One Year After Katrina, New Orleans Public Housing Projects Remain Closed

A year after Hurricane Katrina hit, barely half of New Orleans' population of 450,000 has returned. Many of those unable to come back are poor and African-American. In the ravaged, mostly black neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward - only 1,000 of the 20,000 people who lived there before Katrina have returned. This has drastically altered the demographics of a city that used to be two-thirds black.

Activists and residents have condemned the government's refusal to re-open the city's public housing projects and point out that while tourist areas are being developed, affordable housing is not being built.

That all seemed to change yesterday in what appeared to be a surprise announcement form the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Speaking before a thousand construction-industry members at a privately-organized conference in Louisiana, Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin both introduced what appeared to be a HUD official.

* Rene Oswin, Yes Man posing as HUD official.

That supposed senior HUD official Rene Oswin was actually Andy Bichlbaum - a member of the political pranksters group The Yes Men. Posing as Oswin, Bichlbaum went on to announce grandiose plans for HUD to reverse course in New Orleans such as: scrapping plans to demolish 5,000 housing units, spending $180 million dollars to fund one public health clinic per housing development, having Wal-Mart withdraw its stores from poor neighborhoods and having energy giants Exxon and Shell spend $8.6 billion dollars to finance wetlands rebuilding.

The prank was just the latest in a series pulled off by the Yes Men who have recently masqueraded as representatives of McDonald"s, Halliburton and Dow Chemical.

Soon after Bichlbaum's announcement, HUD confirmed that he wasn't part of their agency. HUD spokesperson Donna White called the hoax "sick" and "twisted." But not everyone felt that way. One New Orleans contractor said, "I'm not angry at them for pulling this joke, I'm angry that it is not for real."

For more on the issue of public housing on this Katrina anniversary we turn to New Orleans resident and a civil rights attorney, Tracie Washington.

* Tracie Washington, lifelong New Orleans resident and civil rights attorney. She is the director of the NAACP Gulf Coast Advocacy Center.

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