Gentrification in the Ninth Ward

By Missy Wilkinson

In New Orleans's Upper Ninth ward, snuggled between the levee and leafy Poland Avenue, there's a new-ish crepe restaurant. Its menu of gluten-free and vegan options caters to newcomers in the 'hood, as does a large pastel mural delineating the city's neighborhoods. From Arabi to Hollygrove, from Audubon to Venetian Isles, all 73 official neighborhoods are depicted here.

Even though 73 designations might seem like overkill for a city that boasts only 391,000 residents, and even though their boundaries are points of contention for longtime residents, there's no denying that New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods. These enclaves differ drastically in terms of architecture — the lakefront is lined with mid-century-modern houses, while the Irish Channel bristles with shotgun homes, for example. Several hundred years ago, their residents literally spoke different languages.

ST. ROCH. Crowds gather for Sunday brunch at the St. Roch Market in New Orleans a few months after it reopened in 2015 following a $3.6 million renovation. The market had been flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Photo by Max Becherer/AP photo.

Today, one's neighborhood functions as both a social hub and a source of identity. It's not unusual for New Orleanians to spend their entire lives in a few square miles, as is the case for Edwin Griffin, a Ninth Ward native who grew up in the Desire Projects.

"I love this city," says Griffin, whose lively eyes and lean cheekbones are framed by a hoary beard. "I was born and raised here. I didn't even leave for Katrina."

However, when Hurricane Katrina submerged 80 percent of the city, ushered in a wave of newcomers eager to assist with rebuilding, and forced out many long-term residents, rapid change came to a city notorious for resisting it. The storm kick-started the gentrification trend that's swept almost every major U.S. city and transformed many New Orleans neighborhoods — perhaps none so drastically as Griffin's home turf, the Ninth Ward.

But in New Orleans — a city improbably perched on a shifting alluvial plain, built below sea level, bifurcated by waterways and industrial maritime traffic, fixed in the crosshairs of Atlantic hurricanes, and wracked by poverty, racism, and the lingering effects of slavery — gentrification is just one symptom of the powers that influence habitation.

To understand how those factors have shaped the Ninth Ward, it's necessary to go back hundreds of years.

New Orleans's first suburb

New Orleans is nicknamed the Crescent City because of the shape the Mississippi River makes around the French Quarter, the historic city core. Walk downriver along the river's spine, and you'll follow the path of the city's development as you approach the Ninth Ward.

In the early 19th century, sugarcane plantations dotted a rural landscape there. Distilleries, schools, churches, convents, warehouses, and scattered residences sprung up in the unzoned area, and from 1850 to 1949, the Desire Street streetcar made its storied route through the neighborhood. White, black, and mixed-race Creole New Orleanians and European immigrants flocked to the working-class suburb.

"The 'front streets' by the river were more white (ethnic white, to use an antiquated phrase) and predominantly working class to middle class, whereas the back streets, in the lower elevation areas closer to the former backswamp, were more African American and a notch lower economically," said Richard Campanella, senior professor of practice in architecture and geography at Tulane University, in an emailed interview.

Today, those demarcations have calcified, spurred by white flight in the 1960s and the Industrial Canal, which divides the Upper and Lower Ninth Wards. The 5.5-mile waterway connecting the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain (a brackish estuary draining to the Gulf of Mexico), the Industrial Canal was dredged in 1918. However, the Industrial Canal cut the neighborhood in two, creating a physical and psychological barrier between the Lower Ninth Ward (so named because it's farther downriver) and the Upper Ninth Ward. Hemmed in by the river, the canal, and Bayou Bienvenue, with only three bridges connecting it to the rest of the city, the Lower Ninth Ward still exists in relative isolation.

"Separating the Ninth Ward into upper and lower made it really hard on people on the other side," says John Koeferl, chair of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Organization and a former planner for the Regional Planning Commission, who bought a Lower Ninth Ward shotgun house for $33,500 in 1985 and raised three children there. "They didn't have the political clout to get any perks out of the situation. It was trouble living over there, and property values were depressed."

Bywater

A double shotgun house in New Orleans's "gentrification ground zero" neighborhood. Photo by Matthew D. White/Vwpics /Alamy Stock Photo.

$386 per square foot

The average list price for a house in good to excellent condition in Bywater

$196 per square foot

The average list price for a house north of St. Claude Avenue in the less trendy area adjacent to Bywater

$173 per square foot

The average list price in Holy Cross, the riverfront neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward

The four Ninth Wards

St. Claude Avenue, a busy east–west thoroughfare, and the Industrial Canal, which runs north and south, effectively divide the Ninth Ward into quadrants, each with wildly different degrees of economic activity. Ground zero for gentrification, the trendy, rapidly developing Bywater neighborhood, exists in the southeast quadrant. Directly to its north is a neighborhood some optimists call "new Bywater," but most people just refer to it as the Upper Ninth Ward, or simply "the other side of St. Claude." That neighborhood is much rougher. The city's crime map shows a "new Bywater" pockmarked by assaults, break-ins, and other violations. Bywater, by comparison, is relatively unblemished.

As one moves farther inland from the river, the crime rate increases and property values plummet. The population shifts from predominately white to predominately black, in a continuation of the old pattern Campanella observed. Because of redlining — racially discriminatory lending practices by banks — African Americans were prohibited from purchasing homes on higher ground.

"Historically, New Orleanians have valued higher ground," says Bart Gillis, a real estate agent who specializes in historic districts and owns a house in the Lower Ninth Ward. "The oldest, most desirable houses are on high ground and lower houses are considered less than. You pay more in flood insurance and less for the house in lower elevations."

Gillis pulled data from the Multiple Listing Service, which points out, anecdotally, some of the difference. The average list price for a house in good to excellent condition in Bywater is $386 a square foot. A similar house located north of St. Claude Avenue is $196 per square foot. In Holy Cross, the riverfront neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward, the list price is $173 per square foot.

And in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood north of Holy Cross, only one property was for sale, which Gillis said wasn't representative of the market. But it does represent the sparse population in the Lower Ninth Ward — a direct result of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures.

Katrina's effect on gentrification

Even prior to Hurricane Katrina's landfall on August 29, 2005, the rumblings of gentrification were palpable. Cheap prices, historic architecture, and proximity to the French Quarter attracted low-to moderate-income home buyers to the Ninth Ward. After Katrina, residents were forced out, unable or unwilling to return and restore their homes. Those who remained were left scrabbling for high ground: the "sliver by the river," the natural levee by the Mississippi, where Bywater and Holy Cross are located.

"The first wave of rapid change came post- Katrina, with our footprint of usable housing flooded out across the city," says Rhonda K. Findley, a local business owner and activist who bought her Ninth Ward home in 2004. "People all over the city relocated by force, not by choice."

Neither Bywater nor Holy Cross are considered floodplains because of their high elevations, so many home owners didn't have flood insurance in 2005. Had the Industrial Canal not breached, the Lower Ninth Ward would not have flooded. But breach it did, and with such force that many homes were ripped from their foundations. The extent of the devastation, coupled with low values, made it difficult for Lower Ninth Ward residents to return. According to The Times-Picayune, nearly 9,000 home owners opted to sell their houses to the government through its federally funded Road Home program.

"There were three times as many participants in the Lower Ninth Ward as there were in the Upper Ninth Ward when it came to property buyouts," says Seth C. Knudsen, director of real estate development and planning for the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.

But this isn't the only reason the low-income — and predominately African American — population wasn't able to return to the Lower Ninth Ward.

"The amount of rebuilding money you could get depended on the value of the home prior to the storm, not the cost of rebuilding," says Brian Luckett, a Ninth Ward resident, board member for Neighbors First Bywater, and public health statistician at Tulane University. "That's why you see so many abandoned homes in the Lower Ninth — people wanted to rebuild, but the money wasn't there, and they didn't have insurance to afford it."

City Park

Photo courtesy Grow Dat.

A former golf course in City Park has been transformed into Grow Dat Youth Farm, the city's biggest urban farm. The urban farming and leadership program teaches local youth how to sustainably grow produce that is then sold to Community Supported Agriculture groups, local restaurants, and markets.

A few miles away, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority funded the ReFresh Project, a 60,000-square-foot food hub meant to stimulate growth in the Broad Street commercial corridor and to improve access to fresh food. It's anchored by a Whole Foods — which is one of Grow Dat's customers — and Liberty's Kitchen, Tulane University's Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, and offices for several nonprofits.

Growing the Green 2017

The mission of Grow Dat Youth Farm is to nurture a diverse group of young leaders through the meaningful work of growing food. youtu.be/m8DUSqqvy-o

'Chicken or egg'

Today, the Lower Ninth Ward has less than half of its pre-Katrina population. This creates what Brenda Breaux, executive director at NORA, describes as a "chicken-or-egg" problem.

"There has always been the ongoing discussion as to number of rooftops required to support some level of mid-scale commercial revitalization in the Lower Ninth Ward," Breaux says. "Having a critical mass of population to support the neighborhood services in order to have a sustainable neighborhood is key."

Only one major retailer has built in the Lower Ninth ward since Hurricane Katrina — a CVS pharmacy that celebrated its grand opening in 2016 in true New Orleans style, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a brass band.

"There has been some spark of community revitalization with the placement of a new CVS," Breaux says. "We're hoping to see a small-scale grocer, and the community would like to see that as well."

In the more densely populated and gentrified Bywater, the problem isn't too little development, but too much. Residents oppose upzoning that allows more intensive commercial land use, thus raising the price of the lots, Luckett says. The owner of a Chartres Street lot near the entrance of a riverfront park bought it in 2013 for $20 per square foot, then sold it for $130 per square foot after new zoning went into effect. The lot is unaffordable for the average home owner, but attractive to condo developers.

"It's gentrification policy, when you have expensive luxury condo blocks along the river," Luckett says. "It pushes the most vulnerable people out of these neighborhoods and farther into lower-lying parts of town."

Preserving affordable housing

However, Breaux and Knudsen say NORA has made major strides in preserving affordable housing in the Ninth Ward and beyond.

"We provided construction financing and some project and home buyer subsidies for 54 units built in the Lower Ninth Ward, 44 with Make it Right, and 10 with the Neighborhood Empowerment Association," Knudsen says. "Starting in 2015, we had another affordable housing initiative called Lower 9th Ward Development Initiative, which made lots available for affordable housing to be built on."

Elsewhere in the Ninth Ward, NORA's Neighborhood Stabilization Program funded the Habitat for Humanity Musicians' Village, which consists of 72 single-family homes. NORA targeted areas in need of investment and repair citywide, counting St. Claude Avenue in the Ninth Ward, Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard in Central City, and Broad Street in Mid-City as corridors for commercial revitalization. From Cafe Reconcile, a teaching restaurant for at-risk youths, to the Growing Green program, which allows residents to plant gardens on unused lots, the organization has revitalized New Orleans neighborhoods in creative and often unexpected ways.

And Breaux sees in the Lower Ninth Ward a unique opportunity for redevelopment.

"The Lower Ninth provides an urban planner's dream as to determining how it might look," she says. "It's an inner-city neighborhood, but one with large lots, greenery, and green space, so we get a sense of suburbia while being in an urban area," she says. "Individuals have made conscious decisions to be there, and they want to invest. Now we need to figure out how to attract the next wave of home owners who want to be in that neighborhood."

Missy Wilkinson is a Louisiana native who has called New Orleans home since 1998. She writes community news for the New Orleans Advocate. Previously, she worked at Gambit, New Orleans's alternative newsweekly, as special sections editor.