Stealing Charity Hospital: Another Tax Exemption Rips Off the Working Class

Roads, infrastructure crumbling but these profit-makers won’t pay a dime.

Plans for tax exempt luxury housing at Charity Hospital include a swimming pool and private parking while we’re struggling with broken roads, poor schools and low wages.

If you were born in New Orleans, chances are it was at Charity Hospital. Now this historic site is being turned over to developers to turn it into luxury housing, a technology and medical center and expansion of Tulane University. All tax exempt.

Charity Hospital is being given away by the state of Louisiana, LSU and New Orleans city officials. They undemocratically chose 1532 Tulane Partners, a partnership of two developers, CCNO and El-Ad Holdings, an Israeli based company that has been destroying Palestinian homes for illegal Israeli settlements. These developers will get huge tax exemptions. 1532 Tulane Partners will get $80 million in tax credits, $25 million in tax-exempt bonds, a $95 million loan and $30 million in equity to finance its plan.

This would have been the perfect site to create affordable housing and a child care center for hospitality workers who have been forced out by high rents. Instead, hundreds of mostly white technocrats will move here to take advantage of the food, music and good jobs. The contract for the project includes no guarantees for local hiring or training of New Orleanians. We are treated as their servants. They feel entitled to luxury at our expense.

Charity Hospital belongs to the people of New Orleans. But this deal was struck behind closed doors, denying the people of New Orleans any say in the decision. There should have been public hearings and tax paying residents should have had a vote on these decisions.

This rip-off follows proposals to give profit making enterprises exemptions at the Convention Center, DCX Technology, the World Trade Center development on top of the hundreds of other exemptions handed out by the rich to their friends. Of course, the politicians who receive campaign contributions (bribes) from these companies are celebrating with them.

With developers running the city and controlling the politicians, nothing will get better until the working class organizes to flex our powerful muscles and make demands that benefit us.

Workers Voice Socialist Movement

We are workers, employed and unemployed, youth, students, and seniors. We are multi-racial and multi-national and organize for the unity of the working class. We are funded by and for workers, for the liberation of all workers and oppressed people.

We organize for jobs and higher wages, against racism, women’s, and LGBTQ oppression, and for solidarity with immigrants. We organize for community schools, lower rents, and food on our tables. We organize for workers’ power so that everything will one day be removed from the capitalists’ private ownership.

We oppose the Pentagon, which is looting our tax dollars and handing them over to war-profiteering private companies, while social programs are gutted. We oppose war for empire which is pursued only to lower our wages and plunder the world’s resources while destroying the environment. We reject the monopoly media who feed us lie after lie.

The labor of workers produces enormous wealth here in Louisiana, the U.S. and the world– so much wealth that everyone could have housing, meaningful jobs, education, healthcare, and genuine equality. But this wealth is stolen and privately owned by the capitalist class for their greed and profit. We believe that we, the workers of the world, can unite in revolution to overcome capitalism and build a better world.

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