Smitty's Place
The whole volunteer house shakes when a loaded dump truck drives by.
A few blocks from here, tucked on the corner of two residential side streets, is the home of a gentleman of considerable experience. He was born and then raised in the Lower 9th Ward, on the same plot of family land that I stood on earlier today. He lives there now, after a considerable hiatus, in a home (re)built in part by Common Ground Relief. Smitty has invited a group of us into his living room. I have no idea what his given name is. It doesn't matter. Or even where we were exactly, I didn't bother to look at the address. That doesn't matter either. We are here to talk about the history of his home. Which has nothing to do with his house. That's a different story.
I'm told the city water in New Orleans is potable. It doesn't taste like it.
At one point I surveyed the scene, arranged around the living room. Twenty humans present. Smitty is black, one of us is Indian. The other 18? You guessed it. Ostensibly we came to New Orleans to help people like him. But really, it is him helping us - to understand the culture here, the divisions here, the community. And the community is divided. It is divided along lines, north middle and south, left over from the slave days, the plantation days, in the earliest portion of New Orleans' history. The masters lived along the river in the south, the black slaves to the north, and the managers in between. It is further divided east and west by economics on the one side and the canal on the other. Apparently the vestiges of slavery and the early transition of the Lower 9th into a black community are not vestiges at all. Those people don't come here, we're not supposed to go over there, you know the drill.
The holes in the roofs in some of the abandoned homes are where the occupants cut their way through to escape the rising water.
There are many issues effecting the 9th. I am still wrapping my head around many of the most basic of them, and never presume or expect to understand completely. But I am beginning to understand the importance and necessity of the volunteerism going on here. Simply, the reason is two-fold. The government demands that any particular house be torn down if the damages to that house are more than 50% of the value. In an area with very low property value this means that relatively minor damages condemn a house to demolition and if people had enough money to build new there wouldn't be an issue anyway. So, donated labor, which can be excluded from the build cost, is essential for anyone who wants to salvage their family home.
Smitty moved back from California into his family home in the summer of '05. Katrina came through on 29 August.
Believe it or not, property value around here is rising, rather rapidly in fact. The other major barrier individuals returning is centered on this fact. FEMA disburses money to home owners, up to 50% of the pre-Katrina value of the property. So apparently people should be able to hire a contractor to build a 100 thousand dollar house with 50 grand. Or a $50k with 25. Donated labor can, and does, cover the gaps.
A few blocks from here, tucked on the corner of two residential side streets, is the home of a gentleman of considerable experience. He was born and then raised in the Lower 9th Ward, on the same plot of family land that I stood on earlier today. He lives there now, after a considerable hiatus, in a home (re)built in part by Common Ground Relief. Smitty has invited a group of us into his living room. I have no idea what his given name is. It doesn't matter. Or even where we were exactly, I didn't bother to look at the address. That doesn't matter either. We are here to talk about the history of his home. Which has nothing to do with his house. That's a different story.
I'm told the city water in New Orleans is potable. It doesn't taste like it.
At one point I surveyed the scene, arranged around the living room. Twenty humans present. Smitty is black, one of us is Indian. The other 18? You guessed it. Ostensibly we came to New Orleans to help people like him. But really, it is him helping us - to understand the culture here, the divisions here, the community. And the community is divided. It is divided along lines, north middle and south, left over from the slave days, the plantation days, in the earliest portion of New Orleans' history. The masters lived along the river in the south, the black slaves to the north, and the managers in between. It is further divided east and west by economics on the one side and the canal on the other. Apparently the vestiges of slavery and the early transition of the Lower 9th into a black community are not vestiges at all. Those people don't come here, we're not supposed to go over there, you know the drill.
The holes in the roofs in some of the abandoned homes are where the occupants cut their way through to escape the rising water.
There are many issues effecting the 9th. I am still wrapping my head around many of the most basic of them, and never presume or expect to understand completely. But I am beginning to understand the importance and necessity of the volunteerism going on here. Simply, the reason is two-fold. The government demands that any particular house be torn down if the damages to that house are more than 50% of the value. In an area with very low property value this means that relatively minor damages condemn a house to demolition and if people had enough money to build new there wouldn't be an issue anyway. So, donated labor, which can be excluded from the build cost, is essential for anyone who wants to salvage their family home.
Smitty moved back from California into his family home in the summer of '05. Katrina came through on 29 August.
Believe it or not, property value around here is rising, rather rapidly in fact. The other major barrier individuals returning is centered on this fact. FEMA disburses money to home owners, up to 50% of the pre-Katrina value of the property. So apparently people should be able to hire a contractor to build a 100 thousand dollar house with 50 grand. Or a $50k with 25. Donated labor can, and does, cover the gaps.
Comments
Post a Comment