I cannot believe that this weekend marked four years since the natural and human devastation that was Hurricane Katrina. Pero what I really can’t wrap my head around is how little has actually changed for so many residents of the Gulf Coast Region. A part of me watched President Obama’s statement below with disappointment. I know he is just another politician in so many ways pero considering his platform and presentation, I expected (expect)/want more from him than speeches. Would it have been such a bad idea for the first president of color to go in his first year of office to the Gulf Coast Region instead of sitting in a studio making a statement in a suit?

According to an article in the Louisiana Weekly, one of the biggest issues remains access to safe and affordable housing.

The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center counts 65,888 abandoned residential addresses in New Orleans, and this number doesn’t include any of the many non-residential buildings…Overall, about a third of the addresses in the city are vacant or abandoned, the highest rate in the nation…Using conservative estimates, UNITY estimates at least 6,000 squatters, and a total of about 11,000 homeless individuals in the city.

UNITY workers have also found that not all people living in New Orleans’ abandoned homes are squatters. In the last three months alone, they have found nine homeowners living in their own toxic, flood-damaged, often completely unrepaired homes. These are people living in buildings – identified as abandoned and not fit for human habitation – that they (or extended family members) actually own, but cannot afford to repair.

Why is there not a greater focus on repairing homes? Why were thousands of units of public housing demolished and not replaced or at the very least, why was there not an alternative housing plan in place. Now people cannot afford rent in their own neighborhoods.

Section 8 subsidized housing has been offered as a solution for those displaced from public housing and other poor renters, but a new study from Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOF­HAC) shows that discrimination keeps many people from finding quality housing through the program. According to the report, 82% of landlords in the city either refused to accept Section 8 vouchers, or added insurmountable requirements.

The study found that both discrimination on the part of landlords (99 percent of Section 8 voucher holders in Orleans Parish are Black) and mismanagement on the part of the housing agency were barriers. One prospective landlord told a tester for GNO­FHAC that he wouldn’t rent to Section 8 holders, “until Black ministers…start teaching morals and ethics to their own, so they don’t have litters of pups like animals, and they’re not milking the system.”

Seems like the U.S. government still doesn’t like black people.