Nicolai Ouroussoff: History vs. Homogeneity in New Orleans Housing Fight
NEW ORLEANS — In this hard-pressed city a proposal by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to demolish four public housing complexes has touched a raw nerve. The demolition, which would affect more than 4,500 housing units, represents for some the plight of a poor, black underclass displaced by Hurricane Katrina and struggling to return. It also represents the problems that faced the city even before the hurricane: poverty, crime and racial divisions.
The bluntness of HUD’s solution reflects a degree of historical amnesia that this wounded city cannot afford. In its rush to demolish the apartment complexes — and replace them with the kind of generic mixed-income suburban community so favored by Washington bureaucrats — the agency demonstrates great insensitivity to both the displaced tenants and the urban fabric of this city.
Offering perhaps a last chance to bring some sanity to this process, a congressional subcommittee is scheduled to open hearings here on Feb. 22 about the future of the city’s affordable housing. It is an opportunity to rethink HUD’s questionable vision and reappraise the role that architecture plays in society.
The hearings should help open up a process that so far has seemed anything but democratic. HUD took control of the four complexes from the Housing Authority of New Orleans in 2002 because of accusations of financial mismanagement. In order to implement the demolition plan, both agencies must comply with a section of the National Historic Preservation Act that requires an appraisal of the historic significance of any building more than 50 years old. But they have largely ignored testimony from of a long list of preservationists, including the Louisiana Landmarks Society and a local representative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In arguing to save the buildings, preservationists point to the human scale of the apartment complexes, whose pitched slate roofs, elegant brickwork and low-rise construction reflect a subtle understanding of the city’s historical context without slavishly mimicking it....
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The bluntness of HUD’s solution reflects a degree of historical amnesia that this wounded city cannot afford. In its rush to demolish the apartment complexes — and replace them with the kind of generic mixed-income suburban community so favored by Washington bureaucrats — the agency demonstrates great insensitivity to both the displaced tenants and the urban fabric of this city.
Offering perhaps a last chance to bring some sanity to this process, a congressional subcommittee is scheduled to open hearings here on Feb. 22 about the future of the city’s affordable housing. It is an opportunity to rethink HUD’s questionable vision and reappraise the role that architecture plays in society.
The hearings should help open up a process that so far has seemed anything but democratic. HUD took control of the four complexes from the Housing Authority of New Orleans in 2002 because of accusations of financial mismanagement. In order to implement the demolition plan, both agencies must comply with a section of the National Historic Preservation Act that requires an appraisal of the historic significance of any building more than 50 years old. But they have largely ignored testimony from of a long list of preservationists, including the Louisiana Landmarks Society and a local representative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In arguing to save the buildings, preservationists point to the human scale of the apartment complexes, whose pitched slate roofs, elegant brickwork and low-rise construction reflect a subtle understanding of the city’s historical context without slavishly mimicking it....