Dispatch From New Orleans

Global Green helps rebuild the Lower 9th Ward

Welcome Home Thanksgiving Celebration @ Make It Right

Join Make It Right for a Welcome Home Celebration for families returning home to the Lower 9th Ward and an open house to  inform the community at-large about the features and  benefits of owning a Make It Right home and the process  for becoming a MIR homeowner.

• Date: Saturday, Nov. 21, 2009
• Time: 2:30 - 5 p.m.
• Location: LANDSCAPE RESOURCE DEPOT: 1742 Deslonde (Corner of Deslonde & N. Roman)

via www.helpholycross.org

Contractors discuss insulation and moisture issues in New Orleans

Contractors Bill Robinson and Julie Groth discuss insulation with Lower 9th Ward homeowner Ariane Wiltse.

New homes from Make It Right

Another example of a hurricane-resistant home going up in the Lower 9th Ward by Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation. Who knew these houses would have such amazing architecture?

Plus, all of these homes are certified LEED Platinum, and the power bills are running $35 a month. When your power bill is $35 a month rather than $250 or $300, that makes a big difference in your quality of life. See more at Make It Right NOLA.

Shotgun house in the Lower 9th Ward's historic Holy Cross Neighborhood

This century-old shotgun home is under renovation in the historic Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward. It's being saved by the Preservation Resource Center, a highly respected nonprofit that buys up old, neglected homes and fixes them up and then sells them to entry-level buyers. In this home, the old paint patina will be mostly saved and become part of the design. This will be an historically sensitive remodel. And thus the history and culture of New Orleans, the soul of America, will be saved.

See more shotgun houses

New Orleans House Colors: Lower 9th Ward

This beautiful little cottage is right on the levee in the Holy Cross area of the Lower 9th Ward. The exterior colors include:

• House siding: Bright yellow

• Doors, window mullions and foundation: Pumpkin orange

• Door jambs, door trim, window frames, fascia, and corner quoins: Periwinkle blue

• Steps, cornice above windows: Mint green

See more New Orleans house colors

New Orleans House Colors: Lower 9th Ward

Here's another gorgeous renovated specimen in the Holy Cross area of the Lower 9th Ward. This house was originally a double shotgun, and has been converted into a single. It is absolutely gorgeous inside, with high ceilings, beautiful hardwood floors, and a large granite-counter kitchen. The colors used on the exterior include:

• Siding and deck: Taupe

• Shutters (closable during hurricanes): Olive

• Doors and cornice over attic windows: Red

• Trim, windows and corner quoins: Cream

• Porch ceiling: Sky blue

See more New Orleans house colors

New Orleans House Colors: Lower 9th Ward: Holy Cross

This is supposedly the first Katrina Cottage built in New Orleans after the storm. The plans and materials came from Lowe's and a local contractor working for the Preservation Resource Center put it together. There were great hopes for these little homes as an alternative to formaldehyde-poisoned trailers for quick homes for hurricane victims. But this house only just sold — for under $90,000 — and it's four years after the levees failed. The standing-seam metal roof is awfully cute, though.

The exterior colors on this modest home include:

Siding, porch deck and steps: Tan

Trim and railing: White

Doors and porch ceiling: Bright blue

Think you know the Lower Ninth Ward? Betcha don't

I drove through the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans (see map here) for the first time back in February. I was saddened and horrified at the destroyed homes, hundreds of them, thousands of them, left rotting, vacant or washed away since the levees failed during Hurricane Katrina. I blogged about it here.

Since my first visit to the Crescent City, I decided to move to New Orleans with my husband and be part of the rebuild. He is a construction consultant who helps homeowners get back into their homes, while I write about renovation. One of the first women he helped is named Miss Sheila. And that became Bill's oft-repeated motto: "I want to help Miss Sheila get back into her home."

I've gone many times with Bill to the Lower Ninth Ward to visit the homeowners he helps. I've gone to the Lower Ninth Ward Village, where Americorp volunteers live and get trained. I've attended weekly meetings of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association as dozens of neighbors gather to give each other strength. I've visited the bunk-style housing of lowernine.org, a volunteer organization started by a boat builder from Maine. I've visited the homes built by Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation. I've visited the demonstration home built by Global Green. And I've visited Ariane Wiltse as she works to restore an 1870s home near Jackson Barracks.

All this has changed me. I first noticed my changes last week as Bill and I were driving once again through the Lower Ninth Ward to drop off some insulation a company had donated and to give some young volunteers advice on how to install it in yet another woman's house who wants to come home.

As we were driving, I commented to Bill that it seemed like a lot of work was getting done, that a lot of houses were restored. I thought, did anything much really change since February? Yes and no. Mostly, the change is in me. I no longer focus only on the homes that are damaged, vacant and broken. 

Instead, my eyes dance from one fixed-up house to the next. I am in awe of every painted board, every restored window, every potted plant and shiny doorknob. I know that each of these elements is a miracle, is a testament to someone's unyielding and irrational belief that this neighborhood can come back. Two or three years ago, nobody knew. But today, with the beauty you see in these photos, it's happening. The Lower Ninth Ward is coming back, better than ever. And I have learned how to see the miracles that I once missed.

Photos: Above you see two colorful houses on Jourdan Street, with the grassy hill of the levee behind them.

Here you see the same cottages as seen from atop the levee. Notice all the other colorful cottages? In this area, the Lower Ninth Ward feels like being out in the country.

From "the Nine," as it's called, you can see across a bend in the Mississippi River to the downtown skylight. At night, this is a magical view.

Here's a beautifully restored double shotgun cottage, converted into a single family home, on Dauphine Street in the Holy Cross neighborhood. It's for sale through Latter & Blum for $250,000. This is a gorgeous home. See more photos of it here.

An iconic Lower Nine home that makes it through every hurricane with style and grace.

A darling cottage with what looks like solar water heating on the roof. There's a big push to rebuild New Orleans green.

Mack, the Village, and the Lower 9th Ward

If you hang out long enough in the Lower Ninth Ward, you're bound to come into contact with Mack, who has created the Lower Ninth Ward Village, a gathering, community and workspace in the area.

Check out this piece with Jimmy Carter in the Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans in general. You'll see Mack and the Village (green building) one minute and 15 seconds into the video. Mack's in the hat, thanking Carter for coming by. Then, read Ariane's thoughts below:

Ariane's thoughts:

As we sit glued to the TV, just like millions of Americans, my thoughts turn to a conversation I had with a neighbor late Saturday night.

Standing under the streetlight in front of my home in Holy Cross, my neighbor Mack and I tried to soothe each other's nerves. Like me, Mack was prepared to stay. He wanted to be able to help rescue our neighbors if the Lower Nine flooded again. But after hearing Mayor Ray Nagin say the storm had veered east, had grown to a Category 5 and was "The Mother of ALL Storms," Mack, and I, decided it best to leave.

We both figured the Mayor was exaggerating, and thank God he was, but we didn't want to stick around to find out first hand.

Even though Mack knew it was time to go, he didn't want to. He feared that he wouldn't be able to get back into the city, that we'd be prohibited from entering the Lower Nine for weeks or even months. (The
Lower Ninth Ward was the last area of New Orleans to reopen after Katrina. It wasn't until May 2006, a good nine months after the storm, that residents were allowed to do more than "look and leave.")

To help convince Mack to leave, and to ensure that he'd be able to return, I gave him a handful of plastic ID sleeves along with shirt-pocket clips to make any type of badge he deemed necessary to get past the road blocks and into the neighborhood.

Mack wasn't always a neighborhood leader. He has a past, a past that today gives him the fortitude and the authority to convince people that by working together, we can do more than survive. We can thrive.

He preaches unity in the Lower Nine. We must bridge the historical divide that has kept so many black and white residents divided. Lower Nine and Holy Cross must work together, he preaches, paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., otherwise we perish as fools.

Like so many other people, myself included, Mack was riddled with anger, frustration and depression in the months following Katrina. The lack of government response made him bitter. In the grips of this rage against the system, he had a vision: "Stop waiting on the government to help. They're not going to. Step up and do it yourself."

Today, Mack tells us, "We are the ones we've been waiting for."

For the past year or so, Mack has been working with neighbors and volunteers to rebuild a warehouse as a community center. He's named it the Village because, like Hillary Clinton's book proclaims, it takes a village.

Mack and I hugged about a dozen times before we parted ways. I was so afraid it'd be months before we meet again, I didn't want to let him go.

Standing under that streetlight, we made a pact: Whatever happens, we will return, and we will rebuild.

Update from Ariane

An update from Ariane at 1:05 p.m. CST:

Thank God for Gov. Bobby Jindal. He's clear, concise and calm, cool and collected. A true leader in a time of crisis.

According to his most-recent briefing, the levees are holding, but the Industrial Canal on the Upper Ninth Ward side is still over topping. The worst could come on the back end of the storm later this evening. So we're not out of harm's way yet.

So far, no flooding in the Lower Nine. And yet, I can't stop thinking about my friends and neighbors there in the Holy Cross neighborhood. Over the past three years since I returned to New Orleans after Katrina, bought a house, and made the Lower Nine my home, these people have taught me what real courage and conviction looks like. They have worked from can't see morning to can't see night for three years straight, rebuilding their homes, their community, their beloved city. Many of them have had little more than their own hard work and heart to sustain them. And yet, they never wavier.

With the help of an army of volunteers from across the country and the world, they are determined to rebuild safer, stronger and smarter. They are true pioneers and true leaders. An inspiration.

We survived Katrina. We will survive Gustav.

For more info on the storm, check out Help Holy Cross.

(Photo: The Times-Picayune)

Looky Loos: What are we good for?

If you're visiting New Orleans for the first time, or for the first time since the storms in 2005, you naturally want to see the effects of the biggest man-made and nature-made disaster in our country's history.

So it makes sense that enterprising tour companies offer tours of flooded areas as well as tours of the French Quarter, the Garden District, and other points of interest.

You can see a tour van above, operated by Tours by Isabelle, driving slowly through the Lower Ninth Ward. Notice that all the windows are up and the glass is darkened. Isabelle charges $60 per person for these tours.

Perhaps this irritates some locals. You see people sitting on their porches, watching a bunch of nicely dressed people in their fancy cars, and you wonder what they're thinking. How do they feel about me driving through their neighborhoods like it's some kind of wild animal park? I think about this.

One group who has made its disgust about this known is Common Ground, which maintains a house in the Lower Ninth Ward and seems to be populated by good-hearted people doing good deeds. Check out these two hand-painted signs outside their house:

One side of the sign seems OK, but look what it says on the other side . . .

Ouch! Are you talkin' ta me?

I'm a little torn about this subject. I think it's good for as many people as possible to see what's going on in New Orleans. On the other hand, maybe these people are tired of their neighborhoods being spectacles.

What do you think? Should tourists drive through disaster areas? Should we only drive there if we intend to get out and help? Or should we just leave these folks alone?

Scene from the Street: Tour around town

We are each called to duty by our passions.

Some people I know are called to help homeless animals, homeless kids, the dying, the wrongly accused, and so many other good causes. I feel for all those. But it's houses in need of help that stir my passions.

And New Orleans, where you see block after block of charming houses that need help, is the mother lode for someone like me.

Here are scenes I saw last week:

A row of "double shotguns" in the Mid-City area. This area was hard-hit by flooding and is coming back.

Here's what these houses look like before they've come back. The spray-painted symbols told rescuers if the house had been searched after the storm in 2005 and what was found there. A haunting book by Times-Picayune reporter Chris Rose is named after the writing on one house: "1 Dead in Attic."

This the saddest scene, when a school has not come back. And so very many of them have not. A beautifully reported and written article in the New York Times Magazine explains why.

Over in the Lower 9th Ward, many of the homes were totally destroyed by the breech in the nearby levees. Some neighborhoods look like this.

Just up the street from the desolation, new homes are being built on piers to withstand the next flooding event. Mike Holmes, of the popular Holmes on Homes TV show, is building one of them. You can see him here, just to the left of the pole.

Elsewhere in the Lower 9th Ward, Ariane Wiltse is still trying to get her home structurally sound before the bad part of the hurricane season is upon her. The going is slow, and she has taken a construction job with a local builder to learn more. That gives her knowledge, but less time to work on the house. She gets set back when too many people stop by to visit.

Just around the corner from Ariane is a beautifully restored cottage. I saw a woman and baby on the front porch, and that was a good sign. The Times-Picayune reported recently that the steady stream of people moving back to New Orleans is slowing down, and some say people with kids don't find it a good place to raise those kids. So whenever you see kids and babies, that's a good thing.

For those who do come back, though, there is a welcoming.

While the return of permanent residents may be slowing, the volunteers keep on coming. Here you see volunteers from a group called Common Ground mowing some razed lots.

And here are volunteers from AmeriCorps putting a new roof on a Lower 9th Ward home.

So this is what I see: a city that was already full of heart and beauty (and struggles, to be sure) that is coming back, helped along by a flood of volunteers and good-hearted people.

In terms of my passions, this is paradise.

And finally, after all my hard work, I stopped by a street fair in the Lower 9 and enjoyed this female drum and horn band. That's me in the hat on the orange chair. I was tired when I sat down and energized when I got up. That's what New Orleans does for me.

Second guessing herself

By Guest Blogger Ariane Wiltse

Every now and then, some story in the local press forces me to reevaluate my decision to move back to New Orleans and buy a house in the Lower 9th Ward. Sometimes the story that jolts me from my idyllic rebuilding spirit focuses on leaks in levees and the recycled newspaper found to be stuffed inside of them. Other times it’s stories about the condition of the swamps to the south and west of the city, stories that describe how the land out there is literally falling into open water, and in doing so allowing the Gulf of Mexico to creep closer and closer to our fragile city.

But today, I’m not fretting over the potential environmental disaster lurking behind the next hurricane. Today, it’s the city’s rampant violence that makes me question my decision not only to move back here after the storm but to sprout roots.

One recent morning, around 2 a.m., a man in my neighborhood was found dead in his home. He had been shot in the head. The man lived a few blocks away from the house I’m restoring, the trailer I’m living in, me.

Although the police have released the barest of details, it appears that the man was murdered in either a drug deal gone wrong or for some retaliatory reason. Typical tit for tat street justice meets the cheapness of human life.

My neighbor is merely the city’s most recent murder victim. By the time the summer finally draws to an end, dozens of other people will be dead. In a city long known for its incessant and often random violence, summertime is the scariest time of year. It’s the time when the murders become so common that the city guarantees itself the morbid distinction of becoming the nation’s murder capital for yet another year. I call this time of year the killing season. The killings are a fact of life down here, or better put a cycle of death.

After two of my friends were murdered last year in separate incidents, and my car was surrounded by drug dealers on a sunny Saturday afternoon – three blocks from my house, I decided to get involved in anti-crime efforts. I started asking questions at my weekly neighborhood association meetings, and the next thing I knew, I became co-chair of the crime committee. Ask questions? Get the responsibility. It was that simple and that unpopular of a job.

Since then, the other co-chair and I teamed up with local grassroots organizations and launched a petition to keep the Louisiana National Guard in New Orleans. Former governor Kathleen Blanco deployed the guard in June 2006 after five teenagers were found gunned down. During the past two years, however, the economic strain of paying, feeding and housing the nearly 300 soldiers stationed here has become extremely unpopular in the rest of the state, placing political pressure on our current governor Bobby Jindal to pull the guard out of New Orleans.

But for some of New Orleans’ most vulnerable residents, true pioneers rebuilding in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere littered with block after block of abandoned houses, the guard provides their only protection. Dressed in fatigues and riding in military Humvees, the soldiers patrol the areas of the city that took the most water, and therefore have been the slowest to recover, neighborhoods like eastern New Orleans, Gentilly, Lakeview and the Lower 9th Ward. These patrols allow the undermanned and over-worked police force to focus their patrols in the more populated areas of the city. Without the guard patrols in the sparsely populated areas, either NOPD would be forced to pull officers from administrative and intelligence departments, effectively bringing investigations to a halt, or large tracts of the city would be left to fend for themselves.

Sensing the post-Katrina political tide in Baton Rouge was shifting, and not in New Orleans’ favor, Jeffery and I along with volunteers from Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans collected nearly 5,000 signatures asking the governor to keep the guard in the city. Mayor Ray Nagin, Supt. of Police Warren Riley and City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis endorsed our efforts and made personal requests to the governor.

A few weeks ago, Jindal announced that the guard will stay through the end of 2008. It’s a temporary success that helps me and a lot of other people working hard to rebuild our homes and community rest easier, for now.

But it doesn’t quiet the cacophony of second guessing in my head. That still comes in loud and clear.

Contact Ariane Wiltse

(Photos: Kathy Price-Robinson)

The foundation saga, continued

By Ariane Wiltse

My mom arrived last week with the best of intentions. Like other relatives who have come before her, she came to help with my house in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. She also came knowing that we’d be working in temperatures hovering around 95 degrees with 95% humidity. And, the air conditioner in the trailer is busted.

Mentally, she had prepared for the heat. But she hadn’t prepared for the mosquitoes and fire ants. They made a buffet of her, leaving her arms and legs a red, swollen mess. After her first night here, she had 50 bites. (Yes, she counted.) I’m sure she’s up to hundreds by now. I, on the other hand, have about five. I don’t know if being better acclimated to summer in New Orleans makes my blood sour to the little suckers. But they sure find hers sweet.

Heat and bug bites aside, we weren’t able to get much done on the house this week. I had hoped that between my mom (“Mama Lin"), my friend Beau, myself and another worker recommended by a friend, we’d be able to knock out the rest of the foundation. But the worker decided that he didn’t want to work this week, leaving me scrambling for another set of hands, and I found those with Andy.

I’m also partly at fault for the delay. When Beau and I and Mama Lin poured the concrete footings and set the piers in the front of the house last week, I hyper-focused on making sure the damn things were level. And in my obsessing, I missed the small detail that the piers weren’t in line with the house. In fact, they set a good six inches too far back, clearly missing the sills.

I didn’t notice this little problem until we were about to install the sills, after the concrete had had a long weekend to cure. Seeing the distance between sill and piers, Beau grabbed the sledgehammer. He said he was preparing for the inevitable. (He’s become an expert, of sorts, at breaking rocks in the hot sun.) I figured there must be some kind of way to fix the piers without going to such extremes. But Beau said to do so would only be doing a “Peanut job.” (See what we mean by a "Peanut job" below.) The piers had to go.

Andy stepped in and found a middle ground. A post-Katrina volunteer and graduate student from the University of Wisconsin, Andy moved here after finishing up at school. I called him the day before, pleading for help after my scheduled worker decided to take the week off. Andy has worked on lots of crews, so he brought a degree of expertise and rationality that was missing from the trifecta of ignorance among me, Mama Lin and Beau.

Speaking with the authority of the anointed, Andy suggested that we wedge a pick (his favorite tool) and a crow bar under the concrete slabs to finagle them forward. This sounded like a fine idea to me, so I grabbed my camera to document the Moving of the Slabs. Beau kept the sledgehammer close. He knew he’d be vindicated.

The first one moved quickly and easily, so quickly that I almost missed the shot. The second one didn’t work out so well. I tried to encourage Beau and Andy from behind the camera: “Heave! Ho!” But it was no use. The damn thing wouldn’t budge. And even if it had, it probably wasn’t the best-made concrete pier. It was our first attempt at pier-building without experienced supervision. And it looked like it too. It might as well have been duct-taped and bubble-gummed together. A real Peanut job. So after much deliberation, I sacrificed the pier to Beau and his sledgehammer.

Because the concrete footings and piers need at least three days to cure before we can put weight on them, losing one pier to the sledgehammer put us back several days. We’ll get the foundation in the front of the house finished this week, but the remaining 24 feet of sill and half a dozen piers on the side of the house will have to wait until I return from vacation. Bummer.