Grandfather Returns

Equal parts astonishment and disappointment. This is the best way to describe my reaction to a recent story out of New Orleans. The St. Bernard Parish Council, in a 5 to 2 vote, approved a new law restricting rental property in the area. The law states that property owners in St. Bernard can only rent to blood relatives.

This law smacks of the old Grandfather laws. Grandfathering, as we know it today, refers to the process of exempting certain people from a new law. A state passing a new driver’s license restriction, for example, can grandfather in drivers who already hold a license – that is, exempt them from the new law. But the original Grandfather laws, which were passed in many Southern states after the Civil war, were intended to prevent former slaves from voting; the laws held that a person was eligible to vote only if his grandfather also had the right to vote. Allegedly the laws were intended to prevent carpetbaggers from coming from the North and participating in elections, but in reality, the laws aimed to disenfranchise blacks. Since most voting-aged blacks in the 1890s were former slaves or children of slaves, almost none of them had grandparents who could vote. The law was very clever, because it applied mostly to blacks but never specifically mentioned race in its language. It was racist in practice without being racist on paper. A perfect disguise.

The St. Bernard Parish government says it intends its new grandfather law to maintain the character of St. Bernard. Council members say their concern is that residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina will rent out their property to others rather than moving back, and that St. Bernard will be transformed from a community of homeowners to a community of renters. This would upset the population makeup of the area.

Critics charge that the law is designed to exclude other races from moving to St. Bernard. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, St. Bernard Parish was 75% white, and homeowners were 93% white. Since very few white residents have black relatives, the effect of the law will be to maintain that high white to black ratio for now and evermore.

Perhaps the intent of the law is, as the Council has said, to try to stabilize the makeup of the population, and to maintain the predominance of home-ownership. Even so, that alone prompts an important question: Does a local government have the right to do that? I don’t suppose any local government likes wholesale population changes. The people who originally lived in Miami didn’t appreciate the coming of condos and hotels. No doubt Los Angelinos in the 1960s would have preferred not to see a constant influx of Hispanics. Deerborn, MI did not plan to become the largest Arab community in the United States. But it happened, and the people there dealt with it, because this is America, and in America people are entitled to live where they want. Except, I guess, in St. Bernard, USA.

To be fair, St. Bernard Parish was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Devastated more completely than anywhere else in the hurricane zone: All but 5 of the 25,000 homes in the parish were flooded, and more than half of those were assessed as a 50% loss or greater. One hundred percent of the population of 68,000 was homeless after the storm. Today, only about 10,000 people are back, most of them living in trailers. Only a few hundred homes have been renovated and are livable again. This is a lot for any government to contend with. It is certainly fair to expect that a community ravaged like that is going to do some unconventional things to get back on its feet.

But on the other hand, given the degree of destruction, dramatic change is inevitable. It is foolish for the Parish Council to think that a law is going to put things back the way they were. St. Bernard will never, ever, be the way it was.

I had a home in St. Bernard Parish. It is razed now, and there is nothing left of it but a concrete slab. My old street, 4 blocks long with about fifty houses on each side, has almost no one living on it. A few homes have inhabited trailers on their lawns, but so far not a single family has rebuilt its home and moved back into it.

And with good reason. The Parish was flooded because of a pitifully designed levee system, and the consensus in my neighborhood is that unless the levees are dramatically improved there is no point in rebuilding. So we all sit and wait. Some people would consider rebuilding if they could rent the properties out. This would allow them to cover the house notes until they decide if it is feasible to go back. This is an approach I was considering.

Not now. If I can’t rent out my property there is no point in rebuilding. I am stuck with a property not worth selling and not worth improving. Thanks to the St. Bernard Parish Council.

When an economy is wiped out as completely as it possibly can be, a responsible government does whatever it can to ease the recovery. But I do not understand how dramatically reducing the pool of potential residents by eliminating new renters helps.

In a high-risk real estate market, most residents are going to be renters. Renting gives a person time to try a community out, to put down roots, and to decide if this is a place worth staying in. Any new population in St. Bernard is going to have to include a substantial number of renters, because (to review recent events in case the Council has not been reading the papers lately) a hurricane hit New Orleans last year and a lot of people are a little too broke to buy. Yes, it would be unfortunate if St. Bernard went from majority home ownership before the storm to 90% renters after, but this is life after Katrina.

The St. Bernard Parish Council, in typical head-in-the-sand style, seems intent on having things white as they were or having nothing at all.

It is pretty obvious that the latter is exactly what they are going to get.

Comments

[Moof]

Dr. Hebert, my home town in Maine was made up almost completely of Franco Americans, and Yankees when I was growing up. I believe that I was an adolescent before I saw my first black person. Today, the city has become the home of thousands of Somali residents, and the city has most certainly changed its flavor. The stores are filled with fluidly spoken French, and melodic Somali ... and the colorful native garb is delightful to see.

I'm proud of those who turned out to march in support of the refugees in the beginning ... I wish I'd been there.

I hope that the leadership of St. Bernard Parish realizes what its doing ... because they're almost certainly going to ensure the very outcome that they seem to be trying to avoid ...

[doctorj]

The law is meant to keep the neighborhoods in the hands of HOMEOWNERS and not that of renters. St. Bernard was a residential parish where multigenerations of families lived within blocks of each other before it was destroyed by flood waters. 5 houses were habitable after Katrina out of 27,000 homes there before the storm. They just want to keep it a neighborhood like it was before. I am so sick of people that don't understand the culture of Louisiana making these grand assumptions that have nothing to do with the reality. Do you know that St. Bernard is a five minute drive from the Lower Ninth Ward you hear so much about? That is 90% black. The races live and work together in New Orleans. We have COMMUNITIES that help one another out. Stop trying to put your American ideas onto this area. The one thing I have learned from this horror is that we are different from America. Yes there are things we can learn from you, but the mixing of races is something you can learn from us.

[Michael Hebert]

doctorj: You can't be serious. In case you didn't read my article I USED TO LIVE IN ST. BERNARD, YOU FOOL. I understand everything there is to know about this issue and then some. I have personally met most of the sitting members of the Parish Council. I occasionally served as Acting Cororner for the Parish on weekends when Bryan Bertucci was out of town.

My opinion stands. There is not a community in America that has a law like this. Not one. And there is a reason: It is not legal! There are laws against preventing people from living in certain communities. The practice is known as red lining, and you can't do it. You can't tell every person in an entire parish he can't rent his home. I have lived in the South my entire life, and about 2/3s of it in Louisiana, and I can tell you from experience that whenever someone says, "I'm not prejudiced, but . . ." you are about to hear a racist remark. No, I don't think this law is explicitly racist, but what is its intent? To keep "new people" from moving into the Parish.

You have to be kidding me about this "you don't know anything about Louisiana" garbage. I am a native; I have a Cajun last name. You can't possibly think I don't understand the issues here.

And another thing: St. Bernard is heavily dependent on FEMA recovery money right now. FEMA is restricted by law from giving money for the purpose of segregation. The Feds could cut St. Bernard off without a dime over this. I am just stating a fact.

And I am sorry, really, really sorry, that you seem to think that the appearance of racism is a "Louisiana" ideal that Americans just don't get. St. Bernard needs America in a big way right now. They need to play ball the way everyone else does.

And Moof: Thanks for your comments. I am glad you get it. I've wanted to post about this before, but I find it interesting that the states with the biggest illegal immigration problems are California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and New York. What do these states have in common? The are prosperous! Having people banging down the door to get into your area is a problem most cities would love to have. It takes people to have growth, both economic and cultural. It is amazing that some people still do not get that.

[Cathy]

Doctor J should read your Katrina blog project, right at the very top of the sidebar.

[Mr. Gunn]

Hey, it's Saint Bernard. Did you expect anything different? Doctorj probably lives in mandeville, anyways.