Study. New Orleans ranked fifth in the country's 20 most gentrified cities for many. The cost of living has surpassed the rate of pay and the disparities and disadvantages were made even worse. After hurricane Katrina. Tonight, we discuss how progress came at the expense of some lifelong New Orleanians. Here's part one of episode five of follow the line. Hurricane Katrina opened New Orleans up to become one of the most intensely gentrified cities in America. It was a beautiful neighborhood. But I since the storm, all the ones that was raining is not here anymore. But even before the storm hit, New Orleans was facing an affordable housing crisis. Right before hurricane Katrina, we had something like 100,000 renters, African American renters, residents who lived in low wage households then spent most of their money on housing with the storm impacting a large portion of the city's most vulnerable communities and made finding affordable housing in the aftermath. The challenge we somehow managed to create a worse housing system than we had pre Katrina. How so more vulnerability, more housing insecurity and more opportunity to further segregate the city, the gentrification its own and pocket before Katrina, you could get a house around here for $200,000 and that was expensive. But now everything is full and up gentrification process is already pricing this hour. I just wanna see New Orleans stay in New Orleans. Gentrification has swept across America from Brooklyn, New York to Oakland, California communities that were historically black have made a dramatic shift in demographics across the board. New Orleans is no different and Katrina sped up that process. They should never have torn it down. It was a nice place to live. My concerns are if I'm gonna be able to be one of the ones because I'm on disability and the city of ma renters prior to the storm, those hoping to return home say they found themselves shut out or facing housing costs that were out of reach. We missed an opportunity post Katrina because there was no comprehensive plan about how we would ensure that renters had housing options. And instead we spent the money to build up neighborhoods that were already gentrifying without protecting long term residents, residents like Xena Moses, a self proclaimed homegrown New Orleanian who says moving back to the city after the storm was troubling. Now, staying in New Orleans is presenting even more of a challenge when I was trying to find a place. It was just OK, I'm on assistance, you know, um that have a stigma all by itself. You know, people just like I don't wanna rent to anybody with a voucher. So I'm like, well, look, I have money saved. It shouldn't be as hard for me to find because a lot of people in my position don't even have any savings. So I should be able to find something month, one pass, month, two pass. And I'm now I'm sweating bricks. Like, ok, I can't, you know, no one's willing to accept the voucher. The, the cost of living is, is double at this point, you know, and my income hasn't doubled. I've been doing music for, for 17 years, you know, so that itself has an income stamina. My money kinda comes based on what the tourism is doing, you know, and being a single mom, I don't have the the resources. So to say, to really pay the top notch rent that was really being offered after Katrina stories like Xena's unfortunately, aren't unique for some lifelong New Orleanians before the storm. Renters with severe housing cost burden stood at 23% in New Orleans in 2022. It spiked to 35% and a city where the median income only nudged a couple $1000 over the past few years. We're just not put in position that we don't have a fighting, a even fighting playing field to, to compete with this. But there is a contingent of homeowners who do have the resources and they found hurricane Katrina to be the perfect housing opportunity instead of gentrification. I see myself as like an art. We're the, we're the first wave of ruining a neighborhood. What's the trend do you think happened is happening in this area? Because we're on Saint Claude right now. People with high income starting to move in Saint Rock and Saint Claude are just two areas that not only altered physically. Post Katrina, but economically, this area is trending upwards in terms of income. Wow. Oh, there's even greater amounts of homeowners. Oh, wow. This is a great place to open a new coffee shop. It's a great place to put a new grocery store, right? Because they see where it's gone. This is not the same car from back in the day and it isn't the only community actively gentrifying in New Orleans neighborhoods like Treme central city, the seventh ward in the Irish Channel are just some of the 13 neighborhoods undergoing gentrification according to a study released in 2020. I don't think it's changing in a way that is most beneficial to the poor. So these are neighborhoods that were historically undervalued. They were majority black neighborhoods. They were neighborhoods like the ones near the port. They were neighborhoods that we call now the sliver by the river which had become some of the hottest neighborhoods in the city because they didn't flood during Katrina. When that happened, most of them were majority black. But those land values and home values and rents doubled and tripled and they became white neighborhoods almost overnight, the influx of investment led to a rise in property values. And just this year, we learned how that rise could cost all of us. We need something to be done to stop this bleeding that's happening in our community. There was an uproar when homeowners across the city received their property tax bill. The city wide assess of New Orleans property values show the total value of city properties increased by 23% since the latest assessment in 2019, which could potentially make residents even more housing insecure short term rentals. They have been buying up the uh the people who are buying up these houses in the inner city in the mid city areas are buying them and renovating them. Ok. So those those affect the values of those neighborhoods. America has been bred and read off of this, you know, they they used to letting a people develop a land, develop a a system in that land, then they come in swipe that land. So it's it has happened from city to city, it has happened from state to state and now it's happening from neighborhood to neighborhood right here at home. In part two of episode five, we explore the origin story of gentrification and why some communities are seeing that influx of investment while others are not
