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October 23, 2007
Cora Foster's house fourteen months on
I happened to be riding my bike around Hollygrove checking out the progress in the neighborhood (a few blocks are back, but most of it is deserted), and I swung by Mrs. Cora Foster's house on Monticello just to see what things looked like.
I'm still so sad and so angry.
We partially gutted this house and salvaged a lot of personal belongings out of it on the first anniversary of the storm, along with some Rising Tide volunteers and the Arabi Wrecking Krewe, and a few weeks later some volunteer rollergirls organized by Brian Denzer cleared the lot of weeds and overgrowth. There's a blog entry about it here, and Scout from First Draft put together a great video of it here:
Back then we were so full of energy and optimism. Volunteers filled the city, the Road Home program was just getting rolling, and we knew it would just be a matter of time before we would be getting people back into their houses.
Fourteen months later, for this part of Hollygrove, I have nothing but despair.
Two lots have been cleared around the Foster house. Most of the rest are gutted houses, untouched by rebuilders. Within a two block radius of her house, you can see one house occupied, and one gutted with an occupied FEMA trailer in the yard. The rest of the neighborhood, at least up at the top end by Monticello, is just gutted and abandoned.
If you look inside, it looks pretty much how we left it on that day in 2006. You can see the hole in the living room floor where we almost dropped the fridge, and the hole in the hallway where Oyster fell through (both events captured in Scout's video).:
I talked to Sheik from the AWK last spring, and he was discouraged. Said of the almost 100 houses he had done, only one person had moved back in, and a few of the houses had been demolished (against owner's wishes), including Al "Carnival Time" Johnson's house.
I wonder how Mrs. Cora is doing, up in Detroit. It saddens me to think that she may never see New Orleans again, and if she does, it won't ever look like home.
All of my recent pictures of Mrs. Cora's house, taken last month, are in a flickr set here.
I've been taking a library of recent photos of all of the houses I've gutted in the past fourteen months, and I'll post a summary later in the week.
Posted by ray at October 23, 2007 8:06 AM | Permalink
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Comments
I wish I had some words of wisdom. When you're right in the middle of things, and, for the sake of justice and because life is short, you want things to get better right away. And at those times, it's cold comfort to hear that things will change eventually as long as you have patience. But I do hope you do keep faith and have patience, because if people lose faith, then the pessimistic viewpoint becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Posted by: Hiromi at October 23, 2007 1:30 PM
Cora Fosters family applied for demolition of this property, it was granted about 2 weeks ago.
Posted by: Karen at October 23, 2007 2:56 PM
Is there any way to predict the date of demolition? I'd like to be there to watch. I've got an emotional investment in this one.
Posted by: Ray at October 24, 2007 1:23 AM
Thanks for the kind thoughts, Hiromi. As usual, you are wise and sensible.
Posted by: Ray at October 24, 2007 1:25 AM
Look on Velocity Hall for the permit. That should give you the name of the company and they may be able to help you. Usually when it goes, it is fast. If you ride by look for the "gass Off" neon spray paint.
Posted by: Karen at October 24, 2007 10:01 AM
I read your post a few days ago, but didn't know what to say. I've driven by the house a few times myself, but I'm dumbfounded by the vastness of the tragedy and need throughout the city, compared to the lack of urgency -- still -- more than two years later.
Posted by: Brian Denzer at October 25, 2007 8:27 AM
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