Yours for $79,000

A reflection on skyrocketing cost of living in New Orleans

It’s a Wednesday afternoon after a long day of work, and I’m driving home along the familiar pothole ridden roads of Lakeview, a neighborhood in the city of New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina some 21 months ago. As usual, there is no traffic, though many cars are parked along the sides of streets. My eyes dart around, eager to notice how the appearance of the neighborhood has changed during my 9 hour absence. Change— in the form of house demolitions, dead tree and debris removal, the arrival of new residents, house reconstruction, and the sight of prospective buyers— is evident everyday.

Today a small white house a few blocks away from the apartment we have been renting for the past nine months has been demolished. The deconstruction team started spraying the house with water (to prevent fires) as the jaws of the Caterpillar excavator started its feast early this morning when I left for work; now, as I return, the house is gone. A muddy lot remains.

I’m driving along the familiar pothole ridden roads of Lakeview, on my way home after a long day at work. As usual, there is no traffic, in fact, I am the only car on the road. My eyes dart around, eager to notice if anything has changed in the appearance of the neighborhood during my nine hour absence. Today, the small white house with a fallen tree on top of it has been demolished. Directly across from it, a bright red For Sale sign draws attention to a newly renovated one-level blue house, raised on old-fashioned stilts to aid air circulation and prevent flood damage.

I pull over on the side of the road, step out and look at the For Sale sign. There are fliers attached in a small plastic container. I take one out. House for sale by owner, it reads, listing all the renovations: 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, steel appliances, two-car garage… yours only for: $345,000.

My jaw dropped. The house looks nice, but not that nice— not nearly half a million dollars nice. This is a one-level ranch-style house in a neighborhood that took as much as twelve feet of water in Katrina, and we all know that could happen again. There is little to no yard. It sits next to a rotting shell of a house not yet demolished, and across the street from a muddy lot created just today. Moreover, it’s raised on small platforms (traditionally used to guard against flooding and to ventilate homes) which gives it a less than modern look. Still, I suppose some would consider this place a bargain.

For me, it perfectly illustrates the Post-Katrina real estate dilemma. There are still more unlivable houses in the city than livable ones; demand is much larger than supply. Add to that reality the mantra, “Location, location, location.” Post-Katrina, buyers and homeowners are more concerned than ever with living on “higher ground,” in crime-free neighborhoods. Lakeview is one of the lowest points in the city (it was largely swampland until the mid-1940s) but also one of the safest. And… it is conveniently located to downtown and suburbia.

So let’s say you owned a house in Lakeview before the storm. In the levee breech following Katrina, it was flooded with as much as 8-12 feet of water. Devastated, you wait a little while after the storm and weigh your homeowner options. You can: a) demolish it for several thousand dollars and sell the lot for $120,000 minimum; b) “gut” the damaged part for several thousand dollars and sell the house for much more than you bought it for; c)completely renovate the house and sell it brand-new at an even more exaggerated price; d)you can demolish the house and rebuild a new, grander structure, worth the most of all.

Prospective buyers all over the city are faced with similar predicaments; do you buy a house that needs (major) renovation? Do you buy a house ready-to-move-in? Do you buy a lot and hire contractors to build your house?

Hazim and I just don’t know. With average ranch houses on stilts going for $345,000, we’re just fine waiting and seeing how it all goes (and how the hurricane season flows) from our second floor apartment (well above the Katrina floodlines), which rents for $1000 a month. That’s right, $1000 a month for a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment in a deserted post-Katrina neighborhood, where there’s a rotting purple house with the trademark Katrina spray-painted “X” across the street.

Our street is scenic, all things considering. A few blocks away, not far from the new $365,000 ranch, a two-story modern house is currently being built on the lot next to the crumbling shack featured in the photo. Every time we drive past this shack, with the offering “79,000” spray-painted on its front and sides, we grimace and shake our heads. That house is actually worth $79,000, with the assumption that if you buy it, you’ll knock it down (for several thousand dollars) and then have a lot worth about $120,000. In essence, it’s a good deal for anyone except the neighbors, filled with optimism about their new home until they look out the window and are reminded of the power of flood water and the lack of initiative on the part of the city to remove such structures. Afterall, it’s been almost two years!

With situations and prices like these, it’s easy to fathom just how few are financially and mentally able to come back to this cultural gem of a city, and worse yet, how few newcomers are encouraged to relocate here. After all, the rent is comparable to New York City and the crime is actually worse.

Still, those that are here feel an almost instant communion with each other. You tend to meet a lot of die-hard NOLA pride people, people with bumper stickers like “New Orleans: Proud to Swim Home,” “ReNew Orleans,” and “Eracism” plastered all over their car; people who wouldn’t dare live anywhere else.

I feel like we are becoming those people. We are now connected to the plight here—even as locals who didn’t weather any part of “the storm.” We chose to move here, we choose to teach here, we catch beads and dance to jazz here, and we encourage people to come here, please. We don’t want to leave. But the cost of housing is making that decision pretty darn expensive—especially when you consider other factors, like the cost of flood insurance (doubled), and the fact that the electric and gas company, Entergy, has a monopoly across the area; it cost us $350 to heat our small apartment in February.

We’ve been here since September 2006 and keep waiting for the prices to go down, but they just keep going up. Still, we are doing our best to be optimistic. After all, these inflated prices have to come down at some point, right? Sure, they will— just as soon as more livable housing comes available and more people decide to take the chance and call NOLA home.