From Local Housing Claims to the Universal claims of the Right to the City: The Tensions between Theory and Praxis in Local Politics in Post-Katrina New Orlean

Since the 1950s, public housing in New Orleans has been almost exclusively Black. When, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, public housing was closed and boarded up by local and federal officials, the move was widely seen as an attempt to reduce the poor Black population in the city. In response, a broad coalition emerged to protest the closure and to reopen public housing. Particularly visible were women leaders who were former residents. They were supported by local civil rights leaders, national organizations working for housing rights, as well as young, white anti-racists volunteers who had come to the city to work on rebuilding. In 2007 after the final vote in City Council passed the redevelopment of public housing to mixed-income adn private-public funded developments, the coalition worked to reconfigure itself with a broader focus on housing including the “right to the city.” Many of the ‘real’ claims on former leaders, who needed to seek housing and work to support families, meant that tensions emerged around the material claims of the local and the broader universal claims of the theoretical, particularly as they tended to fall along racial and gender differences. It also opened up the space for a narrower group of voices. This talk will explore some of those contradictions.