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Struggle for Black Lives Continues in Gordon Plaza

Sept. 9: Residents, including Derrick (pictured), speak out at rally in Gordon Plaza.

by Christina Tareq

Nearly 40 years ago, the City of New Orleans decided the toxic Agriculture Street landfill was the perfect place to construct and sell homes to Black New Orleanians. Building the Gordan Plaza subdivision, the city sold the homes to first-time homeowners. Today, Gordan Plaza (GP) has the second highest rate of cancer in the entire nation. “We are being experimented on, let’s see how long Black people can live on top of 150 cancer-causing chemicals,” says Shannon Rainey, President of the GP housing association and an organizer with the New Orleans People’s Assembly.

GP residents won a lawsuit against the city 20 years ago but still have not received restitution. There are 54 residents stranded in GP who continue to pay property taxes for homes that are killing them. They have been told by mayor after mayor to “be patient” as community members die of cancer. While most homes appreciate in value, these homes are essentially worthless. With no ability to sell their homes or rent them in good conscience, the only option for these working class Black families is to wage a struggle against the city for fully funded relocation of their community.

While running for mayor, LaToya Cantrell publicly called for fully funded relocation for Gordon Plaza. Since becoming mayor in 2018, she has said that she “hears Gordon Plaza” and that her administration is working on a “solution.” Yet the only changes the residents have seen over the last two years are more deaths, most recently that of one of the neighborhood’s long-time organizers, Mr. Robert Anderson, may he rise in power.

At a rally in Gordon Plaza on September 9, Mr. Derrick, who grew up in the neighborhood and whose mother still lives there, asked in regard to Mayor Cantrell’s empty promises, “who else will fight for our lives, if it’s not a Black woman? That’s the reason we were told to vote for a Black woman.” Mayor Cantrell continues to spur the calls for protecting Black lives in a majority Black city while meeting with White supremacists concerned about the fate of confederate statues. It’s up to the people to stand with each other! Join the struggle for a fully funded relocation for Gordon Plaza. Black lives matter while they yet live!

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HOUSING VICTORY IN PHILADELPHIA SHOWS DIRECT ACTION WORKS!

This September, homeless mothers and children organized with Philadelphia Housing Action, Black and Brown Workers Cooperative, two homeless protest encampments, and others through a large-scale direct-action takeover of vacant, city-owned homes. This action resulted in forcing the city government in Philadelphia to agree to demands for 50 vacant homes to be used for very-low-income housing. As the economic crisis deepens and the pandemic continues without adequate response from the capitalist state, the people must take action to acquire what we need to survive. This is only a start to the work that needs to be done, but it shows the power of the people when we are organized!

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We Need a Tenants Union, Rent Control!

By Sally Jane Black

There is more than enough housing for everyone.

The housing crisis in New Orleans is not caused by a shortage. It is caused by predatory developers and landlords who see every opportunity to develop as a chance to gouge workers and raise rents. Meanwhile, the few rights tenants have in Louisiana are often impossible to uphold because there is no support for workers in civil courts, and most of these laws were written by landlords in the first place.

There are thousands of housing units sitting empty in New Orleans and thousands of workers struggling to afford apartments that are often infested with vermin, rotting or covered in mold, over-crowded, and with no guarantee they won’t be kicked out tomorrow.

Recent attempts at relieving the housing crisis have included inclusionary zoning, limitations on short-term rentals, and property tax loopholes that all fail to address the fundamental issues: high rents and unsafe, inadequate housing options available to the working class. 64% of renters in the city pay more than a third of their income on rent (and a third of renters pay over half of their income). History shows developers will drop affordability requirements (which usually last a few decades at most) the instant they are able to, as they did at the American Can apartments. The city’s legal eviction rate (5.2%) is twice the national average and does not include the many who are evicted only with a threat, forced out with rising rents or harassment, or simply come home to find their possessions on the curb. Tenants cannot even withhold rent to force a landlord to make vital repairs to their homes.

Without a powerful tenants movement, this will not change. We must demand rights for tenants that empower workers, and we must demand rent control.

Unless a powerful tenants’ movement puts pressure on law-makers, “solutions” will always favor the rich. There is no way to make a tax cut big enough to make raising the rent less profitable. While working class homeowners deserve relief from the property tax increases, landlords need to be restricted more directly. Shelter is a basic human need, and landlords know tenants will pay anything to keep a roof over their heads. Strong rent control laws can put a limit on what landlords and property managers can charge tenants, including those who are already cost-burdened.

In New Orleans, every new development is taking tax payer money to build hotel rooms and condos while workers are being pushed out of neighborhoods by gentrification. The failed Amendment 4, backed by local nonprofits and conservative law-makers, was designed as a concession to developers before the fight had even begun. In Germany, mass movements have won rent control and have succeeded in forcing landlords to shut down developments and concede to demands for better housing regulations.

The laws we have are a reflection of the class struggle; law-makers answer to us only when we take militant and mass action against them, loud enough to drown out the money of the capitalists who fund their campaigns. With a tenants union strong enough to pressure the landlords, the people can fight back and protect the rights they win.

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No More Tax Exemptions for Real Estate Developers

Renters have nothing to gain from another handout to developers. A tenants’ union is the way forward.

By Joseph Rosen

Most households in New Orleans are spending more than half of their income in rent. Across the city, the rate of evictions is on the rise. In response, politicians are selling us ‘solutions’ to the housing crisis that are devised by the very people at the root of the problem. Various schemes to ‘reinvest’ in neighborhoods or to provide ‘affordable housing’ all amount to the same thing: handouts to the rich who are intent on pushing out working class, mainly Black New Orleanians.

One scheme—so called “opportunity zones”—has proven to be an enormous windfall for rich investors and real estate developers. This tax loophole was put into effect as part of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the rich. Landlord-in-chief Trump who inherited his real estate fortune from his redlining KKK father designated more than 8,000 census tracts across the country as “opportunity zones,” including 25 in Orleans Parish. These cover the Treme, Gentilly, 7th Ward, Gert Town, Algiers, Central City, Magnolia and more—all areas targeted for gentrification.

By stashing money in so called “Opportunity Zone Funds” rich people can skip out on taxes that would otherwise be applied to the profits that they get from their various enterprises. Workers in New Orleans have to pay a 9.45% tax on the purchase of a hot meal while real estate investors can pay as little as a 0% tax on the purchase of an apartment building—all in order to supposedly “spur investment” in areas “of greatest need.” This giveaway has resulted in a massive land grab. Real estate holdings have been consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer landlords. The New Orleans Redevelopment Fund is an “opportunity zone” tax shelter worth $30,000,000.

Vote no to Constitutional Amendment 4
Big property developers have devised yet another scheme deceptively claiming it will help with affordable housing. An amendment to the Louisiana state constitution would give the city the authority to waive property taxes for investments in “affordable housing” units, exempting properties up to 15 residential units. This amendment does not even specify how the term “affordable housing” would be applied. The city is already rewarding developers of high-end condos with millions in tax exemptions for making as few as 1 out of every 20 units “affordable housing.” Worse, this giveaway increases gentrification by raising rents in the neighborhoods where these expensive new condos are built, forcing more workers out.

To live, workers need to be paid more. To make higher profits, bosses need to pay less. The bosses have the money, the workers have the numbers. The solution makes itself apparent. The same applies to renters. Renters need a real tenants’ movement that can organize for rent control, tenants’ rights and an end to mass evictions.

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Mayor Cantrell’s Affordable Housing Meetings Are a Sham

By Sanashihla

An August 29 meeting in the 9th Ward called by the mayor about the housing crisis was beyond disappointing. One after another city official droned on about proposals mostly benefiting developers, not homeowners or tenants. 9th ward residents were not allowed to speak but merely put a question on a card where the officials could pick and choose. Residents should be allowed to get up at these meetings and the politicians should shut up and listen. What are they afraid of?

Black New Orleanians are being pushed out of homes and apartments all over the city to be replaced by mainly white professionals. The city backs this scheme by granting tax incentives to developers and pursuing code violations that are unimportant but expensive.

The only “relief” offered were loans to fix homes; Mayor Cantrell even threatened homeowners who hadn’t made these repairs. Far from fighting new assessments which are raising taxes in Black neighborhoods like Gentilly or Treme and further pushing people out, Cantrell is actually pushing to get those extra tax dollars out of working class New Orleanians.

When the Residents of Gordon Plaza showed up to the meeting en masse, they were also ignored.

Initially, the mayor didn’t mention anything about Gordon Plaza on her own. It took an audience member’s question/comment card submission for the mayor to mention that the city “might have—but no promises” plots of land that can be considered.

Gordon Plaza was a city initiative, framed as “affordable housing,” promoted toward Black residents as an opportunity, that led to the crisis at Press Park and Gordon Plaza being built on toxic soil in the first place.

The residents are demanding a fully funded relocation, where they can be fairly and justly compensated for their homes in the context of an increased cost of living, increased property taxes, and the fact that their houses could sell for top dollar if the neighborhood that it sits on were not toxic. Cutting checks in the name of the Residents only requires resolve. And considering the Residents of Gordon Plaza are not even seeking restitution for the impact on their health or medical bills associated with living in the second-highest cancer-causing neighborhood in the state of Louisiana, this is a small request.

A fully funded relocation of 52 households would only cost half of what the City of New Orleans spent on installing red and blue flashing surveillance cameras all over the city.

It’s the working-class residents across New Orleans who need the real breaks, not a handful here and there but all. Working class residents can’t keep up with the constant rise in the cost of living, particularly with increases on rent and property taxes.

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Homelessness Grows for Families with Children as Rents Increase in New Orleans

By Sally Jane Black

There are 20,000 empty houses in New Orleans. These homes range from blighted buildings left after Hurricane Katrina to places intentionally kept empty by investors. This number does not include the number kept empty for most of the year for the purposes of short term rentals.

1,188 people sleep without shelter in Orleans and Jefferson Parish every night.

For many, this lack of shelter means sleeping under the Claiborne overpass, in tents and small encampments. For others, it means finding one of the empty buildings and using it for shelter.

Yet the city council, mayor’s office, and NOPD have not opened up any empty houses to those in need. They have not worked with shelters to find solutions to the over-crowding issues they have. They have instead brought garbage trucks under the overpass, treating the possessions of those in need as waste. They have targeted people in the Quarter to take away their dogs (which many people rely on for security when they have no walls to protect them).

City officials attempt to sweep the issue under the rug, hide it from tourists, and arrest people for the crime of being poor. At the same time, landlords are throwing people out at a rate higher than anywhere else in the country, targeting people of color and women especially. These same landlords have raised the rent astronomically since Hurricane Katrina, and in many cases, converted homes and apartments to short term rentals instead. And it’s the homeless that the city treats as criminals.

Meanwhile, the city took steps to cover up the horrifying rate of death among the homeless population. Instead of taking heed of an escalating issue, the city shut down efforts to track and respond to the situation. They actually obstructed the work of people who had been informally keeping track of homeless deaths. No one knows how many were lost for lack of shelter last year, but it was on pace to be one out of every 15 people living on the streets.

The city has the resources to provide shelter for every person in the city, but the landlords and capitalists in the city profit more when they can threaten poor residents with eviction and homelessness if they don’t agree to pay inflated rental prices. No wonder a third of the city hands over half their income every month for rent. With housing, healthcare, and education all designed to provide profits to the rich instead of serving the people, the working people of New Orleans have nowhere to turn to for the resources we need—unless we organize to fight back.

There is no reason except capitalist greed that the empty homes in New Orleans cannot be opened up to those who need them. No one should die of exposure while rich people leave homes to rot for tax write-offs.

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Berlin: Thousands Hit the Streets for Lower Rent

Renters in Berlin demonstrate against landlords. Banner read, “Housing is not a commodity. Enough with the crazy rent!”
Renters Demand Breakup of Real Estate Monopolies

You have more in common with your fellow workers around the world than you do with you landlord. Whether in New Orleans, San Francisco, or Berlin, we are all facing a similar housing crisis, with the same causes. Rents are doubling or tripling, gentrification is pushing working class people out, landlords are evicting tenants so they can build more profitable apartments or short term rentals, and evictions are commonplace. Meanwhile, public housing has been replaced by watered down programs that benefit the landlords more than tenants and only increase gentrification. Those hit hardest are women, people of color, and immigrants.

This is as true in New Orleans today as it is in Berlin, and on April 7, tenants in Germany took to the streets to protest. Their demands are not for voucher programs or minor breaks, but for the rental properties owned by the biggest landlords to be taken back and returned to the people.

One group called Expropriate Deutsch Wohnen & Co. is working to enact a law that would ban any rental companies owning more than 3,000 apartments from operating in the city. Companies that would like to stay in Berlin, like Deutsche Wohnen—a company owning 100,000 apartments in the city— would be required to sell their excess housing units to the city for conversion into public housing.

The landlords claim they aren’t responsible for the rise in rents, but the people know who set the rates. People across Germany are organizing. Tens of thousands of people, including 25,000 in Berlin, marched demanding that the German government use Article 15 of the German constitution to acquire hundreds of thousands of units from Deutsche Wohnen & Co. and other major companies and turn them into social housing for the people.

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Gordon Plaza Residents Confront Mayor’s Office

Shannon Rainey, President of Gordon Plaza Residents committee, confronts Beau Tidwell, Cantrell’s PR mouthpiece.

By Star

On March 7 at 9 am, the Residents of Gordon Plaza went to City Hall to meet with Mayor LaToya Cantrell.  For 7 months residents have attempted to meet with Cantrell following a decades long struggle to be relocated off toxic soil.  They hoped she would honor her campaign promise to use city resources to ensure that residents have a safe and healthy environment to call home. Before going to City Hall, residents tried many times to get a meeting and were rebuffed. Despite the mayor never listening to the residents, she approved a statement from her office indicating that “due to pending litigation, the Mayor’s office is unable to make specific comment at this time. Mayor Cantrell has heard from the residents and will fully explore the possibilities in working toward a positive resolution.”

After that statement was issued, Cantrell texted the residents’ representative to say that if she needed anything, to call her office or e-mail to set up a meeting. As the mayor requested, the residents sent an e-mail in advance of their arrival. At the mayor’s office they were met with her communication director who made it clear that the mayor was not going to meet with the residents of Gordon Plaza.

Since being in office, white supremacists continually state that the mayor meets with them to discuss elevating monuments of white supremacy, and the mayor never denies it. It is not acceptable that the mayor refuses to meet with the residents of Gordon Plaza, while she listens to the cries of white supremacists as they mourn the loss of their monuments to oppression.

The fully funded relocation of the residents Gordon Plaza is long overdue and is the only acceptable resolution.  Residents will continue to organize until this is achieved.

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We Need a Tenants Movement for Rent Control, Tenants’ Rights

Inclusionary Zoning Speeds Gentrification, High Rents, Destroys Neighborhoods

By Gavrielle Gemma

Eviction Crisis in New Orleans:

  • One in every 19 renter households in New Orleans faced a court-ordered eviction in 2017.
  • One in four black renter households faced a court-ordered eviction between 2015 and 2017.
  • The overall eviction rate in New Orleans is nearly double the rate of evictions nationally.

Study done by Loyola law professor Davida Finger and the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative

Working class New Orleanians, especially in the Black community, know that rents are too high and wages too low, and that we have no security in our homes. We are being driven out of many neighborhoods like Treme, the Marigny, the Bywater, Mid-city and more. Black homeownership is way down and the price of buying a house in Gentilly is out of reach. Long time home owners are being forced out by higher taxes in gentrified areas or by newly discovered code violation fines. We travel longer distances to jobs where there is no parking and we suffer with an underfunded bus system. There is no question that city policies favoring developers and landlords have fostered this gentrification.

An independent movement of working-class renters needs to fight for rent control, against exemptions for developers, against evictions and fines and the racist policies these all entail. Long time home owners in Black communities should pay pre-Katrina taxes, not gentrification taxes which push them from their homes. We are told that the state controls tenant issues. Yet a militant movement could win change. In the 1930’s workers blocked evictions and moved people back into their homes.

Politicians and even some housing nonprofits favor the supposed remedy known as “inclusionary zoning” which gives developers “incentives” (millions of dollars in tax exemptions) to build if they set aside a few so-called moderate-income apartments. This scheme only furthers gentrification. Once the new development is built, all the rents in the neighborhood go up and people lose more housing than was gained. The racial composition and cultural character of the neighborhood changes as well.  This scheme provides a cover for politicians to seem as they are doing something about the housing crisis while still allowing gentrification to continue unchecked.

The example of the American Can apartments shows how “inclusionary zone” fails lower income renters and the broader community. This former factory was renovated with tax exemptions on the condition that the developers set aside a few apartments.  The city agreed that the developer could end this arrangement over time so the owner proceeded to evict these tenants immediately on that date.  Meanwhile this speeded up gentrification, displacing many other tenants and homeowners from the neighborhood.

While former mayor Mitch Landreiu was traveling the country preaching civil rights, he boasted in 2017 in a speech to business owners that the real estate market was booming, and that New Orleans was “becoming the city he always wanted.”  He bragged about the influx of new professionals moving into the city. Wages stayed low and racist income disparity grew. These new, mostly white professionals basically treat Black workers as if they exist to serve them while they party.

We know landlords and developers are greedy. But it is the complicity of city and state officials—upon whom they lavish campaign contributions— that enables them to run amok with their greed. These real estate developers donated not only to the campaigns for Landrieu but also to Mayor Cantrell and the council members (see State Ethics Commission reports). The policies that these campaign donations buy include favored zoning changes, tax exemptions, special loans and a pledge of silence regarding the racist impacts that these policies encourage. They are aided by the non-elected Planning Commission, which is appointed by the mayor and city council, and currently made up of a majority of rich white real estate developers.

Across the country, tenants’ movements are fighting back.  A united fight for rent control, anti-eviction laws and safeguards for working class homeowners is needed now.

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STOP Evictions in New Orleans! Housing Is a Right!

By Nathalie Clarke

In many cities in the United States, gentrification has been threatening the housing security of workers. New Orleans is no exception–on average, 4.22 evictions occur every day according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. And this number refers only to official evictions, those ordered by a judge, which means it’s definitely an underestimate of how many working-class families wind up homeless. Most tenants know all too well that landlords can also informally evict tenants by paying them to leave or locking them out of their property. These eviction rates are all the more disturbing because in the United States, 75 percent of qualified families do not receive federal housing aid and one in four poor renting families is spending over 70 percent of income on rent and utilities.

Loyola University law professor Davida Finger wrote in the Advocate : “The vast majority of tenants hauled into court on eviction matters are not represented by attorneys and eviction hearings can be completed in a matter of minutes. My research on First City Court evictions over the last several years shows that from 2015, the annual number of eviction cases filed has increased steadily each year. An analysis of demographic information in census bureau tracts where evictions are most heavily ordered shows that Orleans neighborhoods that are primarily African-American are more likely to have higher numbers of evictions ordered.“

In New Orleans, landlords and city officials alike have let gentrification run rampant. Historic working-class neighborhoods like the Bywater and the Treme have become artists’ hubs with accordingly high rents. The price of one-bedrooms increases by 2% every month, and 9.6% every year. Although costs of living in the city are steadily increasing, wages have not risen accordingly. Louisiana is among five states that rely exclusively on the federal minimum wage, which hasn’t been raised since 2009 although it’s lost 9.6% of its value due to inflation.

Basically, workers are earning less, and paying more, which means they often have to work several jobs just to be able to afford a modest home close to their workplace. With workers’ purchasing power decreasing as their costs of living rise, families become more and more at risk of being late on their rent. In Louisiana, landlords don’t need to give their tenants a grace period, and can charge them late fees or give them a five-day notice to vacate, even if tenants are only a day behind.

Recent studies show that to live comfortably in the Big Easy, a family needs to make at least $60,782. Meanwhile, the median household income in New Orleans is $36,964–$23,818 short of what’s needed to live comfortably. Most workers spend 50% or more of their budget on housing, according to the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. The National Alliance to End Homelessness found that between 2015 and 2016, 6% more people were at risk of becoming homeless because of rent burden.

Why are rents skyrocketing? Part of it is the many once long-term residences being converted into short-term Airbnb rentals for tourists, which benefits landlords at the expense of tenants. The other part is a worldwide trend in late capitalism, gentrification, whereby older, affordable neighborhoods are being invaded by wealthy, educated hipsters who move in and push out long-term residents.

For the rich, the housing crisis has obvious advantages. Not only can landlords make more money by charging more for rent, but even restaurant owners and other rich bosses get a piece of the pie: workers fearing eviction and homelessness will put up with more exploitation at work and will be more afraid to organize. What they forget is that the more they keep us oppressed under the boot of economic exploitation, the less we have to lose. With their endless attacks on our basic rights, the rich bosses simply fuel our fury and are creating a force to be reckoned with. The workers from every industry create the wealth of this city; we will not continue to accept less than what we deserve. Our brothers and sisters currently unionizing in fast food chains, restaurants, bars, and hotels leave the bosses trembling, and we will continue to fight until we break our chains and their world crumbles