"only a portion of the new housing units will be for residents in need of subsidized housing and the remainder will be offered at the market rate."

Gentrification of Nawlins continues. Meanwhile, thousands of poor peeps must learn how to live on the street. Nuthin to see here folks, move along....

UN experts criticize New Orleans housing

By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 28, 4:02 PM ET

AP Photo:

GENEVA - Two human rights experts for the United Nations on Thursday criticized a plan by New Orleans authorities to raze public housing projects, saying it will force the predominantly black residents into homelessness.

They charged that demolition would harm thousands of people by denying them a place to live in a city where housing already is scarce since Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005.

The joint statement was not a U.N. finding, but only the individual views of Miloon Kothari, a special investigator on housing matters for the U.N. Human Rights Council, and Gay McDougall, a lawyer who is an expert on minority and rights issues.

They commented a day before a U.N. racism panel planned to discuss Katrina recovery efforts and public housing in New Orleans and also was expected to comment on allegations of racial discrimination in the United States. Neither expert was involved with that committee's hearings.

The high-density housing complexes for the poor were not heavily damaged by Katrina. But city officials argue the decades-old projects were a failure, becoming warrens of crime and entrenched poverty, and say they do not fit with the vision for a rebuilt New Orleans.

"The authorities claim that the demolition of public housing is not intentionally discriminatory," Kothari and McDougall said, but the "predominantly African-American residents" will be denied their "internationally recognized human rights" to a home.

Noting that officials promise to replace the demolished housing, the experts complained that "only a portion of the new housing units will be for residents in need of subsidized housing and the remainder will be offered at the market rate."

Many more homes will be demolished than new ones built, they said.

The U.S. mission in Geneva said much work remains to be done to help Katrina's victims and some criticism of the recovery effort is reasonable. But "problems in such efforts cannot be fairly described as racial discrimination or other violations of human rights," it said.

The mission said it was confident any destruction of public housing "would be based on sound public policy and would certainly not be directed at denying people housing."