Sunday, September 04, 2005
Partisan politickin' aside, I've got some blame to assess.
Picture courtesy of the Dallas Morning News.
We've seen plenty of images like this and worse over the last week. The President is getting blasted for the slow federal response to the aftermath. Lawlessness and chaos, a hallmark of New Orleans, rose to epic proportions. I'm giving the President a pass in this article to articulate an argument that is long overdue, and was already heightened by the Kay Hymonitz article I blogged about last week. Write this thesis statement down, as it should be the rallying cry of what's left of our Civil Rights movement. The aftermath of Hurrican Katrina shows how little we have truly advanced in solving the poverty problem in our large urban cities.
New Orleans according to today's Dallas Morning News has been a city in decline. The statistics prove it. Over the last 40 years, the population of the Crescent City has declined by over 20%. The people that have left the city were middle class, leaving a huge vacuum where you are now either extremely wealthy, or extremely poor. The median household income in the city is
$27,133 (1999) while the national average was over $14K higher.
Those statistics show a couple of things. One, New Orleans has become a city whose primary employers are in low paying jobs (service, tourism). Two, New Orleans has become a city where a majority of its citizens are in one way or another wards of the state.
The real question to be asked is, how was this allowed to happen? The equally important question is, how do we fix it, both in N'awlins (as I pronounce it) and elsewhere?
I can speculate lots about how it was allowed to happen, and there are several contributors. Poor schools, lack of quality infrastructure, lax enforcement of crime, dependence on too few economic sources are the primary contributors. They are a sickening mix that will devastate any city economically. New Orleans is not diverse. It depends solely upon tourism and commerce. The jobs available to that do not pay much. While they bring in lots and lots of money to the city and to the businesses in those industries, they do nothing to lift up most of its citizens. This leads to less home ownership, smaller tax base, dwindling city services and one disaster away from utter ruin. Well utter ruin arrived last Sunday. This lies at the feet of city administrators and economic planners who have sat on their hands for years, accepted federal welfare assistance and be content to let New Orleans suffer as long as people flocked to Bourbon Street and the Port of New Orleans moved its cargo. They should all be fired. Immediately.
How do we fix it? I'm not sure. To me, it must be a three pronged attack after the city is rebuilt and its current government sacked. First, the economy must be diversified by any means necessary. This will lessen the damage of reduced tourism as much as possible. Second, home ownership must be promoted at all costs. I propose that the government help banks give credit and loans to people who wouldn't already qualify (that means expand the HUD loan program). Give people a chance for ownership and get them out of the ghetto. Third, end the bureaucracy, graft and corruption so known to N.O. that has overrun the school system and put it on a path into the ground.
The federal government will spend unprecedented amounts of money on the rebuilding effort of this vital commercial center. By diverting some of that money to these three programs, a lot of the ills that are a part of this disaster can be cured and make a future disaster less damaging.
Fix the corruption, diversify the economy, home ownership and fix the schools. That will solve a lot of Urban America's ills. Let's make New Orleans the model and fix every other urban site one city at a time.
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