Recently, the NONDC Board has decided to expand their reach. Besides working in Central City with new construction of single family homes, they will now broker larger developments, and will work in other neighborhoods by invitation.
Life post-Katrina: The challenges one year later Anderson speaks frankly about how the absence of clear plans post Katrina has been a problem for residents. She adds that, prior to the storm, access to land was a huge problem and the process for dealing with blighted property needed to change. Post Katrina, this change is beginning to happen. Anderson sights her own experience of taking sixty people out of New Orleans with a suburban police escort as an example of one of the biggest challenges: the issues of race and class. She believes these issues need to be addressed through homeownership and policies that facilitate home ownership.
Despite the challenges, Anderson is an optimist about the future of her city. “I’m hopeful – we have a new conversation in the community, the old dynamics have to change,” she says. “We don’t have a choice here. We can’t go back. The old way was not good for families, and not good for children. It wasn’t moving people out of poverty. It was trapping them in poverty.”
Since the storm, partnerships are stronger and have maximized outcomes and successes. When the city put out an application for tax adjudicated properties, NONDC worked with six partner organizations to make a collaborative application for vacant property. There are 300 tax-adjudicated properties available in the Central city neighborhood. Anderson stated, “It is a real working collaborative that didn’t exist pre-Katrina.” She continues, “It is powered by mutual trust. Post Katrina the territorialism is dissolving.”
Anderson feels there is much reason for hope one year after the storm because there is a new conversation in the community. “We are having a conversation about mixed income housing, and inclusionary zoning that mandates a mix of incomes that wouldn’t have happened pre-Katrina,” she says In the past, New Orleans made an attempt at mixed income housing, but did not do a good job for the previous public housing residents. NONDC intends to create a model based on successes around the country. Anderson believes that mixed income housing is most successful when done with public subsidy, public land, and when there is public housing re-development. There are national developers who do it around the country, one-third public housing, one-third affordable housing and one-third market rates. NONDC is now having conversations around this issue at the city council level, the state legislative level, and the resident level.
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