Louisiana’s marginalized ‘see no way out’
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 medications 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 was the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the U.S. mainland, wiping 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, despite warnings not to go back to humid cities without power.
Her apartment was pitch black. Ida had blown in the windows of her upstairs bedroom. Beds, clothing and furniture were 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.
Blunt wants to move, perhaps away from the storm-battered Gulf Coast — somewhere grandson Kamille can resume schooling without worrying about power outages. But she’s far from optimistic.
“This is the end of the road; I can’t go on much longer,” she said. Kamille put down a worksheet to rub his grandma’s leg.
“Don’t cry,” he told her. She managed a tender reply: “Do your ABCs, baby.”
Anti-poverty advocates in Louisiana bemoan links between being Black or brown, living in impoverished areas, and being underserved by governmental disaster response. Available
aid from anti-poverty programs often fails to meet storm victims’ heightened needs.
That’s what happened during Ida, advocates say. In Louisiana, where 17 storms that caused at least $1 billion in damage have hit since 2000, nonprofits see some of the most dire need and starkest divide along socioeconomics lines.
“One of the things that we get really frustrated about,” said Ashley Shelton of the nonprofit Power Coalition for Equality and Justice, “is people saying, ‘Ugh, Louisiana is so resilient.’
“We don’t want to be resilient forever,” she said. “When you force people to live in a constant state of resilience, it’s just oppression. Fix the systems.”
It doesn’t help that Louisiana’s poverty rate is higher than the national average, according to the Census Bureau ‘s American Community Survey. Poverty makes the prospect of relocation precarious for people who were already struggling before disaster struck, said Andreanecia Morris of HousingNOLA, a program of the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance.
“Housing is a foundational issue for all of these
catastrophes,” Morris said. “Our failure to address racial bias, gender bias and poverty bias in housing impedes all of those things.”
After Ida hit, Morris canvassed areas of New Orleans. In the Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood that suffered immensely after Hurricane Katrina, 57-yearold Lationa Kemp found herself cut off from most aid. She’d been relying on neighbors with cars for ice, meals and water. She was without power, with roof leaks and fence damage.
Kemp had disputes with her landlord over the home’s condition. The threat of eviction loomed. Morris wants to get Kemp moved
elsewhere permanently. In the meantime, Morris suggested a cooling center.
“Thank you, baby, but I’m fine,” Kemp told her, explaining that she’d rather stay in a dilapidated home — past experiences make her fear the shelter system. “I’m praying that when I leave out of here, I’m going to a better house.”
Blunt has survived her share of storms — starting with her birth, during the fallout of Hurricane Camille in 1969. As she tells it, her pregnant mother had been moved to a naval medical ship. Today, Blunt chuckles over the coincidence of her grandson’s name, Kamille.