A Will-to-Rebuild Deadline Proposed for New Orleans

Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s commission to revive this city on Wednesday proposed that residents of the districts most heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina get four months to demonstrate strong support for rebuilding their neighborhoods or face the possibility of having to sell to the government.

The proposal, a centerpiece of the mayor’s “Bring New Orleans Back” recovery effort, drew outrage from residents and community activists, who argued that many citizens -- especially the African Americans who predominated the flood-struck areas -- might be forced out of the city for good.

By allowing residents to help determine their neighborhood’s fate, the Nagin commission hoped to defuse a flashpoint in the debate over how to restore the ravaged city: Should all of New Orleans be rebuilt, or should low-lying neighborhoods be returned to wetlands and green space that would serve as a natural barrier against floods?

The vast swath of the city in question -- which includes parts of the Gentilly, Mid-City, Lakeview and Lower 9th Ward neighborhoods -- represents about half of New Orleans. If residents could not reach a consensus to rebuild, city planners would shrink the footprint of New Orleans.

“None of us want to be in this particular place, but Katrina has forced us to take a good, hard look at what we need to do to rebuild our city,” Nagin said. “The realities are that we will have limited resources to redevelop our city.... The other reality is this report is controversial. It pushes the edge of the envelope. It probably says some things to some people they are probably misinterpreting.”

Despite Nagin’s effort to ease tensions, residents across racial and class lines lashed out Wednesday at what they considered a land grab engineered by the city’s elite. Much of their ire was heaped on New Orleans developer Joseph C. Canizaro, a key architect of the plan, whose name elicited boos from the standing-room-only auditorium crowd.

“How many people from my backyard are up there?” Harvey Bender, a laid-off city maintenance worker from eastern New Orleans, yelled at the officials. “I’m ready to rebuild and I’m not letting you take mine,” he said. “I’m going to fight, whatever it takes, to rebuild my property. It’s going to be baby Iraq for Joe Canizaro.”

Under the plan -- which can go forward with Nagin’s approval -- New Orleans would impose a moratorium Jan. 20 on building permits in the areas hardest hit by Katrina’s floodwaters. Residents then would have to demonstrate there was sufficient critical mass in their area to rebuild to warrant public investment in schools and city facilities, possibly by showing that half of the population planned to come back.

To accelerate the process, Nagin’s commission is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to release updated flood plain maps, which could effectively make the decision for many homeowners by raising home insurance rates and setting other new financial barriers to redevelopment.

Neighborhoods that failed to meet the critical-mass test would be shrunk or eliminated altogether; a new city agency called the Crescent City Redevelopment Corp. then would buy out residents or seize their properties through eminent domain. The estimated cost of the buyouts: $12 billion.

Federal legislation introduced by Rep. Richard H. Baker (R-La.) proposes to reimburse homeowners 60% of their pre-Katrina equity. The Nagin commission plan would go further, compensating displaced homeowners the remaining 40% with federal community development block grant money and FEMA funding.

But that federal funding, like many other elements of the ambitious plan, ultimately would need the support of Congress and President Bush -- who is scheduled to make a public appearance in New Orleans today and meet with the co-chairman of Nagin’s commission, healthcare executive Maurice L. Lagarde III.

“We respect the rights of all citizens to return to their neighborhoods,” Lagarde said, casting the four-month process, set to end May 20, as an opportunity for residents to control the future of their communities.

The commission’s blueprint to revive New Orleans also includes proposals to address issues that have nothing to do with Katrina.

An education subcommittee wants to radically reorganize the city’s school system, which has been plagued by corruption and low academic performance. The proposal would decentralize governing authority, giving principals greater authority over their schools and neighborhoods more say over management of schools in their area.

A cultural subcommittee is proposing the creation of a jazz district near the French Quarter -- at the former location of Storyville, a fabled neighborhood of musicians and houses of prostitution that thrived at the turn of the last century but fell into disrepair and was eventually demolished. The idea to re-create a cleaned-up version of Storyville, which gave rise to such musical legends as Jelly Roll Morton, Manuel Perez and Joe “King” Oliver, was championed by committee member and Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz virtuoso Wynton Marsalis, a leading member of one of New Orleans’ current musical dynasties, the Marsalis clan.

Meanwhile, an infrastructure subcommittee is proposing a $3.3-billion light-rail system. The stops would be planned alongside clusters of new development, and the slightly elevated rail lines would form an internal barrier against floodwaters.

But the plan to give residents four months to show their neighborhoods could come back accounts for most of the overall blueprint’s $17-billion price tag -- and generated the most passionate response Wednesday.

“Over my dead body,” said Lower 9th Ward resident Caroline Parker, vowing to fight government seizure of her property. “Like I said, I didn’t die with Katrina.”

Some critics, who had complained all along that Nagin’s commission was stacked with developers and other business leaders, said the proposal was proof that the mayor was allowing moneyed interests to draw up the reconstruction, to the detriment of the city’s working poor.

“To us, that’s Katrina cleansing -- the removal of blacks from the city,” said Mtangulizi Sanyika of the African American Leadership Project, a group that organized a summit of black community leaders today to discuss alternative plans to revive all of New Orleans.

The summit is part of a series of events planned for the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend that will bring African American religious and political leaders from across the country, including Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, to New Orleans to illuminate the plight of the city’s displaced black citizens.

Committee members stressed Wednesday that their blueprint envisioned room for all New Orleans residents who wanted to come back to the city, and would accommodate them in part by redeveloping other parts of town, including some existing public housing projects. About 144,000 residents have returned to New Orleans, which had a population of 462,000 before the hurricane. Officials estimate about 250,000 people will return by fall 2008.

“You who boo need to be active, and tell us what you dislike,” Canizaro told the audience. It did not need encouragement.