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ROAD HOAX
"A Trail of Tears"

The Road Home program established after Hurricane Katrina struck was a management miscalculation, a political payout and a cultural catastrophe that has nearly destroyed the very people it was designed to help. In this case, that represents a disproportionate number of African-Americans, especially in New Orleans, where they were adversely affected by Hurricane Katrina and the failed U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ levees.

“This picture, The Trail of Tears, was painted by Robert Lindneux in 1942. It commemorates the suffering of the Cherokee people under forced removal. If any depictions of the “Trail of Tears” were created at the time of the march, they have not survived."
Image Credit: The Granger Collection, New York

“In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the “Trail of Tears,” because of its devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died.”

Thanks to technology, images of Katrina and what happened to many of the people adversely impacted will survive. People such as filmmaker Spike Lee, oral histories and a truth that cannot be unwritten have all guaranteed that the final chapter in the never-ending saga called Katrina will include the horrific images, whether it was the body of a burly African-American man floating under Interstate 10 near the Circle Food Store or vigilante groups targeting African-Americans in their own self-induced shoot to kills.

To be sure, when the epitaph to the final Hurricane Katrina story is written, hopefully by some yet-to-be-discovered college history major with an insatiable appetite for the painful truth, it will contain the following inscription on the tombstone of torment that defines what Black people in New Orleans have had to endure after the hurricane had already destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward, decimated New Orleans East and sent to the unemployment lines thousands of professional schoolteachers and others who once called the city their home. It will read as follows:

The Trail of Tears: The New Orleans/Louisiana Edition

Much like the well known annihilation of the Cherokee Indians, who were pushed from their native lands in the southeastern parts of the United States all the way to Oklahoma, African-Americans in New Orleans who suffered extensive losses–disproportionately to Whites in New Orleans–were quite literally pushed out of the city into other communities. Some of those locations were nearby while others were far and far away.
It is an ironic twist of fate, however, that the most celebrated European in New Orleans is Andrew Jackson. It is Jackson who has a major park in the French Quarter named in his honor and who couldn’t have won the Battle of New Orleans without the help of slaves and free men of color. It is Jackson who sits on a big horse in Jackson Square, the same location where former President George W. Bush assured the nation help was on the way; albeit it would take much longer for it to reach Black people. It was the same Andrew Jackson who played the greatest role in the Cherokee Nation’s “Trail of Tears.”

Deja vu, or merely coincidence?

Last month, a federal judge ruled what many have felt since the storm hit, that the so-called “help” from Louisiana’s Road Home Program was more of a hindrance. In his sweeping ruling, U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ordered the state of Louisiana to stop using the “pre-storm value” to determine Road Home grants.

Some 127,776 homeowners have received some form of grant money, leaving 3,090 applicants with their grants calculated but without any payment, according to the state’s latest report.

The state, while determining how future grant payments might be affected, has sought to lessen the impact of using the pre-storm value of their houses on some Black homeowners, even as it decided to use some $650 million to pay additional grants to low- and moderate-income applicants. Despite that, the state is not going to admit guilt or culpability easily. Spokeswoman Christina Stephens said the state would appeal the ruling, obviously suggesting she and other state leaders will sleep well knowing they have assembled yet another roadblock - not a road home - to people merely wanting to become whole again.

Why it’s wrong

It seems almost by their very nature, Black neighborhoods are deemed less valuable than those of whites. It goes with the territory. The same well-built home in Gentilly–structurally and similarly built to a house in Lakeview–is going to be appraised at a lower cost. A well-built Creole Cottage in the Seventh Ward, regardless of its historical makeup or its structural soundness, will not be appraised at the same or higher rate of one in the Holy Cross neighborhood.

Race still matters. In New Orleans and in Louisiana, it often rules. That’s why flooded neighborhoods such as Broadmoor and Mid-City were immediately targeted for redevelopment while others were not. They were targeted because they are White. That’s why neighborhoods such as New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward were not targeted. They were ignored because they are Black.

According to the ruling, Kennedy found that Road Home discriminated in its calculations by using the “pre-storm value,’ mostly because of its location in a primarily Black neighborhood. Even a house with the same amenities of living space, yard space and even the same construction, if it were in a Black neighborhood and not a white one, it was considered cheaper, less valuable. It’s a well-known valuation that happens all across the United States.

Anyone in New Orleans who has had to rebuild since Katrina knows it is far more expensive to do it this time than it was pre-Katrina, or when the property was first built. For one, materials are more expensive. Second, labor costs, even among the honest contractors, are exorbitant. Third, insurance premiums are much more expensive. Augment that by the red tape of government, the general disdain for Blacks trying to improve their positions and a state government that has been hostile to their best interests, and the formula for failure is exacerbated.

Ultimately, according to Damon Hewitt, a native of New Orleans and a New York attorney representing Black homeowners and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, parts of Kennedy’s ruling that favored the state will be appealed. While Hewitt believes the judge misconstrued the motives of his clients, he does believe justice will prevail in favor of those who have had to endure the worst of the Road Home follies.

Much of the damage inflicted by Road Home on innocent homeowners has already been done. Most people impacted adversely have attempted to move on with their lives, either by moving away and starting fresh, or joining with family and friends and an occasional stranger to make it work. For their part, the housing advocacy groups that have tried to force Louisiana to recalculate all the grants that were determined using pre-storm value since Katrina have seen their arguments fall on deaf ears, as the judge rejected their pleas and sided with the state.

What’s particularly troubling is that the people who have seen the greatest increase in their property values since Hurricane Katrina are those who sustained the least amount of damage. People who live in the Uptown sections of the city, whether it’s the Garden District or Carrollton or the University District, the Warehouse District, the French Quarter or Faubourg Marigny and Faurbourg St. John have seen the greatest appreciation of home value, primarily because it tends to be higher ground and a lot of people want to live there.

For them, Road Home has been an ally, not an adversary as is the case with most African-Americans. For them, their “sliver on the river” has become their own security field.