Below is a story written by Rachel Sheier, with whom I've been working this week. This is a story of our trip to interview a group of evacuees who have organized in response to their living situation. I will write more from my perspective later, but curently low on time - work is awaiting.
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The thing that strikes you when you first arrive at Renaissance Village, a fenced trailer park on a gravel lot in a sparsely populated suburb a few miles outside of Baton Rouge, is that no one seems to live there. In fact, it is home to more than 1,000 residents, mostly from the New Orleans area, one of the largest such parks that the government has set up all over the state to house residents that lost their homes or were temporarily displaced after Hurricane Katrina.
But in stark contrast the close-knit, mostly black neighborhoods where many had family roots that went back generations, you don’t see people chatting with neighbors or going about normal daily tasks in Renassance Village. When we arrived at the park on a Saturday midday, hardly anyone could be seen even walking on the narrow gravel pathways that separate the makeshift homes. “Lots of people are just sitting in their trailers, watching TV, depressed,” said Francis Collins, who taught fifth grade in New Orleans before the storm forced her, along with her 15-year-old daughter, to flee her home in the Lower 9th Ward.
Aside from the cafeteria, where residents are served free meals, and one basketball court with some barbeque grills nearby, there is nothing for people to do in Renaissance Village, said Collins, a founding member of the Renaissance Village Advisory Council, an ad hoc group of residents who have organized to represent concerns about the management of the park, the Keta Group, which has been subcontracted by the Shaw Group, which was in turn contracted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to run the park and others like it.
After the disaster, FEMA ordered more than 100,000 trailers to house evacuees who had been displaced by Katrina, which are scattered in parks around Louisiana and elsewhere. But many have since questioned whether these isolated trailer parks were the best option.
Residents are forced to wear an identification badge at all times and say they are bullied and treated rudely by security guards routinely for minor infractions of rules or for no reason at all. There is a 9 p.m. curfew for children, who have no place to play or any formal activities on the grounds anyway. Transportation is limited. There is a small library, with very limited Internet access. Visitors arriving at the park are often questioned by security guards and turned away if they are deemed undesirable. The delivery of mail has been sporadic at best, and residents say they were required to provide their FEMA identification number—which would allow management access to private details of their situations—in order to get a mailbox at all. There is no childcare. Residents are not allowed to have landline phones in their trailers, leaving those without cell phones dangerously out of touch in case of an emergency. Collins and others have heard that several elderly residents have died in recent weeks, but management will not reveal details on such incidents.
But the main complaint from Collins and the 10 other members of the advisory council—which formed in late October, a few weeks after most took up residency in the park—is that they are treated as prisoners rather than citizens. There is a prevailing feeling among residents that there is no regard for their rights. There is no clear communication of policies, which seem to change at the whim of the management. For example, residents were originally told by FEMA officials that propane—the main energy source at the park for heating and cooking—would be provided. But Keta recently sent out notices informing residents that they would now be responsible for obtaining and paying for their own propane.
Residents of the park, many of whom lost their homes and their jobs after Katrina, were told they would be provided with shelter at the park for 18 months. Since then, they have received no job placement assistance or counseling, for example, and even the Advisory Council members have no idea who to call to receive information about their situations from FEMA. “We are not being treated as adults, as humans,” said Collins.
She and three other members of the Advisory Council met with us in Collins’ trailer, a cozy space about half the size of my bedroom. Many at the park have relatives, children—as many as 10 or more people living in these trailers. Yolanda Gibson, another member of the advisory council and, ironically, an employee of FEMA, is housing about seven people in hers. Both she and Collins were evacuated during the storm to the infamous River Center in Baton Rouge, which they described as a nightmare. People slept on concrete for weeks until cots were donated by a charity. “I almost lost my mind there,” said Gibson.
A resident of the West Bank, she was more fortunate than some others—her house was severely damaged but she plans to rebuild and return eventually. Gibson has returned to the 9th Ward to look at the remains of her house—a rental. She is not sure where she will go after she can manage to leave Renaissance Village. At the moment, she is living on unemployment. The Advisory Council members we spoke to estimated that only about a fourth of the residents of Renaissance Village currently have jobs—most in New Orleans, about an hour’s drive. (A bus provides limited daily service between the park and the city.) They wonder what will become of other residents—many of whom are severely depressed after the disaster—after their 18 months of shelter has expired.
In the meantime, the Council has managed some small victories. They were responsible for the establishment of the small library with computers and Internet access. They have meetings every Thursday evening, which are attended by more and more residents. At best, their efforts are treated “as a joke” by park managers, they say; at worst, their efforts to organize have been met with intimidation and even threats of eviction.
“It’s a nightmare out here, it really is,” said one Advisory Council member, Wilbert L. Ross, a Baton Rouge resident who was about to start a new job as a dishwasher in New Orleans when Katrina upended his life. “We still feel like we’re drowning.”
