LONG BEACH, MS - Mae Bullard and her 77 year old mother are packing their belongings, a few fans, some family photos and other knickknacks, and moving from one rundown public housing unit to another. The move is by no means a profound upgrade, but at least the new unit won't have a wind-toppled oak tree stuck in the roof. "It don't make no sense," Bullard said, standing in the doorway to a bathroom so soggy tiles are falling off the shower wall.
In the three years since Katrina clobbered the Coast, nothing has been done to fix the problems inside Bullard's public housing unit, for which she pays nearly $400 a month. In fact, none of the 75 barracks-style units at Woodland Park on Railroad Street have been touched. Brown water stains darken her ceiling. A small white stove in the kitchen is rusty after three years under a leak. She uses old newspapers to sop up rainwater in the bedroom and moves plants and pots around to collect dripping water in the living room.
On Thursday, Bullard stood on her front lawn and told her story to Gov. Haley Barbour and HUD Secretary Steve Preston. The government sent $105 million after Katrina to rehabilitate public housing on the Coast, and $2.9 million of that was for the Long Beach Housing Authority's 75 units. But in three years all that's been done is some roof patching and other exterior touch-ups, and that work was largely funded by insurance money.
"I'm disappointed and frustrated that it's taking so long," Barbour said. "I wish it would've started back when we first gave them the $105 million, but unfortunately when we gave them the money they had to start what has been a long and arduous process."
The government poked and prodded the LBHA for months before handing over the $2.9 million in 2006. There were environmental and historical assessments on the federal and state level. Then the local agency had to convince the federal government that rehabbing the units was faster and easier than razing them and starting over in another location.
Barbour and Preston were there to visit Bullard, after all, she's the one with the elderly mother and the tree on her roof, but her next-door neighbor, Scyvonda Bradshaw, couldn't help but chime in after seeing the governor's motorcade parked out front. "Somebody needs to get something done, because we still got mold, mildew, the ceiling's still falling down," Bradshaw told the governor.
LBHA Executive Director LeNelle Davis said one of the biggest hurdles was a federal restriction on building public housing too close to railroad tracks. Davis said the LBHA wrestled with the government for more than a year and finally won approval to renovate the units, which have been there since 1969. "All the units are going to be completely renovated," she said.
The LBHA will solicit proposals from contractors in October and hopes to have all the units rehabilitated by 2010. Meantime, Bullard and her mother will move to a less-damaged unit on the other side of the complex. Bradshaw will stay put. And all the residents left in the LBHA will continue waiting.
Source: SunHerald.com