Current Events

Jovansay Bass

Current Event presentation

April 9, 2019

Housing in New Orleans

Source: McGill, Kevin. 2019. Rats, leaks, urine: “Life in New Orleans low-rent housing”.  Nola.com April 4, 2019. https://www.nola.com/news/2019/04/rats-leaks-urine-life-in-new-orleans-low-rent-housing.html

In this article by Kevin McGill, residents are shown in lower income housing in Louisiana struggle with the living conditions even though some places have failed inspection many times. People have to deal with issues like infrastructure, loitering, bugs and insects, and rodents. Louisiana has as much as 12 percent of its estate fail inspections since 1999. I learned that this could be an issue based on race, however, not many people are doing much to fix it.  From this article, the thing that surprised me most was how little things have changed from the times when slavery just had ended and due to African American housing still being so crappy and similar. I agree with this article because I have experienced this situation with and lived in this situation before my family moved into a new house.

Reflection

I believe that I did really good with being knowledgeable about the whole article because I put real research into what I wanted to talk about. I found something that was easily relatable to other people so I felt that was great. I think the best part was when students actually got engaged and actually started asking questions about the reality of the situation. I liked when people started asking me how would I change the situation or what would my plan be to change things. I feel like this assignment makes you get involved with your city and it makes you knowledgeable about things going on around you.