From COVID-19 to Ida: Marginalized losing hope
CHALMETTE, LA. >> Darkness set in for Natasha Blunt well before Hurricane Ida knocked out power across Louisiana.
Months into the pandemic, she faced eviction in New Orleans. She lost her banquet hall job. She suffered two strokes. And she struggled to help her 5-yearold grandson keep up with schoolwork at home.
Like nearly a fifth of Louisiana’s population — disproportionately represented by Black residents and women — Blunt, 51, lives below the poverty line, and the pandemic’s economic fallout sent her to the brink. With the help of an aid group and grassroots donors, she moved to Chalmette, a few miles outside New Orleans, and started settling into a two-bedroom apartment. Using a cane and taking a slew of medicine since her strokes, she couldn’t return to work. But federal benefits kept food in the fridge for the most part.
Then came Hurricane Ida.
Ida wiped out Louisiana’s power grid before marching up the coast and sparking devastating Northeast flooding. Among survivors of the deadly storm, the toll has been deepest in many ways for people like Blunt — those who already lost livelihoods to the pandemic in a region of longstanding racial and social inequality. Advocates say the small wins they’d made for marginalized communities and people of color since the pandemic began have been quickly wiped out.
“The government is really disconnected from what it’s like for people who have little to no safety net,” said Maggie Harris, a grassroots organizer who created a fundraiser for Blunt. “You marginalize people, you don’t pay them enough, they have health problems and aren’t insured, you offer little cash assistance or rent assistance, and you allow them to be evicted.
“The message that people get is their lives are expendable.”
As Ida approached, Blunt evacuated to a hotel. She could afford only a short stay and had to return to Chalmette that had no power.
Her apartment was pitch black. Ida had blown in the windows of her upstairs bedroom. Everything was waterlogged. She’d spent her last dollars getting to the hotel.
“It’s like I’ve got to start all over again,” Blunt said, sobbing as she surveyed her first floor, where she sleeps since the bedroom is uninhabitable. “Every time I get a step ahead, I get pushed back down. And I’m tired. I don’t see no way out.”
Blunt faces eviction for the second time in a year. Her only hope, she said, is Social Security and other disability benefits. She applied before Ida, she said, but hasn’t heard back — safety net programs are often disrupted in disasters’ wakes.