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KorraSophie Lucido Johnson & Ashana Bigard
8/27/15 11:02am
This is so fucked up. I’ve been listening to the Death, Sex, and Money podcast’s series on this and it’s stunning* to me how this country can still turn its back on entire cities of people while they suffer and then try to scrub their existence clean once the citizens attempt to make their homes habitable again.

Also why the fuck did her rent more than double after a hurricane? That doesn’t make sense.

*well, not really.
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  PhilosophyprofKorra
  8/27/15 11:08am
  It’s the supply and demand — if her place was still standing after Katrina, then it was part of a much lower supply of housing, so — rent goes up. It’s disgusting, and it’s immoral, and it’s the way a free market works to keep folks in their place. It makes me really sad.
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  bwrites enjoyed the time we shared togetherKorra
  8/27/15 11:11am
  Subsidies not implemented thoughtfully will increase prices.
  
  Let’s say you and everyone else can afford $500 in rent. Thus, landlords will charge $500. Suddenly, something happens and you are given a $500 monthly check to help subsidize your rent. Landlords know you can afford the original $500, plus the additional $500, so they start to charge $1,000 in rent. The subsidies end up helping nobody but the landlords, and anyone who doesn’t get a subsidy is SOL.
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RicwashSophie Lucido Johnson & Ashana Bigard
8/27/15 11:37am
Good gracious. Is hipster gentrification ruining everywhere even remotely interesting or colorful?

This seems very similar to what has happened to New York City, in that all of the low income, and the vast majority of the working class, and moderate income people, have been priced out of the neighborhoods they grew up in and have lived in for generations. The personalities that made up these neighborhoods are what made these cities unique and authentic, why wash that away? And while yes, there was a criminal element, why punish the many for the sins of the few?

All color is being wiped out of the major cities, and they are all becoming the same, sad, generic, corporately sponsored tourist trap.
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  DoobyOneRicwash
  8/27/15 11:46am
  New Orleans is hardly a white-washed hipster wasteland.
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  RicwashDoobyOne
  8/27/15 11:47am
  Fair enough, but I think that’s where those with the money actually want it to go.
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LTishSophie Lucido Johnson & Ashana Bigard
8/27/15 10:56am
This is so real, this is the experience a lot of people here are having, but what can we do? The powers that be don’t want to look back at what made this city real and authentic, they want to scrub it clean,sterilize it. It’s depressing because those of us who loved New Orleans before Katrina still love it, even as it becomes unrecognizable.
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  BDCBLTish
  8/27/15 11:20am
  Print semi truckloads of dollars, tote them down there and have soldiers distribute them. This is would not be possible without a left-wing dictator, which is a prospect I’m finding more and more attractive by the year. Democracy is broken.
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  BDCBBDCB
  8/27/15 11:21am
  Kidding. Kind of.
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scowly brow spinsterSophie Lucido Johnson & Ashana Bigard
8/27/15 11:16am
Hire Ms Johnson to illustrate Jezebel articles, please.
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  Stephoclesscowly brow spinster
  8/29/15 10:22am
  YES. So beautiful.
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usedtobehereSophie Lucido Johnson & Ashana Bigard
8/27/15 11:04am
It blows my mind that people were allowed to jack up rents like that. I’m sure someone will have a defense for it, but it just seems like a shitty way to treat people who are already in a shitty situation.
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CalHobbesSophie Lucido Johnson & Ashana Bigard
8/27/15 12:31pm
Her landlord was a jerk if he/she raised rent immediately post Katrina.

As a landlord in the uptown area of New Orleans I am very happy to say that rent on our homes is only about 20% higher than it was prior to Katrina...and we are, frankly, losing money and evaluating what we need to do. As a homeowner post Katrina the rates of insurance and property taxes has skyrocketed. Because the New Orleans police force is mostly ineffective these days, we now pay a “security zone” fee for each property so that someone in a car with lights on the top can cruise through the neighborhood. The burgler/thieves/robbers, wait for the car to go by and then do what they planned to do anyway. The outsiders in the neighborhoods whine and complain about parking so the police now regularly issue tickets to our tenants about the tiniest of parking infractions. Infractions for which they didn’t even understand what they made - there is absolute no signage. We have gone to City Hall several times to argue on behalf of our tenants regarding these issues. Their answer, well “they should know.” We are trying to be good homeowners and good landlords, but feel like we may give it all up soon. These are fully owned homes that have no mortgages etc....and we can’t charge enough reasonable rent to cover insurance, taxes, and other fees. I’m not defending all landlords, but the hike in rents isn’t entirely due to landlords trying to screw people around, many of us are trying to make ends meet in a place that has become very expensive to even own property.
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AltairaMorbius2200ADSophie Lucido Johnson & Ashana Bigard
8/27/15 11:37am
“ It turned out that the new New Orleans didn’t really want the old New Orleans.”

This is something I don’t think people generally get about charters, and how they’re normally implemented (like in New Orleans)- it takes away the voices of the local people and gives them to corporations. Thousands of teachers, mostly minorities, were laid off post-Katrina to make room for charters and TFA. I am not surprised that Bigard was critical at the time; if only more people had been critical, had spoken up.

What makes me the most sick is that the champions of charters are calling the “experiment” such a “success” (results are hard to compare because tests and ratings changed around Katrina times, but basically test scores have been stable for years with a serious dip in 2005-2007, as one might expect), and LITERALLY SAYING THEY WISH FOR KATRINAS ELSEWHERE.
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