WELCOME!

New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team is a newly formed alliance of Pre-Katrina groups, new groups and individuals dedicated to resisting the mass evictions of poor and working class people in New Orleans and fighting the illegal dismantling of public housing. It will mobilize to aid fellow residents whose housing is being threatened.

N.O. H.E.A.T. will use legal strategies, protest, direct action, and petition of the government to fight individual battles for housing and to wage war on the policies that are being designed to rebuild New Orleans as a “sanitized” and pale imitation of itself. We will fight the policies that are designed to eliminate many of New Orleans poor and to “whiten” the city.

3/21/07 - HOUSE PASSED H.R. 1227!

Great news: The House passed H.R. 1227 by a vote of 302 to 125! The public housing section of the bill (Title II) includes:

• Guaranteeing 3000 public housing units in New Orleans opened by August with more, if need be (as shown by residents desire to return)
• Relocation costs provided to residents by the government.
• One-for-one replacement of any unit in New Orleans demolished by the housing authority (based on the 7100 units in HANOs inventory).
• Resident consultation at every step of the redevelopment process.

This is a great day for displaced New Orleans public housing residents, who made their voices heard to initiate the legislation and then push it in D.C. and at the field hearing in New Orleans. Thanks to all whomade calls.

But the fight isn't over... the bill now goes to the Senate, and we all know that can be a totally different landscape. So start contacting your Senators *NOW*... keep the pressure on, and let them know, just like The House now knows, that the racism- and gentrification-based attitudes towards the rebuilding of New Orleans cannot prevail!

SURVIVORS VILLAGE

http://www.SurvivorsVillage.com/

Survivor's Village is a tent city erected on June 3, 2006 by the residents of New Orleans public housing. Joined by other public housing residents, the residents of St. Bernard Public Housing Development initiated the tent city as a response to the federal government's continued undermining of the residents' rights to return to their homes and resume their leases, which is guaranteed by the UN International Policy on Internally Displaced Persons.

As residents attempted to return to their homes, most of which sustained little storm damage, they were met with police harrassment, armed guards, and a newly erected barbed wire fence. Rather than release thousands of undamaged and minimally damaged housing units to displaced residents, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson had boarded up homes and purposefully failed to repair the units or take steps to mitigate further mold contamination. In June 2006, Jackson released plans to demolish 5,000 units of public housing, many of which were not damaged by storms.

View the H.O.P.E video which includes N.O.-H.E.A.T. and MaydayNOLA's attempts to peacefully take back and restore St. Bernard to its rightful occupants:
http://www.survivorsvillage.com/HOPEvideo.html