Posts
Just kidding about chillin'. It's still plenty hot down here.
Ann arrived here in New Orleans after a red-eye from Seattle on Wednesday the 15th. She promptly went to work with me at the Audubon Charter School, putting the finishing touches on Miss Mary Ellen's 4th-5th grade classroom just in time for her
students to show up for their first day at school on Thursday. Mary Ellen is a very resourceful person, and found a family that had saved 70 cases of books from the dumpster after the storm. Lots of textbooks, lots of workbooks, and lots of literature. Reggie and I loaded all of this stuff into our truck on Monday, and Mary Ellen and I sorted it by grade level and relevance on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Ann and I dropped off several cases of 1st-grade-relevant stuff to Maria Kramer for her class at the James Singleton Charter School right around the corner from our old bunkhouse in Central City, then took the remaining surplus the Audubon School couldn't use over to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore on Royal Street. They set up an end-base with all of it on display, inviting kids and their parents to take whatever they wanted. Nothing went into the landfill save for the case or so of miscellaneous stuff that sustained water damage during the flood.
Once school got started, Ann and I returned to Miss Jessie Washington's home in Gentilly to lay floor tile. Miss Jessie's home is just 5 or 6 blocks from the London Avenue Canal, which broke very close to Lombard Street where she lives. Her home
took water to the top of her windows. She got out on the Saturday before the storm hit, staying first with her sister in Natchez, MS, then with her grown kids in Atlanta for the next 8 months. No one was allowed back into Gentilly for two months after the storm, so Miss Jessie had no idea what was in store for her. Once she returned, she rolled up her sleeves and went to work. Using her insurance proceeds and her own savings, she hired contractors to help rebuild. Hands On got involved in March when we heard about her from her good friend Miss Peggy Severe, for whom we were doing work. Miss Peggy told us that the
"contractors" had only done part of the work they were supposed to do, and the part they did was so bad as to be unusable. Of course, they'd been paid for far more than they actually completed. We went in and saw a real mess. Much of the drywall had to be removed and replaced because different sheet thicknesses had been installed on the same wall or ceiling, sheets were sagging from the ceilings because the workers apparently had no idea how to actually hit a roof joist with a screw, and the cuts around outlets, switch boxes and vents looked like they'd been cut with a chainsaw by a guy with Coke-bottle-thick eyeglasses. Sean and Liz led the crew to fix and/or replace the drywall. Following that, they taped, mudded, and textured the walls, and we then painted her home inside and out a couple of weeks ago. I have attached before-and-after pictures showing the interior of her home. It's with no small amount of pride and happiness that we all are working in there whenever we can now, as we can begin to see the end in sight. Miss Jessie insists on fixing us a hot lunch every day we are there, and I can happily report that its awfully easy to get used to gumbo, crawfish etouffee, candied sweet potatoes and sweet tea for lunch.
Anyway, Ann, Sean, and I laid the floor tiles she purchased for her bathroom, utility closet, and kitchen, and we will do the same in her family room this coming week.
Ann provided the precision and care to make perfect tile cuts, Sean, Ann and I laid 'em down with care, and Reggie came on his days off and did the grouting, and the floors look pretty darn spectacular. Every day, Miss Jessie spends more time in the house with us, and you can tell how deep her pride in her home and in us runs. We are angels, she told us. I understand what she is saying, knowing that before we came, all she had was a mess caused by unscrupulous-at-worst/dumbshit-at-best workers who neither knew nor cared how to do a job correctly. We showed up, and all we've
done is really first-class work just to help someone out. This is the essence of the value of the experience for us HONO people. One day pretty soon, Miss Jessie is going to get to watch her wretched FEMA trailer drive off down Lombard Street and disappear. Ann and I will be there with her when that day comes.
Two quick stories about how cold people can be, then one quick story about resourcefulness under extreme conditions:
1) Ann and I sat down with Davida Finger, a young, energetic, committed attorney who runs the Katrina Clinic at Loyola Law School. She told us she is used to losing when she goes to court to try to help people with all manner of problems related to the storm, but this one tops 'em all.
Jefferson Parish sits on the Westbank of the Mississippi, and is a hodgepodge of small communities and unincorporated spaces. The powers-that-be are trying to get rid of the FEMA trailers once and for all, and their leaders have decided the best way to do that is to set a hard-and-fast deadline. Davida represented a woman who has pretty much gone blind from macular degeneration in the two years since the storm, and whose daughter died in the aftermath of Katrina. This lady had been ordered to vacate her trailer by a certain date, but she had been unable to find another place to live. So, into court she and Davida went on Tuesday to ask for a three-week extension. Not an indefinite extension, not a one-year extension---a three-week extension. The woman brought her late daughter's ashes into court with her. She brought them in the cardboard box the Coroner gave her because she can't afford an urn. She explained to the judge that she had gone blind, that she had lost her daughter to the storm, and that she wasn't trying to take advantage of the system. She just needed some extra time, because finding affordable housing here in the New Orleans area is damn near impossible. Did the judge grant her request for a three-week extension? Nope. A rule is a rule. Get out. Next case.
2) Davida had also asked Ann and I to visit the home of Mr. Miller, an 80-year old man who lives in a FEMA trailer outside his flood-damaged home in Marrero, also in Jefferson Parish. Immediately after the storm, lenders were asked to voluntarily suspend collection activities against mortgage clients whose ability to make their payments on-time had been impacted by their evacuation, loss of employment, use of any surplus funds for survival, etc. Most lenders complied. And we are just talking suspension. We aren't talking about forgiveness of any debt, just ignoring the fact that payments were late. In most cases, the lenders who cooperated required all late payments to be made up in a year. Imagine that. However, Mr. Miller's mortgage lender chose not to participate in the forebearance program, and Mr. Miller was given no allowance for late payments. The lender then foreclosed on his mortgage, but they charitably agreed to rent him his own home, I'm sure out of Christian selflessness and charity. They brought in some half-assed contractor to repair his flooded home. The house isn't habitable, and Mr. Miller is still living in his trailer. Inside we found a disconnected furnace and central a/c unit, "replaced" with two in-window air conditioners, one of which operated, but wasn't cold, and the other connected to an outlet that shorted out and threw sparks when I plugged in the a/c unit to test it. The bathtub walls had cracks in them through which you could see inside, there was mold growing up several walls, and the hose bib in the back was leaking, resulting in a $100 water bill for Mr. Miller last month. I fixed the hose bib the other day, but the lender scoffed at the remainder of our report, telling Davida that "I am losing faith in our ability to satisfy Mr. Miller. Our understanding that the window unit installs were the end of the complaints, was apparently not the case. I think that at this point, you should advise Mr. Miller to look for other housing since he is so dissatisfied with this house. We cannot continue to focus so much of our time, money, and energy on a house that is a losing proposition for our company anyway. I am sympathetic with his situation, but not the way he has handled the relationship with our company. At this point it appears we will never have this house in the condition he expects." That is a direct, verbatim quote.
Who are these people?
------------------------------
OK, the resourcefulness story:
St. Bernard Parish lies immediately east of the Lower Ninth Ward. If you check the map, you will see the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ("Mr. GO" to the locals), a man-made navigational channel built by the Corps in the 60's as a shortcut from the river to the Gulf. At the river end of Mr. GO is the Industrial Canal, whose floodwalls failed when the storm surge funneled to it by Mr. GO hit the end of the line. Lower Ninth, poof. Along the way up Mr. GO, though, that massive storm surge exceeded 20 feet, and along the way up the line kicked aside the levees that were to protect St. Bernard Parish. People in places like Chalmette saw the surge coming. It took less than 10 minutes to make it all the way across St. Bernard Parish, and absolutely inundated everything in its path. The family whose story I'm telling had taken in a number of pets for people who evacuated or were otherwise gone. They saw the surge coming, went to the top of their home, and waited for the 9 minutes they had for the surge to hit. Because they weren't going to abandon the animals, they were all unable to evacuate together. The first rescuers took the women, leaving Mark (the dad) and Justin (the 19-year old son) with the animals. After they separated, there was no communication between them. Father, son and pets survived 11 days in the muck of water and oil burped up by the refinery near their home. Forget food. It was water they needed to survive (oh, yeah, it was nearly 100 degrees during the days immediately after the storm). The guys figured out that if they swam to their neighbors' homes, they could find fresh water in the tanks of upstairs toilets ("2.5 gallons per", Mark will tell you with some authority). By siphoning that water, then swimming back to their home, they lived and were rescued and reunited with their loved ones 11 days after the wall of water hit.
------------------------------
It's our last week here in New Orleans. We're going to try to finish the tiling at Miss Jessie's, and wrap up some unfinished siding work on the other two sides of Miss Rose's house. We've been spoiled by the generosity of the good people at Wyndham Resorts, who set us up in a one-bedroom unit gratis for the entire 33 days of my stay, and by our friends at Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters, who made sure we had Omar's Organic Blend every morning of our stay. We've also been inspired and humbled by the generosity of so many of you great folks who have contributed financially to the work that is going on down here. The Tool Fund money you contributed (about $7500) will be spent soon, and that will not only make a tremendous contribution to our ability to do more work, it also serves as inspiration to the people we have been helping. I've heard from several of them that it means so much to them personally to know that you know there is still so much work to be done. Hope sustains many people in this American city of ours, and every single person I have spoken to down here about all of you who have helped has told me to tell you how grateful and blessed they are to know you care.
My love to you all.
David/Dad
No comments:
Post a Comment