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ABSTRACT
Making use of theories of discourse and social innovation, this paper analyses the resilience of post-Katrina housing reconstruction trajectories in New Orleans. It defines and connects the concepts of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic social resilience cells (SRC), institutional structures and housing reconstruction trajectories as the pillars of the housing systems. SRC are the key agents in these systems and have been the main architects of the multidirectional housing recovery trajectory in New Orleans. Their discursive and material practices, and the way they interact with institutional structures are studied for two periods in the post-Katrina recovery process. Based on the main features of their practices and institutional affinities SRC can be divided into three types: hegemonic pro-growth and counter-hegemonic pro-equity and pro-comaterializing SRC. The evidence on the multidirectionality of housing reconstruction trajectories has challenged at least three hegemonic discursive myths about the post-Katrina recovery process: that reconstruction should be planned top-down; without state involvement; and without city-wide political leadership. The paper concludes that socially optimal recovery outcomes can be achieved when institutional structures build alliances with diverse types of SRC and orchestrate resilience trajectories on the basis of equity of treatment.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their constructive comments and valuable suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Institutional structures include public or state entities (state agencies, governmental authorities, elected officials) and private bodies (lobbying firms, foundations, faith-based organizations, intermediaries, financial institutions, industry associations).
2. Straighforward connections between recovery and resilience were only made by some interviewees to justify their narrations. This was explained by the fact that the term “resilience” was largely absent in the rhetoric or practice during the early years of recovery.
3. Cultural diversity was understood in “post-race” and “post-class” terms, transcending socio-spatial inequalities, and sustainability was interpreted as a symbol that would connect real estate markets to secure ecomodernist futures (Gotham and Greenberg Citation2014).
6. More on the policy victories of the alliance here: http://gnoha.org/main/policy_victories.
8. The openness of public officials to a better acknowledged non-profit affordable housing sector can also be illustrated by the formation of a New Orleans consortium comprising twelve non-profit organizations and three for-profit developers, who together with NORA received Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP2) funding to create affordable housing units for local residents.
9. “'Follow these guidelines or plan when a disaster happens' isn't really going to capture everything … communities start doing stuff because they don't want to wait” (personal communication, June 18, 2014).
10. A. Liu, Vice President and Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program (personal communication, June 23, 2014) explains: “You want people to come back to a place of opportunity … why re-build a house on a plot of land that will have no market value, why rebuild a house in a neighborhood that has no grocery stores and no access to jobs, why come back to a community if you could go to Atlanta and Houston and have a better life? … It’s all about rebuilding New Orleans so it is truly a place of opportunity to come back to”.
11. Regarding the first element of inefficiency of tax credits, Schwartz (Citation2015, 140) explains: Tax credits are seldom sufficient to cover development costs. Most developers require some amount of mortgage financing as well as additional sources of debt and equity to make a project viable … these additional resources of financing are most often provided by state and local governments, often through block grants, housing trust funds … as well as low-interest loans on which interest payments are deferred (also known as 'soft second mortgages')”. K. Labord, President and CEO at the Gulf Coast Housing Partnership (personal communication, 29 August 2014) further elaborates: “Due to the fact that the real estate in the US is capitalized in a transaction-focused way, many nonprofit developers (alternative SRC) end up being under-capitalized … they cannot access the capital markets because they do not have the financial capacity. On the service side, the affordable housing tenants are subsidized by the federal government. Without governmental intervention, affordable housing provision is hard to sustain. To be in the real estate business you need capital … and a non profit in the US cannot sell stocks (to raise capital)” According to N. Barnes and B. White, especially in the affordable housing sector, alternative SRC are the principal interest groups delivering the mission of affordable housing needs satisfaction; followed by the pro-growth who are nevertheless primarily motivated by the provision of public subsidies and secondarily – if at all – by the social mission involved.
12. With respects to the second element of inefficiency of tax credits, the resulting delays in the recovery progress can be variously explained. According to A. Stroud, real estate development consultant and Principal at the Urban Focus LLC Louisiana (personal communication, 12 August 2014), from the start on, investors were not necessarily interested in investing in New Orleans recovery, when the American media was still arguing against the rebuilding of the city and better opportunities for investment were found elsewhere as the national economy was booming. Moreover, substantial reliance on tax credits in New Orleans at the critical post-disaster moments was inappropriate because there were very few LIHTC developers in the city prior to Katrina. Later, in 2008, when the mortgage bubble burst, the rebuilding of rental housing was further affected since investor demand for LIHTC declined steeply (Seidman Citation2013).
13. An anonymous think tank stated: “Some neighborhoods recovered faster because they often had a leader, a social leader or a social entrepreneur in the neighborhood, maybe a pastor or church leader … so they were able to rally folks to come back and recover … Reliance on those sort of local entrepreneurs seems to be very key, a mover of change”. A. Liu echoes: “Neighborhood and grassroots organizations have demonstrated increasing organizational capacity and autonomy, such as the rise in nonprofit housing advocates and developers. Individuals and groups have become more strategic and sophisticated … And I think that’s the big story that came out of New Orleans – that the absence of political leadership because the mayor was not strong at all, forced citizens and community organizations and others to come into this vacuum and really push for changes”.