HALIBURTON & KATRINA? Anybody know anything about this? Saw this on the internet, wasn't able to find it again. Supposedly ABCNews has witnesses who saw people playing around with the New Orleans levees after the hurricane hit, causing them to break. The theory goes that if the poorer sections of New Orleans were flooded, the poor residents would be forced out, the government would declare eminent domain, take over and level the area, give the land to real estate developers who would then hire Haliburton and other Federal contractors to rebuild the areas with taxpayer money. Seems like another case of corporate welfare. Also seems like a case ethnic cleansing. Nature is blamed for the flooding and corporate America walks away with the goodies.

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/hurricane_katrina.html

That has some info about it.

The concern expressed by the OP about eminent domain are essentially a middle class (aka petit bourgeois) ideological worry about property rights. It's not really concern about the poor. That's just a front to not appear so greedy -- this front of concern for the poor is a common middle class performance.

I don't think there was some eminent domain plan, though, if there is any rebuilding, odds are, some property will be taken for something. Maybe they'll build another Riverwalk-style mall, or some casino or something huge like that.

Even if no property is taken with eminent domain, there will be a lot of poor people displaced. Slumlords aren't known for rehabilitating their apartments, even when it's dry. Odds are, if they tear down their housing, they'll rebuild with an eye toward finding wealthier tenants. They'd probably support seizure of working class people's property, as long as it wasn't their own property.

It goes the other way too. Landowners of moderate means might also be hostile to funding the rebuilding of low-income housing, which would bring poor people back into their neighborhood. They could potentially support eminent domain if it would turn a street of run-down shacks into a row of new condominiums.

There's also another trend that may displace poor people: privatization. In Los Angeles, some violence plagued public housing in the Aliso Gardens projects was replaced by townhomes.

http://www.hacla.org/New_Aliso_Village/home.htm

The project invariably displaces poor people into other slums, and replaces them with wealthier people (still of modest means) in the area who are able to afford to buy rather than rent. Though the geographic demographics get richer, increasing the property values of neighboring landowners (who own the stores, small apartments, and single family houses), the number of poor people remains the same. They just move. As the displaced people are pushed into privatized housing, perhaps without rent control, they'll find that their rent increases will take a larger and larger chunk of their paycheck.

Housing Rights

One possible way to protect the rights of the poor in New Orleans is to establish their right to housing, in their old neighborhood. Whether you owned property or not, you'd have the right to housing, and the government would coordinate things so that you could get housing for roughly the same amount of money.

The right would not be tied to property ownership, as it is now. Your right to move back into rebuilt property wouldn't be predicated on homeowner insurance that would restore the property to its prior condition or better, and a landlord who'd choose to let you return. A "housing right" would expand the right to housing to all people, regardless of their wealth, and turn it into a "human right" that would be a priority of the government. Taxpayers would foot the bill (but in exchange, they could potentially gain that right when disaster blows their home away too).

Comments are appreciated.