New Report on Post-Katrina Rebuild, with Contacts for Funding Fair Housing Research and Activism
Report recommended by Tulane's Southern Institute for Education and Research, the nexus of post-Katrina studies.
http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/PDF/racetorebuild.pdf
I like it because it makes the point that disinvestment in the infrastructure is the rupture of the minimum social contract: I pay taxes, you protect me.
The Center for Social Inclusion had a post-Katrina housing conference Dec. 5 and 6 in Baton Rouge. The list of attendees looks to be the establishment in this arena; if you want sources or jobs, they look like the people to talk to.
PANELISTS
-James Perry, Executive Director for the GNOFHAC: http://gnofairhousing.org/index.html
-Maya Wiley, Director for the Center for Social Inclusion
-Dr. George Amedee, Board President, GNOFHAC and Professor of Political Science at Southern University
-Joseph Rich, Project Director for the Fair Housing and Community Development Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: http://www.lawyerscomm.org/2005website/home/home.html
PARTICIPANTS
Andre Banks, Applied Research Center: http://www.arc.org/content/view/31/43/
Roger A. Clay, Jr., National Economic Development and Law Center: http://www.nedlc.org/
Kay Fernandez, PolicyLink: http://www.policylink.org/
Jonathan Hooks, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law
Myron Orfield, Institute on Race and Poverty: http://www.irpumn.org/website/
Brad Paul, National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness: http://www.npach.org/
Danilo Pelletiere, PhD, National Low Income Housing Coalition: http://www.nlihc.org/
James Perry, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center
Colette Pichon-Battle, African American Forum on Race & Regionalism: http://www.aafrr.org/
john powell, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity: http://kirwaninstitute.org/
Denis R. Rhoden, Jr., MCRP, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Joseph Rich, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law
Phil Tegeler, Poverty & Race Research Action Council: http://www.prrac.org/
Maxine Weaver, Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans: http://www.nhsnola.org/
Maya Wiley, Center for Social Inclusion
Beverly Wright, PhD, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice: http://www.dscej.org/
And here is the conclusion of the recent CSI Race to Rebuild report (link above).
Conclusion and Recommendations
We are not just rebuilding the Gulf Coast.We are rebuilding the nation. The Gulf Coast was vulnerable before the levees broke because, as a nation, we have been pulling resources out of the public sector and, therefore, communities.
The most obvious example of this are 2004 tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% of the nation worth twice what the government would spend on job training, public housing, child care, etc. What this represents is a disinvestment in our people and our communities and an investment in the country’s top earners who have received 49% of the increase in aggregate real wages. The middle class in this country is shrinking. Opportunity is becoming scarcer. The federal government created the middle class. It can reinvigorate opportunity, but only if we invest in the federal government and only if the federal government
is responsive to our needs.
The way to determine our needs and
to build opportunity is to examine the most
vulnerable among us, all too often, low-income
people of color, determine their structural barriers
to opportunity and change those barriers. Our
support for New Orleans’ recovery requires our
support for federal capacity to intervene and
the demand that it do so. It also requires that
the federal government take seriously policy
proposals that will improve the grades New
Orleans will receive for recovery for all of its
former residents.
These policies include:
1) rebuilding and developing more affordable
housing, and connecting it to jobs, education and
transit opportunities; requiring and providing
incentives to private developers to develop
low-income and affordable units in their
multi-dwelling developments;
40
2) creating a regional education system that
intentionally creates socio-economically
balanced schools;
3) creating a regional public transit system that
connects city neighborhoods to job centers in
suburbs and considers creating development
clusters of affordable housing and businesses
around transit hubs;
4) restoring wetlands along the lines already
developed by Louisiana’s own task force;
5) signifi cantly greater monitoring and soil
removal and treatment by the EPA, with particular
attention to hard hit communities; and
6) planning all of these as steps in relationship
to one another, recognizing that each step will
impact the other.
People’s well-being, housing, schools, the
environment, the economy and healthy growth of
the region are all connected. Policy-makers must
recognize this and create institutional linkages
to plan, monitor and alter plans in each of these
areas so as to produce the right outcome -
opportunity for all to live life well and in harmony.
If we do not follow these policy
recommendations, which are supported by
research and experience and proposed by a variety
of experts in their fi elds, we will continue to see
failing grades for rebuilding New Orleans and the
Gulf Coast region and probably little improvement
in opportunity more broadly. If we adopt and
pursue these policy proposals, we will see a
more invigorated, renewed region and will have
strengthened our collective capacity to support
each other, by enabling the federal government
to produce better opportunities for all of us.
http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/PDF/racetorebuild.pdf
I like it because it makes the point that disinvestment in the infrastructure is the rupture of the minimum social contract: I pay taxes, you protect me.
The Center for Social Inclusion had a post-Katrina housing conference Dec. 5 and 6 in Baton Rouge. The list of attendees looks to be the establishment in this arena; if you want sources or jobs, they look like the people to talk to.
PANELISTS
-James Perry, Executive Director for the GNOFHAC: http://gnofairhousing.org/index.html
-Maya Wiley, Director for the Center for Social Inclusion
-Dr. George Amedee, Board President, GNOFHAC and Professor of Political Science at Southern University
-Joseph Rich, Project Director for the Fair Housing and Community Development Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: http://www.lawyerscomm.org/2005website/home/home.html
PARTICIPANTS
Andre Banks, Applied Research Center: http://www.arc.org/content/view/31/43/
Roger A. Clay, Jr., National Economic Development and Law Center: http://www.nedlc.org/
Kay Fernandez, PolicyLink: http://www.policylink.org/
Jonathan Hooks, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law
Myron Orfield, Institute on Race and Poverty: http://www.irpumn.org/website/
Brad Paul, National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness: http://www.npach.org/
Danilo Pelletiere, PhD, National Low Income Housing Coalition: http://www.nlihc.org/
James Perry, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center
Colette Pichon-Battle, African American Forum on Race & Regionalism: http://www.aafrr.org/
john powell, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity: http://kirwaninstitute.org/
Denis R. Rhoden, Jr., MCRP, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Joseph Rich, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law
Phil Tegeler, Poverty & Race Research Action Council: http://www.prrac.org/
Maxine Weaver, Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans: http://www.nhsnola.org/
Maya Wiley, Center for Social Inclusion
Beverly Wright, PhD, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice: http://www.dscej.org/
And here is the conclusion of the recent CSI Race to Rebuild report (link above).
Conclusion and Recommendations
We are not just rebuilding the Gulf Coast.We are rebuilding the nation. The Gulf Coast was vulnerable before the levees broke because, as a nation, we have been pulling resources out of the public sector and, therefore, communities.
The most obvious example of this are 2004 tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% of the nation worth twice what the government would spend on job training, public housing, child care, etc. What this represents is a disinvestment in our people and our communities and an investment in the country’s top earners who have received 49% of the increase in aggregate real wages. The middle class in this country is shrinking. Opportunity is becoming scarcer. The federal government created the middle class. It can reinvigorate opportunity, but only if we invest in the federal government and only if the federal government
is responsive to our needs.
The way to determine our needs and
to build opportunity is to examine the most
vulnerable among us, all too often, low-income
people of color, determine their structural barriers
to opportunity and change those barriers. Our
support for New Orleans’ recovery requires our
support for federal capacity to intervene and
the demand that it do so. It also requires that
the federal government take seriously policy
proposals that will improve the grades New
Orleans will receive for recovery for all of its
former residents.
These policies include:
1) rebuilding and developing more affordable
housing, and connecting it to jobs, education and
transit opportunities; requiring and providing
incentives to private developers to develop
low-income and affordable units in their
multi-dwelling developments;
40
2) creating a regional education system that
intentionally creates socio-economically
balanced schools;
3) creating a regional public transit system that
connects city neighborhoods to job centers in
suburbs and considers creating development
clusters of affordable housing and businesses
around transit hubs;
4) restoring wetlands along the lines already
developed by Louisiana’s own task force;
5) signifi cantly greater monitoring and soil
removal and treatment by the EPA, with particular
attention to hard hit communities; and
6) planning all of these as steps in relationship
to one another, recognizing that each step will
impact the other.
People’s well-being, housing, schools, the
environment, the economy and healthy growth of
the region are all connected. Policy-makers must
recognize this and create institutional linkages
to plan, monitor and alter plans in each of these
areas so as to produce the right outcome -
opportunity for all to live life well and in harmony.
If we do not follow these policy
recommendations, which are supported by
research and experience and proposed by a variety
of experts in their fi elds, we will continue to see
failing grades for rebuilding New Orleans and the
Gulf Coast region and probably little improvement
in opportunity more broadly. If we adopt and
pursue these policy proposals, we will see a
more invigorated, renewed region and will have
strengthened our collective capacity to support
each other, by enabling the federal government
to produce better opportunities for all of us.