'HUD' Sham Acts Out Katrina Housing Anger

NEW ORLEANS — It may have been a hoax, but an announcement Monday that the federal government was reversing course and reopening public housing projects it had slated for demolition exposed a fault line in this city's efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

Onstage at an investors' conference with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, an impostor claiming to be an assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development gave a 15-minute speech announcing the supposed policy shift.

"Our charter here at HUD is to ensure access to affordable housing for those who need it the most," said the man, who called himself as Rene Oswin. "This past year in New Orleans, I am ashamed to say that we have clearly failed to do this."

HUD immediately said there was in fact no policy change.

"Despite false statements made today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is moving forward with its plan to redevelop New Orleans' public housing so that families will have the opportunity to return to better, safer neighborhoods," said spokeswoman Donna White. "It is terribly sad that someone would perpetuate such a cruel hoax and play on the fears and anxieties of families who are desperate to return to their homes."

In the year since Katrina hit, there has been an angry dispute between the federal government — which, along with many public housing residents, views the facilities as crime-infested eyesores — and advocates of low-income housing, who argue that New Orleans is far too short on housing to demolish anything.

"The natural disaster of Katrina uncovered and exacerbated existing man-made threats to fair and affordable housing, which have been created by specific policy decisions and years of neglect," the NAACP said in a recent report.

The hurricane last summer displaced tens of thousands of low-income New Orleans residents, many from the city's Lower 9th Ward. The NAACP, saying Katrina was disproportionately harsh on the poor, has called on the government to repair and reopen the units within six months.

Before Katrina, about 5,100 people lived in New Orleans' public housing.

HUD plans to demolish four complexes — St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper and Lafitte — within three years and put mixed-income neighborhoods in their place.

In addition to hurricane damage, officials said, those facilities were plagued by drug dealers and gangs.

About 1,000 public housing units in the newest, least damaged complexes are to be reopened by the end of summer.

But some residents have sued to keep their homes from being destroyed, saying the government's real intent is to drive black families out of town.

"It's clear what they want to do. The developers want the land," said Sharon Sears Jasper, who raised six children and 14 grandchildren at St. Bernard Housing Development, the city's largest such complex.

Jasper is living in Houston but regularly travels to New Orleans in hopes that she might be allowed into her flooded first-floor apartment to clean it.

A "survivors village" has sprouted outside St. Bernard, located in the 7th Ward. On Monday, former resident Stephanie Mingo, 44, held court under a tent on the median strip in front of the complex, as she has for several weeks.

"This is history. This is where I had my babies at," said Mingo, a mother of four, as she pointed toward the complex. "This is where I've seen people come up.

"I'm coming back. I don't care what they say, I'm coming back."

Analysts say affordable housing is the foundation for the city's recovery.

"In the short term, when you have thousands of people in trailers … and thousands with no housing, it makes no sense to demolish public housing units that are habitable or can be easily restored and made habitable," said Alan Jenkins, executive director of the Opportunity Agenda, a New York-based communications, research and advocacy group.