CITIES

BUSH AGENT ORDERS DEMOLITION OF 4,500 NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC HOUSING UNITS

WASHINGTON POST - Public housing officials decided Thursday to proceed
with the demolition of more than 4,500 government apartments here,
brushing aside an outcry from residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina
who said the move was intended to reduce the ability of poor black
people to repopulate the city. Residents and their advocates made
emotional, legal and what they called common-sense arguments against
demolition at the housing authority meeting. "The day you decide to
destroy our homes, you will break a lot of hearts," said Sharon Pierce
Jackson, who lived in one of the now-closed projects slated to be razed.
"We are people. We are not animals."

She and others questioned why the Department of Housing and Urban
Development would destroy affordable housing in New Orleans, saying it
is essential to the city's recovery. C. Donald Babers, the federally
appointed administrator running the Housing Authority of New Orleans,
did not respond to that question in tersely approving the demolitions. .
.

"This is a government-sanctioned diaspora of New Orleans's poorest
African American citizens," said Bill Quigley of Loyola University's law
school, who is representing the displaced. "They are destroying
perfectly habitable apartments when they are more rare than any time
since the Civil War."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/07/
AR2006120701482_pf.html

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BOTTOM OF THE NINTH

PROGRESS REPORT - The Army Corps of Engineers for months "frantically"
prepared for hurricane season, "patching broken levees and building
floodgates." "That repair work is essentially complete and the corps has
moved on to the task of strengthening flood protection in New Orleans
beyond its pre-Hurricane Katrina level, hoping to entice residents
back," the New York Times reports. "But lately the bulldozers have been
idle, and the trucks motionless."

"To save money, the corps will skip interim steps on some projects and
go straight for the higher, 100-year level of protection." The move
"will leave the city at risk until 2010 at least." The corps "has also
scaled back plans to armor the levees against being scoured away when
water flows over the top."

Meanwhile, "Louisiana's largest commercial insurance provider" has
announced it has plans to "cancel all its commercial property policies
in the New Orleans area next year, sparking fears that other insurers
will follow and slow the region's economic recovery." "This is sending a
shock wave through the business community," said one economic
development official. "We cannot exist as a business community without
insurance." Another commentator says the announcement could be
"disastrous to the recovery of New Orleans."

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=
klLWJcP7H&b=1331575&ct=3281703


AP - More than 15 months after Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin on
Monday tapped a leading regional planner and disaster recovery expert to
head a new city recovery office. Edward J. Blakely, who helped
coordinate recovery planning in California after two natural disasters
and in New York City after Sept. 11, has been chosen to lead what is
expected to be a five-person office and to serve as the leader for
marshaling a recovery process that critics have derided as too slow. . .
Asked why it took so long to hire a recovery czar, Nagin said he was
waiting for "momentum and clarity" before hiring someone for the job"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6258222,00.html

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