NPR: Spreading the word
Source: National Public Radio
Here's a story that makes you feel good about humanity:
The map effort, which started out as a kind of party line for information, has grown into the Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (NENA), which [Patricia] Jones heads. NENA is based out of a former church on Lamanche Street, and it's where residents can find Jones' map.
NENA has been helping people come back to the Lower Ninth Ward by providing assistance on issues such as securing loans and hiring contractors. Only 1,200 of the 14,000 residents who lived in the Lower Ninth Ward before Hurricane Katrina have returned. NENA hopes that 4,000 residents will come back by September 2008.
Strolling down Lamanche Street, Jones greets the few people who have returned and inspects the work being done on some homes. There's still a lot of empty space in the Lower Ninth. It feels almost rural now. This area used to be hopping, she says.
There used to be an elementary school, a pre-K program and a nail salon on the street, but all that is gone now. To keep the area from turning into a ghost town, Jones and other members of NENA have been mowing lawns and keeping the place clean to persuade people to rebuild.
But no matter how much work they do, the area will always be surrounded by water on three sides.
That doesn't scare Jones. It helps makes the Lower Ninth Ward what it is: a place where you can have breakfast on the levee and watch the boats pass.
Jones doesn't want to see the working-class neighborhood raked clean and gentrified. She remembers what happened to her grandfather decades ago, after the government bought his house to put in railroad tracks.
"Another generation passed before he was able to buy a home. But that's how I understood and was introduced to the value of homeownership," Jones says.
That last bit is key - it takes a generation or more to get back into a house again and in that time damage to the family and surrounding social scene can be huge. What we are seeing New Orleans is the experiment of community destruction and redevelopment in real time and it's folks like Patricia Jones who are doing the hard work to get positive things done.
