Marco F. Cocito-Monoc, Ph.D. joined the Greater New Orleans Foundation in the summer of 2007 to oversee regional initiatives. Prior to joining the Foundation, Marco was the executive director of Baltimore’s Southeast Community Development Corporation.
On a recent journey through several neighborhoods in St. Bernard Parish, one phrase kept repeating itself in my head: “What a shame.” While admiring the courage, determination and love of community that were evident in every person who was fixing their home with the intention of returning, I had to wonder if their efforts would yield the benefits that they deserve. The gaps between renovated homes were considerable in far too many neighborhoods. Redevelopment was happening mostly in isolated spots.
The above conditions notwithstanding, good models for redeveloping the parish do exist. Beyond the occasional costly and contextually inappropriate New Urbanist charette, there was an alternative plan in wide circulation soon after Katrina that emphasized redeveloping neighborhoods and businesses in sustainable clusters while creating new open space that would function as an amenity for the parish and its residents. This latter plan went unimplemented and now we see St. Bernard returning slowly, in fits and starts, with many former residents rebuilding in areas that are otherwise abandoned. What will happen to the values of their homes over time? How can an already financially burdened parish government provide essential services to such a scattered array of people living on its new “frontier” amidst bare slabs and decaying buildings?
Then there is the issue of affordable housing in St. Bernard. Not only is there a surfeit of affordable homes presently on the market, but there is a rapidly growing number of cheaply rehabbed rentals that threatens to stop whatever reinvestment has been made to date in these areas. Nobody questions Jefferson Parish when it voices concerns over increasing levels of disinvestment in some of its neighborhoods. In its “Jefferson Edge 2020 Economic Development Strategy,” recently completed by GCR and Associates, it is plainly and unapologetically asserted that
Demographic change is a natural characteristic of every community, but changes in a community’s population should be a source of concern when the socio-economic “equilibrium” of the community appears to be upset. A healthy, sustainable job market, retail economy, and tax base all hinge on a community’s having a substantial middle class population. If a community witnesses a severe decline in its socio-economic profile, it may become difficult for the community to fund needed services, and the community over time may be seen as a less lucrative, less appealing place to do business.
St. Bernard has never boasted a wealthy population, even by South Louisiana standards. According to a report commissioned by GNOF, current average household income in St. Bernard is $40,000, compared to $45,000 in Plaquemines Parish, $47,000 in Jefferson and $60,000 in St. Tammany. What St. Bernard did have prior to Katrina was a large percentage of homeowners who could count on their housing investments to grow in value over time. A recent article in the Times-Picayune indicated that this is no longer the case. Over the past year, St. Bernard has suffered the greatest decline in housing values (-9%) among all of the parishes within our region. While it is true that the nation as a whole is in the midst of a real estate slump, one can reasonably expect that housing values in most communities will rise once the economy stabilizes. The same assumption cannot be made about St. Bernard given the haphazard manner in which its housing stock is being resurrected. Without a sensible, incentive-based plan that shapes its future residential and commercial footprint, St. Bernard will remain the victim of arbitrary and mostly cheap reconstruction (one non-profit entity actually boasts that it spends only an average of $12,000 per rehab) that will continue to depress home values and discourage serious reinvestment.
First, I want to congratulate GNOF in the launch of the new website and this blog. I very much enjoyed browsing the new website and am as equally excited about the blogs. Marco you observations and remarks regarding St. Bernard and the challenges of its housing market are on target. The issues facing St. Bernard are complex and there are no simple solutions. However, that does not mean there are not solutions. You are very much right to point out the assertion within the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Strategy. Maintaining as strong middle-class and encouraging housing investment that appeals to a middle-class population is critical to any community facing economic challenges and changes. For St. Bernard it is as critical and vital to the future of the community. Therefore, housing should target the segments of the market that are most needed in the community, in this case the working and middle class. In addition, housing reconstruction and new housing must be constructed and maintained to high standards and quality to ensure it has the best chance to maintain and gain value. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for providing a clear and balanced post on this complicated and dynamic issue.
Let’s hope St. Bernard will be renewed as a unique and wonderful place, and NOT become a cut-rate cookie-cutter suburb that’s destined to blow down like a house made of straw.
Many thanks for your comments, Joe and Don. I am convinced that there are solutions. I also believe that these solutions must be agreed upon AND implemented by the community as a whole. In his book Democracy as Problem Solving, Xavier De Souza Briggs (former Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning at MIT and currently Associate Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget) talks about the importance of developing “civic capacity.” To Briggs, this term encompasses much more than just the feel-good potential that comes with public input sessions and planning charettes. It is, instead, rooted in the notion that citizens (and in the immediate context of the above blog, residents) must be involved not only in direction setting, but also in manging outcomes. If the people of St. Bernard, who are among the most determined and resilient individuals that I have ever met, can “implement the means of acting together more effectively, with and beyond government,” then I have no doubt that their collective future will be very bright. GNOF’s affiliate in St. Bernard – the St. Bernard Community Foundation – began this important process two years ago when it brought in nationally-renowed community development expert David Boehlke. With his help (and the sewat of local neighborhood leaders), neighborhood associations throughout the parish were reorganized and reinserted into civic life through the aegis of very concrete activities. Now that they have gained capacity and a sense of common purpose, they are ready to begin assuming even more impressive leadership roles in their community. Stay tuned.
In a terribly unsentimental way, it no longer really matters how we got here, how St. Bernard came to be so empty feeling to an outsider. What DOES matter is the manner in which the Parish today continues to claw forward.
To claw forward the Parish needs to acknowledge that it’s “right size” is inextricably tied to the degree to which the Lower Ninth is itself a vibrant housing market, a weak market, or emptied out. As the Lower Ninth goes, so goes much of the consumer purchasing power of residents in the retail trade area that would support commercial space along Perez and St Bernard Highway, especially west of Paris Road.
It also must acknowledge that the “right size” leaves empty no less than 20 percent of the land area customarily dedicated to neighborhoods. This emptiness can take one of two forms. It can be dispersed throughout the Parish, or it can be consolidated. In the former, the Parish will present itself as a place of 10,000 homes each on what looks like a 1/2 lot – which is to say looks empty – or in the case of the latter, 10,000 homes tightly clustered and thereby transforming the Parish into a more genuinely walkable, less empty-feeling suburban area.
In either case St. Bernard Parish is not going to become a Parish of 25,000 households earning $60,000 a year capable when combined with a full Lower Ninth of generating $760M in annual spending on goods and services, and is instead likely to be a Parish is 10,000 HHs earning $50,000 a year without the Lower Ninth nearby and thus more probably capable of supporting not much more than 700,000 sq.ft. of retail
If the Parish continues to claw back without a change in strategy, it will be look and feel empty because it is. There will be too many streets with only a few houses on them, and too many empty chain stores. It will communicate to the market more that 15,000 HHs are not there rather than the fact that 10,000 are. It will signal to the market more that 1.9M sq.ft. of retail is vacant, than that 500,000 is not and that 200,000 is yet to be filled and supportable. The signals will all point to a failed recovery because it will look empty and over time, validate the emptiness by remaining so. Households considering a return, to say nothing of those who might be new to the region, will soon discover the rationale behind the migration of former St. Bernard residents to Slidell and other locations in St. Tammany Parish.
The right direction is to get smaller physically, redirecting infill between Delambert and Jean Lafitte, shrinking Chalmette’s footprint by 30 percent, and incenting higher density mixed-use development in Arabi, and combining these intentions with a cessation of suburban strip retail along Perez and St. Bernard and instead focusing smaller retail at key intersections (Paris and Perez) (Paris and St. Bernard) so as to create consolidated, neighborhood-serving destination retail in a concentrated central location while also encouraging smaller-scale retail to flourish throughout. Perez from Packenham to Mereaux needs to be scaled down and eventually incented to become residential; otherwise the development trend, without the population, will mimic the results along Veterans in Jefferson Parish.
For the Parish to flourish, it has to rebrand. It cannot alone be a ancestral home to the St. Bernard tribe that came back against all odds. It can be partly this. But it also must be something more (and less) than a series of subdivisions and suburban strip malls mismatched to current and likely population groups. Instead it must rebrand itself as a Parish of three small working class towns with healthy retail and civic spaces, and open consolidated spaces between them.
Great thoughts, Charles! Thanks for your input. A smaller footprint would be a very good start, as would a master plan.