[News] New Orleans, Public Housing and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/arena07102007.html

July 10, 2007


A Social Movement and Public Works Alternative


New Orleans, Public Housing and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

By JAY ARENA

"So goes New Orleans, so goes the country" was the message this 
writer and other public housing activists delivered at the recent 
United States Social Forum held in Atlanta. New Orleans' grass roots 
activists argued, at this gathering of leftists and liberals from 
across the U.S. and Americas, the U.S. ruling class is using the 
'opportunity' of Hurricane Katrina to eliminate New Orleans over 
7,000 public housing apartments, or what they call 'concentrated 
poverty'. This 'success story' will then be used to justify public 
housing's elimination across the country.

Furthermore, we held, the demolition of New Orleans' public housing 
is part of a broader ruling class initiative to privatize public 
services from health care to education in order to create a model, 
racially and class cleansed, 'neoliberal city'. Again, as with public 
housing, elite-defined success in our devastated city will be used to 
extend capitalist gains across the country.

While we delivered our radical critique, we did not have the time to 
develop another part of New Orleans' public housing story, and a 
central theme at the U.S. Social Forum: the role non-profits, 
foundations and universities are playing promoting the neoliberal 
agenda in post-Katrina New Orleans, and, more generally, the 
insidious role they play in undermining social justice struggles. 
Below I elaborate on the role of these actors--what a collection of 
writers in a recent work call the 'non-profit industrial complex'--by 
examining an ivy league university's initiative to create a cadre of 
'experts' to implement and legitimate the neoliberal 
'reinvention'--privatization--of New Orleans' public housing. I 
conclude the analysis by highlighting the obstacle non-profits pose 
for social justice struggles, and how grass roots social movement 
organizations--qualitatively different from non-profits--have made 
great strides in defending New Orleans' public housing. I argue the 
social movements, not non-profits, opens the possibility of a massive 
public works program, the only real way to obtain a just 
reconstruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.



Penn and Privatization

'This project is a great example of how Penn engages with communities 
across the globe to drive progress and improve lives.' Penn President 
Amy Gutmann

The University of Pennsylvania's so-called 'Center for Urban 
Redevelopment Excellence' [hereafter the 'Center'], through a $2.2 
million grant from the Rockefeller foundation, is providing a series 
of fellowships to 'recruit talented and energetic staff for 
organizations directly supporting large-scale redevelopment in 
neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Katrina and Rita.' The 
fellowships will be awarded to 'early or mid-career professionals' 
who will work with, primarily, non-profits involved in 
'public-private redevelopment projects'. In addition the Center, in 
collaboration with the University of New Orleans' Department of 
Planning and Urban Studies, will oversee an extensive training 
program for fellows. The curriculum includes cutting edge topics, 
such as the 'Entrepreneurship in Urban Redevelopment' course, focused 
on 'privatizing public functions', or, in neoliberal-speak, 
'innovations in government'.

Schooled in privatization and co-optation, the 'Rockefeller 
Foundation Redevelopment' fellows will be able to quickly put their 
skills to use. The fifteen agencies--including some for-profits and 
government agencies--currently designated to have fellows work with 
them are almost all involved in privatizing and downsizing public 
housing, mostly targeting New Orleans (for the full list of 
collaborators go to: 
<http://www.upenn.edu/curexpenn/hosts_rfrf.htm>www.upenn.edu/curexpenn/hosts_rfrf.htm). 
Further underscoring the program's privatization agenda, many of the 
Center's board members have played major roles in the 1990s and early 
2000s frenzy to eliminate 'distressed' public housing developments 
that occupied valuable real estate parcels in cities from Washington 
to Chicago to San Francisco. Furthermore, a few of the Center's board 
members, and their organizations, have even received contracts to 
eliminate New Orleans public housing--or what they and their future 
'fellows' call 'reinventing' public housing, 'de-concentrating 
poverty', and 'building strong, healthy communities.'



UPenn's Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence:
A Rogues Gallery of Public Housing Demolishers

Among the Center's 22-member advisory board is one Bruce Katz, who 
now heads up the Brookings Institution's 'Metropolitan Policy 
Program' (for the full list go to: 
www.upenn.edu/curexpenn/board.htm). Katz is well prepared for that 
neoliberal think-tank post: in the 1990s he worked at the Department 
of Housing and Urban Development under Secretary Henry Cisneros 
implementing the HOPE VI program. HOPE VI, what a public housing 
resident at the Social Forum critiqued as having no hope, only 
despair, was the key Clinton era neoliberal legislation used to 
eliminate over 100,000 units of what had been a stock 1.4 million 
public housing units in the United States. This program helped 
radically downsize public housing, such as New Orleans' pre-Katrina 
St. Thomas public housing development. St. Thomas, located along the 
city's highly valued riverfront, was 'redeveloped' under HOPE VI, 
shrinking from 1,510 public housing units to under 200--part of 
slashing the total city public housing stock from approximately 
14,000 to 7,000. Katz vigorously defend his pre-katrina efforts in 
New Orleans, telling a researcher in 2002 at the London School of 
Economics, following a query about St. Thomas, that

Cities have to gentrify, especially bottom of the barrel cities like 
New Orleans. If they don't gentrify, they're going to die. Because 
nobody is going to bail them out this time. The federal government is 
not going to bail them out this time.

Other leading lights of public housing privatization that sit on the 
Center's board include Richard Baron--who is also a member the 
Brookings Institutions Metropolitan Policy Board directed by Bruce 
Katz--and Tony Salazar of the McCormack, Baron and Salazar firm. 
Salazar, who heads the outfit's "west coast operations', touts that 
he oversees 'five HOPE VI sites'. McCormack, Baron and Salazar also 
have under their belt the destruction of Techwood homes in Atlanta, 
the first public housing development built by the Public Works 
Administration, completed in 1936. This 'success story' helped spur 
on gentrification in Atlanta, further reducing the civil rights 
capital's African American working class population. Of course the 
role that Richard Baron played in racial and class cleansing did have 
its benefits, making him a deserving recipient of the Urban Land 
Institute's--the premier, 'non-profit' real estate industry think 
tank--$100,000 "J.C. Nichols Visionaries in Urban Development' prize. 
The award is named after the Kansas City developer that played the 
key role, beginning in the early 20th century, institutionalizing the 
real estate industry's use of racially restrictive covenants in new 
housing developments.

All of the remaining 22 member advisory board have, at one level or 
another, supported and legitimated public housing privatization and 
gentrification. Some of these leading lights include Sandra Moore, 
who heads the non-profit 'Urban Strategies'. This outfit specializes 
in collaborating with McCormack, Baron and Salazar in what they call 
the 'self-sufficiency, self-improvement' component of HOPE VI 
privation schemes. Urban Strategies expertise also includes 
'community engagement processes', that is co-optive efforts to 
ensnare public housing residents in negotiations, helping grease the 
skids for expelling communities, thus handling a messy problem for 
developers. James Corcoran, a developer and Center board member, also 
has public housing demolition--Boston and Lynn Massachusetts--on his 
resume. Another interesting figure is real estate consultant Paul 
Brohpy, who epitomizes the Center's 'public-private' collaboration, 
having held posts in government, for-profits, non-profits, and 
academia legitimating gentrification.


Non-Profits in the Service of Public Housing Privatization

Many of the non-profits scheduled to receive Rockefeller funded, and 
Center for Urban Redevelopment trained, 'fellows' are directly or 
indirectly involved in privatizing four major public housing 
developments--C.J. Peete, St. Bernard, Lafitte, and B.W. Cooper. 
These four-closed [a few apartments are open at Cooper] New Orleans 
public housing developments comprise some 5,000 badly needed, rent 
controlled, apartments. In addition, two non-profits scheduled to 
receive fellows have direct business relationships with certain 
Center 'advisory' Board members. For example, the so-called 'New 
Orleans Neighborhood Collaborative', led by New Orleans school board 
member Una Anderson, is 'partnering' with McCormack, Baron and 
Salazar in a HUD awarded contract to privatize the 1,400 units of the 
C.J. Peete development. Only 141 public units are planned for the 
redevelopment, according to the Center website! If the past is any 
indication, Center board member Sandra Moore's 'non-profit' Urban 
Strategies--whose agency is scheduled to be awarded a fellow as 
well--will also receive a cut of the C.J. Peete deal.

[The role of Anderson, who through her school board position has led 
the busting of the New Orleans teachers union and school 
privatization, underscores the close linkage of public housing 
privatization, charter schools, and gentrification.]

Another 'non-profit' involved in privatization and scheduled to 
receive a 'fellow' is Providence Community Housing--an arm of the 
archdiocese of New Orleans. Providence is working with Enterprise 
Community partners--two of whose arms are also receiving 
fellowships--to demolish the almost 1,000 units at the Lafitte public 
housing development. Lafitte, one of the best-built public housing 
developments in the country, constructed by Creole artisans from the 
city's Treme neighborhood, and modeled after the Cabildo apartments 
in the famed French Quarter, received little or no flooding. Indeed, 
MIT professor John Fernandez testified that with minimal 
repairs--basically sanitary swipes of the solid plaster 
walls--displaced residents would be able to safely move back into 
their apartments. Nonetheless, Providence and Enterprise 
claim--arguments soon to be buttressed by their 
gentrification-trained Rockefeller hacks--that the development is not 
habitable and plan to demolish all the solid, historic, brick three 
and two story walk-up apartment buildings.

Another appalling aspect of the Providence-Enterprise collaboration 
is that the "CEO" of the non-profit, 'National Low Income Housing 
Coalition'--Sheila Crowley--sits on the board of trustees of 
Enterprise [along with Center board member Paul Brophy, and former 
Defense secretary Robert McNamara, involved in destroying several 
million low-income housing units in southeast Asia a few decades 
back]. New Orleans public housing activists from C3/Hands Off 
Iberville have repeatedly called on CEO Crowley to step down from 
Enterprise and denounce the outfit's privatization scheme. Crowley, a 
typical, arrogant, nonprofit 'CEO', accountable only to her 
foundation paymasters, continues on the Enterprise board. She refuses 
to deign herself by responding to the grass roots rabble in New 
Orleans carrying out the day to day struggles on the front lines to 
defend public housing.


AFL-CIO and Privatization

Like Crowley's outfit, another putatively 'progressive, working 
class' organization--the AFL-CIO trade union federation--is also 
involved in privatizing New Orleans' public housing. The AFL's 
'Housing Investment Trust' (HIT) and 'Investment Trust Corporation' 
(ITC), scheduled to receive a Rockefeller fellow, originally had its 
eyes set on the Lafitte public housing development. Yet, when their 
erstwhile Providence and Enterprise partners refused to use union 
labor, the AFL bankers backed out of the deal--it's OK to demolish 
poor peoples housing, as long as union labor is involved! Who says 
our union leaders have no principles! HIT and ITC are now 
concentrating their efforts on winning the contract to privatize the 
St Bernard public housing development. Nonetheless, the AFL efforts 
to act as 'socially responsible investors' are now stymied since the 
Columbia Residential Corporation, another Rockefeller fellow 
designee, was previously awarded the St. Bernard contract by HUD.

Of course, the AFL's pro-privatization policies in New Orleans should 
not come as a surprise. An organization that funds coup plotters in 
Venezuela to overthrow a president carrying out the 
re-nationalization of industries and expanding social services, 
should not be expected to oppose neoliberal 'reforms' at home. 
Indeed, as the AFL-CIO oversees the continued savaging of working 
class living standards, we can expect that increasingly their top 
honchos' main area of concerns will be protecting and 'growing' their 
considerable capitalist investments.


The Struggle from Below and the Public Works Alternative to Privatization

The non-profits, and the foundations, the latter of which political 
scientist Joan Roelofs calls the "planning and coordinating arm" of 
the non-profit 'third sector', are part of the problem in New 
Orleans, not the solution. The non-profits--which have proliferated 
in post-Katrina New Orleans--play key roles, as we have seen with the 
University of Pennsylvania-Rockefeller foundation program, helping 
legitimate neoliberal reforms. The non-profits help, at the grass 
roots level, to disseminate the ruling class' 'common sense' ideology 
that we have to be 'realistic' and adapt to neoliberalism. The 
non-profits' message is to be reasonable, to work out a compromise 
within the interstices of neoliberalism. That is, as Roelofs argues, 
the non-profits act as "a protective layer of capitalismThey provide 
jobs and benefits for radicals willing to become pragmatic" (Roelofs 
2003, p. 22). They take grass roots activists away from mass 
struggle, and into the insider negotiations that sap and undermine 
working class strength.

Thus, the solution is not, as a number of New Orleans activists 
implored, in their "Letter from the People of New Orleans to Our 
Friends and Allies", to get the 'progressive' foundations and 
non-profits to open their coffers to fund local organizations 
involved in advocating a racially and economically equitable 
reconstruction. [http://leftturn.mayfirst.org/?q=node/573.] Winning 
fellowships from the Rockefeller foundation is the not the solution. 
Nor are fellowships from the largess of a late 20th century robber 
baron--George Soros' Open Society Institute. In fact, a New Orleans 
based criminal justice reform non-profit, 'Fighting Chance'--a proud 
recipient of the 'Social Capitalist award' from fastcompany.com--has 
one of their 'senior investigators' on Soros' payroll.

In contrast to those focused on creating non-profits to pressure the 
foundations for cash, New Orleans needs grass roots, politically 
independent of the Democrats, social movement organizations to 
pressure and confront the capitalist state. This has been the agenda 
and purpose of the public housing group C3/Hands Off Iberville, which 
has led and organized scores of direct action mobilizations to 
confront the capitalist state and their public housing privatization 
agenda. Instead of being 'reasonable', accepting privatization, and 
being sucked into negotiations--a key role of the 
non-profits--C3/Hands off Iberville and others involved in the public 
housing movement have maintained pressure on local and national state 
officials through marches, denunciations, protests, disruptions. This 
line of march has bone fruit.

Struggle from below in New Orleans produced movement from above in 
Congress. Congresswoman Maxine Waters sponsored, and helped lead the 
successful passage of, bill HR 1227 this spring that provides for the 
reopening of New Orleans public housing, and one-for one replacement 
of public housing units under any 'redevelopment'. The bill stalled 
in the Senate until C3/Hands Off Iberville and others began a 
pressure campaign on Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, including 
marching to her brother's home-Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. She finally 
budged, and endorsed and sponsored the bill, S 1668, The Gulf Coast 
Housing Recovery Act of 2007.

The struggle is not over. The Senate has not passed the bill, and no 
funding has been appropriated. There are some weaknesses and 
loopholes, ones that can only be plugged through more 
struggle--something the non-profits are not interested in. 
Furthermore, the movement faces the continued efforts of developers, 
and their intellectual backers at the University of Pennsylvania to 
'reinvent', that is destroy public housing. Nonetheless, the 
experience of C3/Hands Off Iberville shows that building a grass 
roots movement, politically independent of the Democrats--rather than 
a professional, non-profit reliant on foundations--can produce 
important gains even at ground zero of the U.S.'s domestic neoliberal 
capitalist offensive--New Orleans, Louisiana. Within New Orleans 
public housing movement lies the seed for a necessary and broader 
one, the only one capable of guaranteeing a racially and economically 
just reconstruction: a movement for a massive public works program, 
democratically and government run [no private contractors!], and at 
union wages, to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (for historic 
precedence, and how to achieve it, see Jeannette Gabriel's article in 
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/gabriel240806.html>Monthly Review).

Jay Arena is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Tulane 
University and a long time community and labor activist in New 
Orleans. He can be reached at: <mailto:jarena at tulane.edu>jarena at tulane.edu

References

Roelefs, Joan. 2003. 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0791456420/counterpunchmaga>Foundations 
and Public Policy: the Mask of Pluralism.. Albany: State University 
of New York Press.

<http://www.louisianaspeaks.org/news/9721.html>http://www.louisianaspeaks.org/news/9721.html

http://www.enterprisecommunity.org/about/leadership/trustees.asp




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