leaving, abandoning, bailing

Can you blame anybody for leaving? Really?

The price of everything has gone through the roof. One of the great things about NOLA used to be that it was so cheap to live here. That's one of the things that attracted artists, musicians, and the rest of us faux braniacs to the island of misfit toys.

We have the worst mayor ever, and we can't recall him.

People are waiting until after Carnival to leave? Fuck 'em all. Sinn Fein.

We gotta spend local now more than ever. Like Ray said a while back:

Don't buy it at Home Depot out in the suburbs if you can buy it in New Orleans at Harry's Ace, a couple of miles away. Don't buy it at Harry's Ace, two miles away, if you can buy it at Clement Hardware, two blocks away.

Too bad the Home Despot on Carrollton doesn't actually have anything in stock...

And now there's a real Vic and Nat'ly's restaurant!

Punch line: It's in Covington.

For that real faux-9th ward ambiance.

Fuck me running.

It was supposed to be on CL10 and Carondelet.

Enjoy your money, Bunny. I still have my soul.

Is there anyone here? We haven't even sold out the playoff tickets for the Saints. That, to me, is astonishing.

We gotta get our people back. I know they wanna come back. Really, who wants to live in Houston? Let me rephrase...who, that we want back, wants to live in Houston?

We gotta have the tourists come here and spend money for New Years, the Sugar Bowl, the playoff games, and Carnival. That may tide us over, or it may spell the beginning of the end.

The major businesses on Canal Street, that support thousands of service industry workers, as well as musicians, chefs and others, may be on their way out. What else could go here? Well, as I've found to be correct, when it comes to rebuilding New Orleans, always expect the absolute worst, most evil, underhanded thing possible.

Yep: condos. When in doubt, follow the money. Why try to develop in the 9th or the west bank, when the riches of the quarter are about to be laid open?

The Japanese didn't rebuild Hiroshima...the US did. Remember the Marshall Plan?

That paradigm has been shifted.

By temporarily abandoning New Orleans, the developers will extinguish any and all affordable housing, and the people who live there. Then, they can make it a playground for the uber rich. We, the New Orleanians, are simply an afterthought.

After all, Dr. John lives in New York. Herman Leonard lives in New York. For that matter, Alan Richman lives in New York.

Harry Anderson moved to Asheville.

If you do leave, please speak fondly of us. Ray puts it well: I don't blame somebody for not coming back, but if you're gonna go, then fucking go. Don't keep coming back around to piss on us every few weeks. Go read Metroblogging Topeka or whatever other shit they read in the paradise you're living in now.

Metroblogging Topeka. I love Ray.

To paraphrase Joshua, As for me and my house, we will stay until the last levee breaks.

Comments

[Varg]

Seems everyone's a little depressed these last few days. It's one of those things I noticed sweeps the city's population. One week we're all optimists and the next were sinking. That's life in a Scorpio City. Hang in there Doc. What's really the worst case scenario? We'll all be broke and the city will die? We can always live on the dole. Have the state and federal government subsidize our mortgages because the levees failed.

Things to be happy about:

- Oil and gas revenues are approved.

- Jefferson WILL get indicted.

- Most of the money the Feds allotted for recovery is still coming.

- The levee boards and assessors are history.

- City-run schools are history (yes, I have heard about how awful the schools still are but baby steps man, baby steps.)

- I don't know how you feel about this but I am happy Blanco will most likely be ousted next election. Change is good at this point.

- Tourism publications are hyping us again.

- Saints are in the damn playoffs.

So James Brown may be dead but Monday's a whole new year.

Your fellow blogger,

Varg

[gentilly rick]

my bitch.

i love colston but he needs to quit selling dodges on the radio ads while kissing coach woodsens ass. or maybe im just deaf enough that it sounds that way.

i mean it should be coach payten right?

a minor complaint. sorry for being a baby.

[GentillyGirl]

Betts and I will never leave New Orleans. That's a true freakin' promise

[Mr. Clio]

Let 'em leave, and let the free market work, for once. Prices will do down if there's nobody around to buy the stuff.

I'm not a big free market guy, but it does have its place. Problem is, the GOP thugs running things now DON'T believe in the free market. They believe in a market controlled by their people, who get to manipulate supply and price, backed up by government regulation and/or indifference and/or intentional incompetence.

Seriousy, I think there are going to be some dark times, but the pendulum will swing back on prices and morale.

I'm with you and Joshua, bra.

Also, Freddie Mac is BACK!

[Richard P.]

Local and state leadership really needs to get away from being too focused on just restoring the status quo pre-flood but rather on a vision for progress flood or no flood. Wasn't New Orleans once upon a time intent on being a strong player as an international gateway city and center of transportation, banking and finance, not to mention education, the arts and health care, the type of place that Baton Rouge, Shreveport or Lake Charles have never been and can never even dream of being even as much as they're gloating now over New Orleans' problems and struggles and Baton Rouge is now beating its chest as the top dog La. locale? Everything with New Orleans has flowed from its original reason for being and importance as a port and the main tragedy is how New Orleans has let so many other cities pass it by as a transportation center.

[bayoustjohndavid]

I respect your point of view, but I disagree with parts of it. I think that more people need to say exactly why they're leaving, if only to expose the "buy New Orleans dirt" tour for the farce that it is. The mayor's a joke, but the T/P's editorial and op-ed writers refuse to criticize him as much as Blanco (I don't think they criticize Blanco too much) and Oliver Thomas refuses to provide the leadership that only he's in a position to provide. Something's got to make him stop waiting to inherit the throne and start rocking the boat now (yeah I knw, mixed metaphor). As it is, the people on Howard Ave and on Poydras seem to take complaints about Nagin by people who plan on staying as harmless venting. I agree that people who've given up on N.O. shouldn't whine about it, they should shout about it.

[Ray Ward]

Me, I feel like Peter, when Christ asked him, "Will you too also leave?" He replied, "Lord, where would we go?"

[Infrogmation]

New Orleans' worst mayor ever?

Sorry, Vic Schiro still holds the title.

One word: MRGO.

If C. Ray's decisions still kill people and destroy cities long after he's gone, we can reassess then.

[Puddinhead]

I guess I'm naive...I've spent my entire life here in New Orleans thinking that one of the city's major problems was that too high of a percentage of those who could afford to live without needing public assistance of one sort or another had moved outside of the actual city, taking the tax base they represented with them, and leaving a higher percentage of those whose income levels made them reliant on public assistance or housing. Throughout my life it's been pointed out that, compared to many other urban areas in the country, New Orleans had a higher proportion of it's population consuming this assistance as opposed to the proportion of the population that was helping to pay for these services. Too much of the upper-income work force (such as it is in NO) earning salaries in the city but living and spending the salaries outside the city because living inside the city limits was unattractive to them.

Now, post-K, many private developers express a willingness (for various reasons, the best of which is the probability of making a profit) to invest in projects that will ultimately increase the number of households that are attractive to higher-income inhabitants in the downtown area. This is now a bad thing? I mean, I'm strictly lower-middle-class in income level myself, and have no illusions about being able to afford a condo in Tracage or Trump...but I'm not sure I got the memo on just why having some of those who CAN afford that lifestyle residing inside the city in an urban setting rather than in some planned enclave for the wealthy out in the hinterlands is so terrible. I'm aware some, or maybe even most, of these proposed condos may be marketed to "part-time" New Orleanians. My feelings are if they have anywhere the enthusiasm of Harry Shearer or Jennifer Coolidge, to name two, then I heartily welcome them even on a part-time basis.

I guess I'm immoral, but I don't see it as being desirable to "re-create" New Orleans back into the same wretchedly poor and dying city that it was pre-K as though mindlessly matching the previous demographics was the key to preserving our home's ambiance and charm. Perhaps my viewpoint is shaded by my own experiences; I came into this world (in old Hotel Dieu...not the building that was most recently University Hospital, but OLD Hotel Diew, long since demolished) right about the same time as the 1960 census that marked the high population level for Orleans Parish, and have lived in Orleans Parish, in the Ninth or Eighth Wards since that time watching as the more employable and thus more affluent citizens progressively found the grass greener and the situation more attractive elsewhere. I lived through my home town shrinking to roughly two-thirds it's size at the time of my birth because some found the "charm" of New Orleans was not enough to outweigh the better jobs elsewhere while others found that even if their jobs remained in New Orleans they could find a better living situation outside the city.

Anyway, count me as one liberal Democrat who doesn't feel a "responsibility" to ensure that just as many people are living in the city on public assistance post-K as were pre-K...or more accurately, that those who are living in the city on public assistance post-K are doing so in a location and manner that is identical to that which existed pre-K. Again...I may be heartless, but I don't see that having lived on assistance in a housing project for twenty years, for example, invests one with any form of "property rights" where that particular bit of housing is concerned. The very fact that the housing is publicly subsidized in the first place should make it self-evident that the benefits and costs to the community as a whole should trump the benefits and costs to the individual receiving the assistance. And this doesn't mean you find the land with the least possible value as far from downtown as possible and build "warehouses" to "concentrate" the poor; in essence, that's what Desire/Florida among others was. Those who need subsidized housing often do so because their jobs are the types of low-income service jobs prevalent in the New Orleans tourism economy (I will point out that some of those same jobs aren't always as poorly-paying in some other "tourism" reliant towns--Las Vegas, for example), and they need to be able to find affordable housing from which they can conveniently get to and from their jobs. But that doesn't mean you necessarily reserve prime real estate for public housing when the community as a whole might be better served were the same land put to other uses. It could just mean that you do what many other cities have always done, and develop a REAL responsive, efficient, and affordable public transportation system, making locating scattered public housing on more remote but also more affordable land a reasonble adjunct to less-dense subsidized housing interspersed in a "mixed income" fashion on the more costly land nearer the town center.

I'm certainly no conservative (Buddy Roemer was the last Republican I can remember voting for), but I fail to see how more wealth residing in the city in general and downtown in particular, where those with the incomes to spend will demand and patronize upgraded retail and other services aiding in the rejuvenation of the Canal Street Corridor through the Warehouse District, is anything but a good thing. Will some developers make a profit? Hell, yeah. I hope New Orleans becomes a place where it's a no-brainer that investing money into the community will generate a profit.

[ashley Morris]

Puddin,

I agree with you on almost everything.

I don't see a need to recreate any kind of a welfare state here, but the fact that many public housing complexes could easily be occupied smacks of conspiracy.

No matter what happens, we need to have affordable housing. The unique demographics of the 9th ward meant that low income families owned their own homes, and several generations lived under the same roof. With most of that gone, along with the accompanying infrastructure, we need a plan to provide those families a place to call their own.

Now, you gotta admit that a lot of people moved to the outskirts over time because a) they could afford bigger houses away from the center, b) as places like Metry grew, they became a bit more viable, c) a lotta white folks don't wanna live near black folks.

The Hotel Diew story reminds me of how some people, when remembering Fortier high, forget that it used to be almost exclusively white, FWIW. Demographics change and evolve, but what's happening now isn't evolution, it's sinister.

The developers are looking at the city center not because of profit, as they can get that in the surrounding parishes. They're looking at ridiculous profit. Gentrification to the nth degree. When this will involve bulldozing homes in the 9th to build part-time residences, well, that won't help anybody.

Yes, public transport is a key to all of this, and that's why the 9th ward is a key to everything. The homeowners there have been abandoned by every level of government. It's really hard to put 3 generations of family into a FEMA trailer.

I don't see how absentee landlords and absentee residents will help this community, other than to drive up the prices...and that will NOT help the community.