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Housing plans go against neighborhood's wishes

By Craig Flournoy

NEW ORLEANS – Don’t try selling Don Lewis Sr. on the idea that the government will turn his neighborhood into homeowner heaven. Or Bettee Wilson Lockett. Or Gail Wise.

They bought into that 20 years ago. Literally. They were some of the 67 families who bought homes in a subdivision built here by the federal government and private developers. They did not know their homes were built on a toxic dump contaminated with lead, arsenic and cancer-causing chemicals.

Mr. Lewis, a retired longshoreman, lost his 16-year-old daughter to cancer. Ms. Lockett, 61, said she cannot retire from her job as a teacher because her home is worthless.

"They need to cement this whole place over and make it industrial," said Ms. Wise, a social worker.

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Federal and local officials have very different plans. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has committed $62 million to rebuild the failed Desire public housing project, which borders the toxic landfill where Mr. Lewis, Ms. Lockett and Ms. Wise live. Local officials want to build 800 townhouses, apartments and single-family homes on the Desire site.

Many experts and residents said that would repeat a tragic error.

"The government has trapped us in a toxic ghetto," said Pat James, a schoolteacher whose front yard bears a sign that reads "Toxic Land – Move Us Out Now."

"Why," she continued, "would the government repeat the same mistake?"

More than two dozen neighboring homeowners echoed Ms. James’ view.

Local and federal housing officials said rebuilding on the Desire site is the right thing to do.

"We are very careful to be sure these are viable sites to redevelop," said Elinor Bacon, the HUD official who oversees the HOPE VI Urban Revitalization program, the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild public housing in dozens of other cities.

But federal auditors and private consultants have recommended that the Desire plan be abandoned. Among the reasons they’ve cited: Desire’s poor location, possible health threats from pollution, questionable financing, cost overruns, poor local management and inadequate federal oversight.

Desire is next to the 17-foot deep Agriculture Street landfill, a dump so polluted that in 1994 federal officials placed it on the Superfund list – a designation reserved for the 1,300 most toxic waste sites in the country.

A joint federal-state study in 1997 found that those who lived on or near the landfill had a 60 percent higher incidence of breast cancer than residents in a surrounding three-county area.

‘The new racism’

Elodia Blanco knows this all too well. She and her husband bought a home on the landfill almost 20 years ago. In 1986 her daughter, then 12, developed breast cancer. She said her family has no history of breast cancer. Melika Thornton, now 26, survived. But Ms. Blanco said she is stuck with a worthless home.

She said the government’s plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to force 800 minority families to live in

New Orleans, LA, slideshow

subsidized housing next to the dump would result in a "complete disaster."

"It’s a way of keeping black folks in toxic black neighborhoods," said Ms. Blanco, the director of a foundation that helps recruit officers for the New Orleans Police Department. "I call it the new racism."

"The plan has the potential to produce an exciting new affordable housing community and also rescue the adjoining neighborhood from certain decline if the Desire site were abandoned," he said.

The rebuilding plan calls for a mix of townhouses, apartments and single-family homes on the site, at a total price tag of $125 million. Federal auditors estimate the cost at $107,341 per unit, 21 percent above the government maximum for the region.

So far, no new housing has been built. Despite years of trying, the housing agency has yet to persuade private developers to invest a penny of the $63 million it needs to go with the money HUD committed.

Elizabeth K. Julian, formerly HUD’s top fair housing enforcement official, said that’s good news.

"Desire," she said, "shouldn’t ever be rebuilt."

Desire has long been a notorious project.

The sprawling complex of 1,832 apartments was built on a former swamp and a dump. A consultant reported in 1993 that "serious problems with soil subsidence" had caused foundations and pipes to crumble soon after it opened in 1956.

That same consultant concluded that redeveloping Desire was "neither viable nor feasible." Federal auditors reached the same conclusion in 1994 and again in 1998.

A key reason was Desire’s location. It is situated on an isolated peninsula and surrounded by heavy industry, railroad tracks, an interstate highway, a shipping canal, another abandoned housing project and the toxic landfill.

Some HUD officials have recognized the problem for years.

Chris Hornig, formerly the agency’s No. 2 public housing official, wrote in 1996 that the site was "marginal and isolated, distrusted environmentally and lacking the mobility and social intercourse and access to jobs which are the key to a different future for Desire’s children."

Desire, he said, represented a "public housing sin."

Desire supporters

Still, Desire has had friends.

New Orleans applied for $44 million in HOPE VI funds to rebuild Desire in 1994 – the same year that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designated the neighboring Agriculture Street landfill as a Superfund site.

According to a HUD memorandum, the Desire application "had been ranked near the bottom of those received but was funded at congressional direction." The housing authority later obtained an additional $18 million in federal funds to rebuild Desire.

The housing authority’s renovation plan quickly fell apart. According to federal investigators, "The end result was that the authority spent about $2.5 million without rehabilitating a single unit."

The New Orleans Housing Authority has had a troubled history. According to a 1998 federal audit, "Over the past two decades, the authority spent millions of dollars on consultants, planners and management teams. However, despite all this time and money, the tenants continue to live in squalor."

Joseph Shuldiner, HUD’s top public housing official from 1993 to 1995, said in an interview that New Orleans was the "worst housing authority in the United States [and] the most corrupt."

The U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted to withhold money from Desire in 1996 because of concerns over the site and the rebuilding plan. But an unlikely ally came to the rescue – Henry Cisneros, who was HUD secretary.

Shortly after taking office, he killed a $67 million plan to rebuild a giant housing project in West Dallas. Like New Orleans, the plan would have forced hundreds of families to live in one of Dallas’s poorest, most polluted neighborhoods. Instead, he provided 1,000 families with Section 8 certificates they could use to rent apartments of their choosing.

But when it came to Desire, Mr. Cisneros lobbied for the rebuilding plan. The New Orleans Housing Authority "must begin its physical recovery somewhere, and there is literally no better place in its inventory than Desire,’’ he wrote in a 1996 letter to four key members of Congress.

Recently, Mr. Cisneros said his support was a compromise designed to end a bad situation.

"Desire is so isolated and has such a history that there has always been an argument for not redeveloping it at all," he said. "But where do you put the people?"

Ms. Julian, who served as HUD’s top civil-rights lawyer under Mr. Cisneros when the agency approved the funding, said, "Desire was driven by the local political situation. If it had been up to Henry, he would have taken that place out."

Fewer than 200 families live at Desire today. They are virtually all black, as are the residents in the city’s other 7,300 public housing apartments.

A computer analysis by The Dallas Morning News found that three-quarters of the public housing in New Orleans is within a mile of one or more toxic dumps. A few hundred whites live in housing built or renovated under the federal Section 8 program. None is within a mile of a toxic dump, the analysis shows.

Blacks constitute 62 percent of the city’s population and whites 35 percent.

Deborah Davis, the project’s resident council president, has lived in Desire for 40 years. She said government-sanctioned neglect – driven by race – turned Desire into a "sick community."

"There’s no place more hopeless than Desire," she said.

But she wants the government to rebuild it.

"This will be an oasis," predicted Ms. Davis, who receives $200 each month in HOPE VI money for participating in planning sessions with developers, architects and housing authority staff. "It will be enriched socially, economically, spiritually and physically."

HUD’s Office of Inspector General remains unconvinced. In its 1998 audit, the agency watchdog recommended that HUD abandon its plans to rebuild Desire.

That would be fine with Cheryl Thomas, one of the project’s few remaining residents. She wants out.

"I would like a Section 8 certificate," said the young mother. "You get better quality and more choice."

Lawsuit pending

Beverly Rogers can understand Ms. Davis’ desire to leave. So can Lillie Dorsey. And Betty Egana. They are among the hundreds of Desire-area homeowners who are suing the city and the housing authority. They want the government to pay for their ruined property values, relocation costs and ongoing medical checkups. The suit is pending.

HUD provided financing and loan guarantees in the early 1980s to help build their homes in Gordon Plaza subdivision and townhomes in Press Park, along with 128 apartments for the elderly.

All were built on the landfill that later was designated a Superfund site. The homeowners asked the EPA to relocate them, which would have cost $12 million. The agency refused. Instead, the EPA spent $20 million to clean up the site.

"The remedy selected for the site – soil excavation and back filling with clean soil – was more than sufficient to be fully protective of human health," said EPA spokesman David Bary.

Wilma Subra disagrees. Ms. Subra, an environmental consultant and technical advisor to the families living on the landfill, said soil subsidence is so severe that it will quickly mix contaminated dirt with clean soil.

"With each passing day, the ground is moving and the toxic waste is moving with it," said Ms. Subra, who was selected in 1999 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for one of its "genius" grants. "It’s dangerous and a threat to human health."

But the homeowners such as Peggy Grandpre, a supervisor with the New Orleans Port Authority, said they are not optimistic that local and federal housing officials will drop their rebuilding plans. "The government will drive African-Americans into this area if it kills them,’’ she said.

"Desire is so isolated and has such a history that there has always been an argument for not redeveloping it at all. But where do you put the people?"