Community Underdevelopment: Federal Aid and the Rise of Privatization in New Orleans Megan French-Marcelin Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Columbia University 2014 © 2014 Megan French-Marcelin All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Community Underdevelopment: Federal Aid and the Rise of Privatization in New Orleans Megan French-Marcelin In 1974, the Housing and Community Development Act replaced traditional antipoverty programs with block grants, decentralizing decisions about federal funding, ostensibly to give more control to local administrators. Despite the pretense of providing greater flexibility, the focus of block grants on developing the city’s physical environment circumscribed the options of local planners hoping to pursue comprehensive community development. Community Underdevelopment traces the struggle of government officials in New Orleans to fulfill the dual aims of alleviating poverty and spurring economic growth in a time of fiscal crisis. Armed with new social science techniques, planners believed that with accurate data collection and systematic planning, they could achieve these ends simultaneously. However, coping with an increasingly regressive tax regime and an anemic economy, they soon discarded this vision. Instead, block grants were used as stopgap measures in low-income communities while the city pursued economic development strategies that administrators acknowledged would do little to improve conditions in those neighborhoods. By the end of the decade, the hope that the private sector could achieve what the public sector could not led the city to shift federal funds away from antipoverty measures and toward boosting private-sector involvement. Low-income communities in New Orleans struggled to resist this movement, but their efforts to do so went unsupported by local officials who feared that supporting resource redistribution would jeopardize relationships with private developers. Consequently, by the end of the 1970s, local urban development strategies had largely abandoned antipoverty aims. Rather than read this period solely as the precursor to President Ronald Reagan’s unprecedented cuts to urban aid, Community Underdevelopment explores a steady shift in policy and ideology that created a political climate conducive to such dramatic reductions. Moreover, my focus on this period reveals that the movement to undercut antipoverty programs did not originate with the rise of the Reagan Revolution. Instead, it was from its inception a bipartisan assault. TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF MAPS and FIGURES ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION 1 New Orleans’s Long Urban Crisis CHAPTER ONE 40 From Maximum Feasible Participation to Maximum Feasible Priority: Dismantling the War on Poverty CHAPTER TWO 95 Prioritizing the Private: Low-Income Housing, Urban Triage, and Gentrification CHAPTER THREE 150 Potemkin Village Policy: Transitioning from the War on Poverty to Community Development CHAPTER FOUR 217 Civilized Decay and the Politics of Growth CONCLUSION 277 Maximum Feasible Privatization: New Orleans, from Reaganomics to Katrina BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 APPENDICES 327 Neighborhood Blight Index, Second Year CDBG Program Contribution of Federal Aid to N.O. Capital Budget, 1970-1980 Unemployment in New Orleans, 1960-1990 i TABLE OF MAPS AND FIGURES Fig. 2-1: RERC scale for Neighborhood Life Cycles 101 Fig. 2.2: Map of Irish Channel 106 Fig. 2.3: Map of Broadmoor 108 Fig. 2.4: Map of Central City 111 Fig. 2.5: Map of former site of the Parkchester Apartments 129 Fig. 3.1: Map showing gradients of blight in New Orleans, 1976 160 Fig. 4.1: Growth Management Program Area, 1975 242 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project was possible only because of the wonderful archivists at Tulane University, Loyola University, and the New Orleans Public Library. They are undoubtedly the real experts on the city’s history. During my time in New Orleans, I had the opportunity to talk with former city officials, grassroots activists, and residents about their experiences with Community Development Block Grants. Through these conversations, I came to know New Orleans in a different, more complex way than archives could ever capture. The daunting task of sifting through the massive archival collections at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, was feasible because of incredibly knowledgeable archivists who curate these collections. Their insight into how to approach each collection was a roadmap without which I would have been lost. I cannot thank Ira Katznelson enough. As an advisor, he has challenged me to read widely, interrogate my own preconceptions of this history, and to analyze with precision. I strive to follow his example. Our conversations about theater, film, and politics were highlights during this process. Eric Foner has been an essential force throughout my graduate studies. With the utmost patience, he has trained me to become a better writer and historian. It has been through my innumerable conversations with Samuel K. Roberts that I honed an argument about why the 1970s are so important. After every meeting with Elizabeth Blackmar, I have left iii with something new to read. Her deep knowledge on everything cities is unparalleled. The insights of Ester Fuchs helped me to refine my understanding of how local administrators make decisions on where to direct resources. Other faculty members at Columbia University have continued to support and enrich this project and my studies. Chris Brown, Kenneth T. Jackson, Natasha Lightfoot, Carla Shedd, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Josef Sorett have offered invaluable time to contribute feedback on my work. I would also like to thank the Institute for Research in African American Studies. The faculty and staff continue to provide encouragement years after my graduation from their MA program. Upon entering the program, I was blessed with an immediate community. Through numerous brunches and coffee dates, the members of BHM (Black Historians Matter) inspired and strengthened my interest in history. Thank you to Elizabeth Hinton, Samir Meghelli, Kellie Carter-Jackson, Zaheer Ali, Russell Rickford, Adrienne Clay, and Horace Grant. Thank you also to the numerous friends without whom I would not have made it through in one piece: Rosie Bsheer, Wes Alcenat, Nick Juravich, Suzanne Kahn, George Aumoithe, Erika DaSilva, J.T. Roane, and Ezra Tessler. I have to thank Sharee Nash for being a beacon throughout this process. The love and constant encouragement from my family have been invaluable. My mom has been the sounding board for the finer points of my argument; my dad was the first person to read each chapter; and my sister, Zoe, has been an enthusiastic cheerleader throughout. A month into my graduate studies, I met a family that would become my New York City clan. The Massands have given me a second home, a place to relax – and they always make sure I am fed. Leo, my co- iv pilot in life, you are the cornerstone in all of this, providing laughter and encouragement throughout. I cannot wait for our next journey. I would not be completing this PhD program without the presence of the late Manning Marable in my life. This project emerged directly out of our conversations about how historians should interpret the post-Black Power urban landscape. Professor Marable always and enthusiastically championed my work in all its multiple forms. His support and confidence in me as a scholar are something I will hold with me always. v INTRODUCTION New Orleans and the Long Urban Crisis “I think it is the most unreal outpost in American civilization; people living right at the edge of catastrophe.” – Bill Kuhns1 If you have visited New Orleans in July, you are aware of standing on the most precarious of marshland. The air hangs heavy just above the street and seems to breathe with you as you walk. In hurricane season, the weight of that air can be the deadliest of natural disasters, throwing shotgun houses off their pilings and bringing water almost 15 feet high. New Orleans has always been on the verge of environmental catastrophe. However, a fragile ecosystem did not cause the uneven development unmasked by Hurricane Katrina. The city’s deep-seated structural inequalities were man-made.2 They were, in fact, the result of decades of policy making at both the federal and local levels. These decisions reshaped (and preserved, in many ways) the city’s socioeconomic landscape by shifting policy aims away from alleviating poverty. By the end of the 1970s, new federal programs 1 Bill Kuhns, The People’s Directory; New Orleans, La: Fall 1973. Reprinted in G. Lee Caston and Rose Drill, "Input New Orleans," Career Education Department, Spectrum High School (New Orleans, 1975). 2 At the time of Hurricane Katrina, almost one-third of the city lived at or below the federal poverty line; New Orleans maintained some of the grossest wealth inequities in the country. There is a proliferation of good studies on pre- and post- Katrina New Orleans. For statistics on the storm and its aftermath, see Amy Liu, Matt Fellowes, and Mia Mabanta, Special Edition of the Katrina Index: A One-Year Review of Key Indicators of Recovery in Post- Storm New Orleans, Brookings Institute, 2006, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2011/8/29%20new%20orle ans%20index/20060822_katrina.pdf (accessed December 22, 2013). 1 focused on rebuilding the city’s tax base through private-sector investments.3 This study traces this shift and its inevitable consequences for much of the city’s population. In doing so, I ask the simple question: How did New Orleans get here? I. In August 1974, the 93rd Congress passed the Housing and Community Development Act. The law would dramatically alter the relationship between cities and the federal government by transferring oversight of urban aid from Congress to mayors and opening federal housing and community development funds to citywide use.