So far at work I've mostly been doing some background reading on the history of New Orleans, particularly the neighborhood of Freret (where I'm working). There's a lot to take in, so I should probably write down some notes for future reference before I get to what else I did today...
An article by Coleman Warner, "Freret's Century: Growth, Identity, and Loss in a New Orleans Neighborhood," gives the history of the neighborhood from it's creation when swamplands were drained in the mid-1800s to the 1990s. The neighborhood was historically a real neighborhood, where businesses, homes, schools and churches were interspersed and close together--it was a "walking city," in which nothing was more than a 30 minute stroll away. Freret Street was the center of it all, with a cobblestone street and later a streetcar. Jane Jacobs would have loved it. The city was majority black, but barely, as working class whites fled overcrowding and rich whites built large homes on the boulevards surrounding Freret. Racial segregatation mirrored the rest of the states, black schools were seperate and unequal (re: Jim Crow), but racial tensions were relatively harmonious.
The decline of Freret began around 1952 when the school board moved to turn a formerly white school, Merrick Elementary, into a black school (note that this was before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that sparked similar racial unheaval in other cities). Although it made sense to serve rising demands for quality--and equal--schools for black children, it had been the only white public school actually in the neighborhood (although there were several all white private schools). White families pulled their kids of out of the public school system and moved away to the suburbs, eroding the consumer base on which Freret businesses had formerly depended. America's obsession with cars and suburbia also contributed to Freret's decline--the "walking city" was no longer attractive in light of new shopping malls and highways. Even black population in the community has declined.
The 1990's saw further erosion as local businesses died out and crime rates and vacancies rose. But the decade also saw some imrovements, particularly at the hands of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS). Warner writes:
"At the center of the recent effort to revitalize Freret is Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization that has grappled with the underlying problem of an eroding residential base by hosting homeowner training classes, arranging financing for homebuyers and, in certain cases, restoring and selling blighted homes. One of the more sophisticated nonprofit groups active in troubled sections of New Orleans, NHS has recruited neighborhood students for beautification projects, revived a Freret Street Festival, furnished staff support to the merchants' association, and helped establish a community garden."
Although I can personally see in all the boarded up storefronts on my way to work that Freret is still not what it used to be (I have yet to find a grocery store that I don't have to drive to, although I'm working on it--I saw a fruit stand/truck today that I might check out), NHS is still providing the services that Warner mentioned. I am interning with their Community Building Initiative (CBI) visited the Community Center across the street today, which provides space for all kinds of community events. It's a pretty great place for summer camps and meetings, and they have a computer lab in the back. Next week I might check out their free yoga classes.
One of the CBI's current projects that I'm working on is to document and catalog abandoned/blighted homes in the community, and send letters to the owners pressuring them to renovate. The letters allow community members to affirm their commitment to the maintenance of their neighborhood and hopefully shame homeowners into doing something with their vacant properties, whether on their own or with NHS's assistance. This entailed driving around today taking pictures of properties. It was interesting to see the neighborhood--parts of it surprised me by reminding me of the mountains, with the wooden houses built on cinder block post foundations.
But anyway, if the pressure from the letters doesn't work, the next step (escalating! like in my community organizing class!) is the code-enforcement office, which can write citations requiring repairs to be made in the interest of safety and maintaining properties at levels required by building codes--NHS apparently has a pretty good relationship with the office.
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