Support the Right for All to Return to New Orleans

June 30, 2006

Dear CONGRESSMAN,

We, the undersigned, believe that New Orleans must be redeveloped in a just and sustainable way that allows all low-income residents their Right to Return in accordance with the US international policy on Internally Displaced Persons.

We stand in solidarity with the Survivors Village tent city, and with grassroots affordable housing groups everywhere.

Assistance to displaced persons is ceasing and many low-income residents will be abandoned to face homelessness in the cities where they have been evacuated. Instead of using these past many months to reopen housing, the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, under Secretary Alphonso Jackson, has spent 1.5 million dollars so far to barricade the developments, causing further damage by neglect. Despite this, independent engineers' inspections have shown that thousands of apartments are COMPLETELY UNDAMAGED, and immediately inhabitable.

By denyingthe working poor, largely African American population their Right to Return, Jackson and his supporters are committing an egregious act of systemic racism that we believe must be stopped.

We therefore demand that Jackson immediately reopen all public housing units in the city that are structurally sound and make all necessary repairs so that the remaining units can be opened in a timely fashion.

In this, the worst municipal housing crisis of our time, any suggestion of demolition of viable housing is entirely unacceptable;
We also insist that the Section 8 affordable housing program be returned to pre-Katrina levels, particularly in light of the recent drastic rate increases in the rental market and the widespread property damage due to Hurricane Katrina;

We are unequivocally opposed to all plans that would demolish affordable housing or would in any way reduce availability. We therefore stand in opposition to the HOPEVI program that would make public housing projects "mixed income" with an end result being a dramatic reduction in the number of affordable units as occurred with the redevelopment of St Thomas into River Garden;

We recognize that there has been a municipal trend within the last ten years, particularly with the closure of the St. Thomas Housing Development, to dramatically reduce the amount of affordable housing available in New Orleans.

We see that this municipal trend is connected to the national trend of government ceasing to serve those most in need while private corporations increasingly prosper from their increased ownership of social services, from hospitals to schools to utilities to housing. We oppose all such reforms and budget cuts that benefit the elite by curtailing governmental social services for the disadvantaged;

In conclusion, we believe that in the midst of the dire housing shortage in New Orleans, it is unacceptable for housing authorities to refuse to reopen thousands of undamaged or slightly damaged public housing apartments.

It is even more reprehensible for the planners and officials in charge of the future of this city to neglect the many disadvantaged residents who are an integral part of the social fabric of New Orleans. It is hypocrisy at its worst to call for other nations to follow published US guidelines on the Right to Return for all Internally Displaced Persons while it denies that right to it's own citizens.

We ask that you take a stand alongside the most vulnerable citizens of New Orleans to demand that Alphonso Jackson, the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, allow everyone to come home.