Katye Milligan

This was the first day of the official trip. A small group came to New Orleans a few days early to set up for the rest of the group, which allowed us to get it ready for a large group of people. We were able to purchase the food needed for the entire group and rearrange some of the rooms so that everyone would fit better.

           

We ended up filling up six carts of groceries so that we would have enough food for the week.

The food for the week

We were glad to come a few days early because we got to spend more time with Mack and got a chance to meet Slick, who is basically the handy man of the village.

Scott, Danielle and CK getting the food for the trip

This morning we all went on a tour given by Mack McClendon, the founder of the Lower Ninth Ward Village (community center). He has been the main leader in bringing together the Lower Ninth Ward.

Mack McClendon giving a tour

He emphasized that so many of the people who had to leave their homes because of Hurricane Katrina have not returned to the Lower Ninth Ward. Many of them were elderly and on fixed incomes, so they wouldn’t be able to renovate their house and make it livable again. This really affected me because I thought about my Grandmother. If she was forced to leave where she raised her family and be unable to return even six years later then that would put a lot of stress on her and our entire family. When this happens to an entire community at the same time this makes it even more difficult to handle, because there is no support system in place.

He started a program titled ‘Where’s Your Neighbor?’ This is basically a program where volunteers go around asking people who have returned to the village about where their neighbor is. He found that this was a more effective way of locating people then looking in directories, because people generally knew where the people around them had gone.

Mack explaining 'Where's your neighbor?'

One of the things on the tour that made this disaster more tangible was some of the houses he showed. Many of them were clearly unlivable. An example of one of these houses is shown below. At this point on the tour this house would have been under more than 25 feet of water. After the levees broke these homeowner had 12 minutes to break a hole in their roof to escape. The hole means that these people probably got out of their house, while the uninhabited houses without holes in the roof most likely had homeowners who drowned trying to escape. 

A deserted house in the Lower Ninth Ward

On the next stop of the tour, Mack showed us the three types of levee construction: metal, concrete, and dirt. He also showed us where a barge had broken through the levee during the flooding from Hurricane Katrina, which led to flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward with water reaching over most of the houses.

WPI Habitat for Humanity listening to the tour

One of the next stops on the tour was to look at the Make It Right houses. This is an organization that was created by Brad Pitt to rebuild a neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward so that they are ‘safe, sustainable, and affordable.’ They require that the family who owns the land were residents of the Lower Ninth Ward before Hurricane Katrina and that they are buyer ready. This is a good thing, because it means that the original residents of the Lower Ninth Ward will be returning to the land that their family had owned for decades.

However, many of these people that would be returning are either low income or they are elderly on a fixed budget. Before Hurricane Katrina most of these families owned their houses so they did not have to pay a mortgage or rent. Also, most of the houses before Katrina were worth less than $75,000 so they did not pay property taxes. The Make it Right Foundation requires the original homeowners to contribute to the purchase building materials and paying for the maintenance of the house as well as taxes and insurance. All of these costs make it very difficult for the original homeowner to be able to afford rebuilding their house. It seems like it would be more effective to build houses that are less extravagant and more affordable, so that more of the original homeowners can return and stay.

One of the houses that stood out to me was a new design that actually has a hydraulic system so that if there is flooding the house will rise with the water and then return to the original level when the water is gone. This is a great idea for a house that lies in flood zones.

Make it Right Foundation house with hydraulics

Mack has a new idea of how to recover after a disaster. He believes that if their was a system of sponsorships then more of the money would go directly to the homeowners, rather than getting caught up in administration costs. This could be accomplished by having a website with a list of families and what they need to be able to return. Then, when making a donation, it could be more specific. For example, I could donate fifty dollars to the Johnson family for sheetrock for their walls. This would earmark funds and make it more specific as well as connecting the donator with an actual person.

Now that we have seen some of the destruction and some of the rebuilding efforts, we were off to see how the children were being educated. Still six years later, there is only one school in the Lower Ninth Ward when there used to be seven. This school was reopened as a charter school and students all through New Orleans apply to go here through a lottery system. This school isn’t large enough to cover all of the Lower Ninth Ward so many of these children have to be bussed out to go to school elsewhere. This seems like a broken system, because there are children who are being bussed in, while others are being bussed out. With this added difficulty of getting to school more and more children are dropping out.

School in Lower Ninth Ward

After we saw the Lower Ninth Ward school, which was brought back to life from members of the community, we travelled to a neighboring parish to see what it was like there. According to Mack, this area was actually more affected by the flooding, with higher water levels. But when we went there it looked like it had completely recovered from the hurricane. There were businesses such as Walmart and Home Depot as well as a variety of other small businesses. The thing that was most interesting about this nearby area was the school. It was not only completely restored, but it was on the level of most colleges in terms of facilities. They had multiple turf athletic facilities as well as a walkway over the main road connecting buildings. Mack commented that he wished the Lower Ninth Ward could have that type of facility, because it could get the kids off the street and bring the crime rate down.

School in St. Bernard's Parish

The final part of the tour we came back to the Lower Ninth Ward and we looked at some of the houses. There is a lot of culture in this area that has become diminished without the people there to support it. One of the examples of this culture was what Mack called the ‘cake houses.’ These are houses that a seaman built so that his wife could see when he returned from sea, because they were high enough to see from their porch. They were also built to prepare for flooding, because if there was a rise in water level then the family could go from the first level to the top level until the waters receded. 

House in Lower Ninth Ward

The last place we looked at was at Mack’s house. After Katrina, it was months before he was able to return to his house just to see what the damage was like. He still has not moved back into his house yet. This shows his dedication to bringing a community center to the Lower Ninth Ward. He has prioritized this center over his own house. Without his dedication and effort there is no way that the village would have been started, much less in the process of being able to offer many resources to the local community. He is the heart and soul of this project and he has given up so much to help lead it.

Mack McClendon's house

For more information about the Lower Ninth Ward Village please visit their website here and if you would like to make a donation, you can do that here.