong to get us to this point. So, while the levee failures were the engineering failure that wrecked havoc on the physical infrastructure, we had economic and social failures that stretched for years and decades prior that had wrecked havoc on the lives of the citizens..

I started to look at Katrina through the lens of our economic decline and how that played into the problems before, during and after the storm. How lack of economic opportunity left folks vulnerable because they lacked the resources to choose their own path, how the lack of good jobs slowed the recovery and still continues to slow the recovery.

It is a big change for a self-identified “art guy”. I’ve gone from writing screenplays to thinking about zoning policy. The drive towards making up stories has been supplanted by the need to attempt to do the things needed to ensure New Orleans’ economic sustainability. If you had told me 10 years ago I’d be this “pro-development” I would have laughed. But things change and it changes you.

Central to this is the idea that people need jobs, in general, and good jobs, in particular in order to put their lives back together. They need economic opportunity and a good shot at career advancement to meet their obligations to their families and have the resources to enhance their lives and their community. And if they don’t find it in New Orleans they will leave to find it somewhere else.

As a result of this I have become extraordinarily sensitive to anyone who stands in the way of our city’s economic development. It is a “jobs first” outlook. It has made me very sympathetic to those who are bringing jobs to the city and fairly hostile to those attempting to obstruct those who are bringing business and jobs to the city.

Put simply- I will generally support those who are doing something and oppose those who look to stop them. To borrow a baseball rule, the tie goes to the runner.

New Orleans can only survive in a meaningful way if we work diligently to make its economy strong. Not just for its own purpose but because it allows its the city to retain and attract its population, it allows it to access the resources from the nation it needs to protect itself from hazards when it can demonstrate it is economically important to the nation. It allows the citizens to maintain themselves and be in a position to make their own choices.

And this is why I am working towards a future for New Orleans. Not just one that is a whisper or pale reflection of the past, but one that finds us, once again a world economic center.