Pearl River      While I was busy with the plumber and minding broken pipes left over from our recent and historic snowstorm and cold snap on the Gulf Coast, things were popping in the neighborhood over plans to build affordable housing.  My son was handling radio business in Arkansas, but the rest of our tribe was fully represented in a hearing at the local community center about whether an affordable housing development should proceed or be delayed.  At a local housing groups encouragement, we had all sent letters to the local councilperson expressing our point of view, which was “build, baby, build!” and do it PDQ!

Normally, I would be surprised that this thing was controversial at all.  The proposal replaces what used to be public housing and section 8 apartments near the Mississippi River in the far eastern part of our Bywater neighborhood.  The developers want to put in some 82 or so apartments to maximize affordable housing there.  The property is a square block.  On one side is the river.  On the other is a huge development, also contentious, to create something they call a “poshtel,” which is another term for a fancy hostel.  They’ve been building it off and on for several years, and it looks like it might be ready to open, but who knows, maybe for Mardi Gras.  Where the poshtel was built used to be a fabrication yard where we once tried to organize the workers before it went out of business more than 40 years ago.  The Joint, a popular barbeque place is across the street, as well as a couple of houses on that block.  In short, what could be the harm, and why would anyone oppose this project?  It makes me suspicious about the real reasons.

The neighborhood has changed in the more than 45 years we have lived here.  We first rented, and then bought, in what was a tri-ethnic, working-class area populated largely by shotgun doubles, which were either rented, or where an owner lived on one side and rented the other side to make the note.  The name Bywater comes from an old telephone exchange, but also denotes the fact that we’re hard by the great river, where the ground is higher than most of the city because of the alluvial flood plain of the Mississippi.  Originally populated by Irish, Italian, and German workers who were building and filling the canals, before Katrina hit 20 years ago, the majority of the populations was African-American.  Because we didn’t flood, housing values have soared, the area has gentrified, and now the majority is white.

And, that’s likely the rub.  For those of us here for many decades, this project is ho-hum, and totally belongs here, because we desperately need more affordable housing for the many displaced, and for families who simply need to be able to pay the rents that have doubled and tripled since Katrina.  For others maybe property values trump the special, diverse nature of the community that attracted us.  It’s hard not to wonder, particularly in these fraught and contentious times, the degree to which class and race underlie the opposition to this project, even as everyone politely genuflects their support for affordable housing, particularly from some of the neighborhood groups that are more or less controlled by real estate interests.

Listening to the after-action reports of the meeting, one speaker noted that some were arguing now against these apartments and saying they instead favored small bungalows of the type not far away in Musician’s Village build by Habitat for Humanity, yet they had opposed exactly those kinds of houses in an earlier hearing when this development was first proposed.  Other opponents objected to the number of units of affordable housing in this project, even as they had been silent and supported the replacement of a former meatpacking facility in the next block from our house that included 75% of units as Airbnb locations making it a mini-hotel.

There were some 80 people there giving the local councilperson what for both pro and con.  On the family WhatsApp, there were reports that mi companera was unable to control her tongue and rose mightily to the occasion.  We were well represented.  For the sake of the neighborhood’s future, I hope we were winners.  We are certainly ready and willing to welcome our new neighbors to live and work with us in the community, city, and country we love.  Who knew that could now be controversial and contentious?