Well, as I was looking for more info concerning HUD’s plans for the poor of our city, I ran across this piece on Common Dreams by Bill Quigley from today. Here’s some info we ain’t seen on NOLA.
Excerpt (Emphasis mine):
“As James Perry, Director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Center says about the planned demolition of public housing, “If the model is River Gardens, it has failed miserably.” Despite HUD’s promise to demolish homes, the right of people to return to New Orleans is slowly being recognized as a human rights issue. According to international law, the victims of Katrina are “internally displaced persons” because they were displaced within their own country as a result of natural disaster. Principle 28 of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement requires that the U.S. government recognize the human right of displaced people to return home. The US must “allow internally displaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence. Such authorities shall facilitate the reintegration of returned or resettled internally displaced persons. Special efforts should be made to ensure the full participation of internally displaced persons in the planning and management of their return or resettlement and reintegration.” The US Human Rights Network and other human rights advocates are educating people of the Gulf Coast and the nation about how to advocate for human rights. HUD has effectively told the people of New Orleans to go find housing for themselves. New Orleans already has many, many people, including families, living in abandoned houses – houses without electricity or running water. New Orleans has recently been plagued with an increase in the number of fires. HUD’s actions will put more families into these abandoned houses. Families in houses with no electricity or water should be a national disgrace in the richest nation in the history of the world. But for HUD and others with political and economic power this is apparently not the case.”
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