In a Monday afternoon session called, “Hurricane Katrina – Surveillance Under Emergency Conditions,” Beth Scalco and others from the Louisiana Office of Public Health HIV/AIDS Program in New Orleans told the story of how everything collapsed after the storm, including their capacity to get people their medication, gather information about the local epidemic, and do prevention outreach. Several hundred thousand homes were destroyed, leaving countless people homeless. Since August 2005, the city’s population has dropped from 462,000 to 200,000.
“Some neighborhoods aren’t there anymore,” Scalco said. “Before, we could say, ‘This is the neighborhood where people are at high risk for HIV.’ Now, that neighborhood is gone.”
The presenters noted that while the dramatic loss of city residents meant that the number of people living with HIV there has also dropped, the HIV rate is increasing. “There is a lot of stress and pressure on people’s mental health,” Scalco said, with much of the city still reeling from the disaster. “People need support, and they are more likely to drink. Drug use and domestic violence increase under these conditions.
“The French Quarter was spared, and it’s an area with a lot of commercial sex work. After the storm, the federal workers, FEMA and construction people went to the bars at night. We were concerned there would be a spike in HIV infections, and we are seeing some of those things.” Half the city’s prevention organizations went out of business after Katrina, she said. There are some new community health centers staffed by volunteer doctors that are filling some of the gaps now. But one of them recently closed, she said, when donations dried up.
Scalco and her team have started from scratch to figure out how to meet the prevention needs of the radically changed city. But as an activist, I was left wondering about all the people who couldn’t come back, and whether their needs are getting met. And I was thinking about racism – the way it drives the epidemic, and how our best efforts to fight HIV sometimes only help small groups of people in an overwhelming number of folks who are put at risk by political decisions that supposedly have nothing to do with HIV.
Overnight gentrification
William Robinson explained that the definition of “high-risk heterosexual” is not necessarily a category that people know they are in or can be found easily, like injection drug users or men who have sex with men. A heterosexual woman, for example, may not know if her partner is at risk for HIV. So prevention outreach workers use the term “high-risk areas” (HRAs for short), to figure out particular neighborhoods to do outreach work in. HRAs are based on the prevalence of HIV in each part of the city and the proportion of people testing positive who likely got HIV through heterosexual contact. The HRAs in New Orleans were disproportionately among the neighborhoods that were highly flooded, Robinson said. They were also the poorest.
In August 2006, Robinson and other public health workers began surveying these neighborhoods to figure out if they were still areas where HIV prevention outreach should be targeted. In focus groups, residents talked about the destabilization of their communities, the lack of affordable housing, and conflict between people who used to live in a neighborhood and people who have moved in.
Robinson also mentioned the Survivor’s Village, a protest tent encampment of public housing residents who have been locked out of their homes since the storm. What he didn’t mention is that the housing projects were barely harmed by Katrina, and that this forced displacement is part of a plan to eliminate 82% of the city’s low-income public housing and replace it with “mixed-income” developments.
Psychiatrist and HIV prevention researcher Mindy Fullilove has shown us how mass displacement of people of color, like with urban renewal programs that clear ghettos for new development, disrupts communities and creates ideal conditions for HIV to thrive. In an interview with the New Orleans Times-Picayune in January 2007, Fullilove argued that poor people are intentionally being kept from coming home. “There is definitely an attempt in New Orleans to label this as a moment of progress, meaning you can bar the poor from returning,” she said.
This is where prevention justice comes in. I mean, forced displacement is injustice. And it puts people at risk for HIV. What about the thousands of people who have been kept from returning? Has their HIV risk increased after being uprooted and possibly left homeless? What about the destruction of their community’s social fabric, and losing touch with the people they trusted in local community organizations and churches who used to give them condoms and other prevention services?
It’s not necessarily the job of the public health workers in New Orleans to do the research to answer these questions. But I was left wondering who, if anyone, ever will.
And now, the city has scheduled all four of its major public housing developments to be destroyed within the next few weeks. Activists have noted the similarities to the much-slower efforts of many other cities to get rid of low-income housing. They say that if it can be done this quickly in New Orleans, up against a thriving activist resistance, it can be done anywhere.
Here are some ways that we can act in solidarity with the public housing residents of New Orleans:
[Thanks to Philadelphia activist DrewChristopher Joy for this list!]
*** Visit the Color of Change website to contact senators and ask them to support The Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act of 2007 (S.1668).
This act, which has already passed in the House, requires that at least 3,000 units of public housing are re-opened and that there is no net loss of units available and affordable to public housing residents. This bill is crucial and may be the only thing that can stop the demolition of public housing.
*** Go to New Orleans for the week of December 10th. They are asking people to find an affinity group and be prepared to participate in direct actions. Two days of training and orientation begin on December 10th. For more information, see the Call to Action.
To register email: action@peopleshurricane.org
*** Donations. If you can not go to New Orleans, please make a
financial Donation. Please send checks earmarked Stop the Demolition
Coalition to: Hope House
c/o Bro Don Everhard,
919 Saint Andrew St
New Orleans, LA 70130
*** Organize a demonstration or take part in a demonstration against HUD targets in your town or region sometime in the week of December 10th.
*** Being informed is an important part of fighting this crisis. Below are more resources to learn about the public housing movement in New Orleans:
For a great power point presentation on the public housing situation see justiceforneworleans.org This was created by Bill Quigley, a lawyer working with public housing residents.
For many good articles on the public housing struggle in New Orleans, see the Advancement Project.
For more info about HIV prevention in the wake of Katrina, see Solidarity Project #4, “Survivors in Action.” Also, I haven't read this, but look! The New York Times has a front page story today called New Orleans Hurt by Acute Rental Shortage.
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