Letters From Our Readers

ReInhabiting New Orleans Report Available

Hello to all ReInhabiting NOLA participants,

We are happy to announce that the ReInhabiting NOLA Final Report, based on
the workshop on November 28 and 29 2005, is complete and can be downloaded at www.kerrn.org. We thank everybody involved in the creation of the report and would especially like to acknowledge the workshop participants who provided detailed feedback on a preliminary draft. We will be mailing copies to the addresses provided on the sign in sheets. If your address has
changed, please notify us as soon as possible so we can send another copy to the correct address.

We hope this report will be a tool that participants can use to amplify their voices in the discussions about how we should ReInhabit NOLA. We took care to articulate the process as well as the results of the workshop to give people who did not participate an understanding of the collaborative environment and context in which these ideas and recommendations were developed.

Within days of the event, basic documentation of the recommendations was provided to the Bring New Orleans Back Commission and the Louisiana Recovery Authority. We will provide the completed report to these same groups.

In the section of the report entitled ‘Next Steps’ we have outlined some of the projects initiated as a direct result of partnerships formed during and after the workshop. We are pleased to report that this list is continually growing longer. Such new projects include:

• A partnership between Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston; Ujamaa Community Development Corporation, Treme; and a coalition of environmental health and justice grassroots organizations to develop an environmental health neighborhood center in the Treme. This project will begin with site remediation (removal of contaminated sediments) of Ujamaa Square in March 2006.

• Students from the University of Montana spent an entire day cleaning out and gutting the House of Dance and Feathers Museum in the Lower 9th Ward. The students have also committed to helping raise funds in Montana to finance reconstruction of the museum during the summer. Project Locus, a nonprofit community based architecture organization based in Kansas, will lead the design and construction efforts.

• Architecture for Humanity Boston will assist in developing plans for the Katrina House of Care senior citizen assisted living complex. This project was developed by workshop participant Sharon Alexis of Catholic Charities Gert Town. She met with AFH members in January to discuss collaboration.

• Neighborhood Housing Services New Orleans has developed a concept paper further articulating workshop participants’ visions for community centers. This paper has been shared with interested funders, and a number of sites have been targeted. Please contact Lauren Anderson of NHS (nhsneworleans@yahoo.com) if you are interested in establishing a community center in your neighborhood.

The Tulane City Center continues to reach out to universities around the country who would like to work directly with community-based organizations on reconstruction projects. If you have specific projects in mind and need assistance, please let us know (contact Dan Etheridge - dether@tulane.edu) and we will try to facilitate partnerships to bring these ideas to life.

We will soon have a dedicated website up and running, reinhabitneworleans.org, which will include the final report, as well as updated information about projects developed through the ReInhabiting NOLA network. Please keep us up to date on partnerships and activities started through this network so we can keep everyone informed.

Thanks again to everybody who contributed their time and energy to
ReInhabiting NOLA. We look forward to continuing to work together.