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New York, 2:53 AM
Tue Dec 1
67 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/30/09
11/30/09
In fact! My entire family still lives along the bayous, and they all -had- to raise their houses in order to keep their home insurance. (Another post-hurricane gripe: The Road Home program was supposed to fund all these house raisings, and went bankrupt before they could pay out, leaving hundreds without the funds to save their homes / insurance policies.)
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Meryl Streep, I love you. That quote sums up much of why, apart from your talent.
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So I totally understand, Angela.
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The houses are so avant garde that they are changing the look of New Orleans, which some people object to. They are also pretty slow to build, which is too bad since they are being priced on a sliding scale and are affordable for people who might otherwise be unable to buy a home. Plus, there are so far no commercial spaces being developed so no grocery stores.
It seems like an architectural project first and a disaster relief program second. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it is a little Howard Roark.
11/30/09
It's easy to complain - but at least Pitt is doing SOMETHING, which is more than most. I consider it an utter failure on the part of this country that we have failed New Orleans, on the eve of escalating war in Afghanistan.
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I've been homeless. I squatted for a time in an abandoned building, at one point when I was younger. This project gives people homes. There is nothing more important than having the security of a place to live to call your own.
Movies are not important, and neither is celebrity. This project, on the other hand, is incredibly important.
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I'm willing to cut the guy some slack. He's putting roofs over heads. Criticizing someone for doing something in a place where nothing is getting done is more elitist than I'm willing to be.
11/30/09
You also have to realize that they are limited to building (so far) only on properties where the owners can prove ownership. In NOLA, this is tough to do (due to cultural practices and poverty). The people they are building the houses for have to put up a (small) amount of money, as well as attend classes on home maintenance and personal finance. They are highly involved in the design process and collaborate to customize the design they select. All of this takes time and thoughtfulness. It's a fantastic process and I encourage everyone to learn more about it, because I have been a student of housing programs for a long time and was extremely impressed by the long-term positive change they are paving the way for. I've never seen anything like this project, it's amazing.
For example, there's some unclaimed land in the neighborhood that they can't build on, but since the grass grows so well there, they are bringing in a herd of goats and will hire a neighborhood goat herder to tend them, hopefully with a view to making cheese in the future. They are repaving all the roads with permeable asphalt. They are making all kinds of permanent changes and the people moving back in are psyched.
It takes *time* to plan to do things right. The people I met in the neighborhood seemed patient.
11/30/09
The Make It Right houses are being built only on locations where there was previously a house, in conjunction (and with the full participation of) the previous homeowner. So, Brad Pitt would have to go buy some other random lot and then try to build, on spec, an empty commercial building and then entice a Trader Joe's or what-have-you to move into it. That's the way most "urban development" is done, and sometimes it works, often it doesn't--usually it fails in poor neighborhoods where it only causes gentrification rather than contribute to the existing cultural practices. The purpose of Make It Right is to work with the existing population, and help facilitate their re-growing of their own neighborhood -- not to step in and attempt to plunk down a fully-formed neighborhood on them, all at once.
Does that help it make more sense? They're specifically trying to avoid a lot of the bad urban practices that have done nothing in the past but encourage gentrification and force out existing communities.