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Much has been written about the relationship between African-Americans and Latinos and the tensions that arose when they were forced to compete for the same limited resources in a post-Katrina New Orleans. But little is known about what the two groups have in common—and how those shared experiences, attitudes, and goals could bring them together to help rebuild their community.
In late 2008, Oxfam America commissioned Bright Moments, who subcontracted with Dr. Silas Lee & Associates, to conduct a survey of the racial attitudes of African-Americans and Latinos living in New Orleans. "Building Common Ground" is a summary of those findings. The purpose of the survey was to measure how African-Americans and Latinos rated the quality of their lives, race relations with each other, experiences with discrimination, perceptions of each other, support for an African-American and Latino alliance, and effective strategies for such alliances.
The results reveal that the majority of African-Americans and Latinos agreed that they face similar issues of discrimination3 and agreed that it's important for their two groups to put aside their differences and work on overcoming those issues. It is on this common ground that we seek to build.
This publication is available in English and Spanish.
]]>The new study, Building Common Ground, reveals vast similarities in the post-Katrina experiences of two groups often considered separately in discussions on hurricane recovery and rebuilding. While the study revealed many of the tensions and misconceptions that existed between the two groups, it demonstrated that there is very fertile ground upon which African Americans and Latinos can forge new relationships to combat some of the challenges they face together.
The results of the study will be presented Tuesday at 6 pm at Xavier University and will be followed by a panel discussion. Lydia Camarillo, Vice President of Southwest Voter Registration Education Project will deliver a keynote address following opening remarks from Xavier University president Dr. Norman Francis. Members of the panel include:
In one key finding, 83 percent of African Americans and 86 percent of Latinos said building alliances are important to achieving social and economic equity in New Orleans.
"Too often we talk about tensions between African-Americans and Latinos," said Ilana Scherl, Gulf Coast Field Representative for Oxfam America. "This study demonstrates that African Americans and Latinos face common challenges which limit their opportunities to succeed in society."
The study's results were driven from a survey conducted in late 2008 by Dr. Silas Lee & Associates of African Americans and Latinos living in New Orleans. Hundreds of residents were interviewed and participated in focus groups to gauge the issues and concerns affecting these communities.
The study found striking similarities, including:
The report also identified some of the obstacles and opportunities for working together on the issues both groups experience:
Most importantly, both groups recognized the importance of working together on common issues, with one focus group participant saying "We have to be here, and we have to get along. How can we start the dialogue?"
"This survey goes a long way to deconstructing some of the myths that have sprung up after Katrina," said Dr. Silas Lee. "Contrary to popular belief, significant percentages of both African Americans and Latinos not only believe that the two groups can and should work together, but are willing to take steps to continue to the process of recovery together now."
"Building Common Ground: How shared attitudes and concerns can create alliances between African Americans and Latinos in a post-Katrina New Orleans," was published by Oxfam America. Read the full text of the report and detailed results of the survey.
]]>"War, drought, and malnutrition are thrusting Somalia towards even greater catastrophe. Tens of thousands are on the move, hundreds of thousands are displaced, and more than three million are in dire need of aid," said Hassan Noor, Oxfam's humanitarian coordinator for Somalia. Noor just returned from Afgooye, a town several miles south of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.
Many of the 70,000 people who have fled Mogadishu in the past few weeks are now sheltering in Afgooye, as part of the approximately 400,000 people made homeless by years of conflict who are now taking refuge in Afgooye. Working through local partners, Oxfam is providing shelter and mosquito nets to recently arrived families, and has expanded its water and sanitation system to aid an additional 84,000 displaced people. Oxfam is now supplying water to over 200,000 people in Afgooye, and plans to increase its efforts further in the coming months. Additionally, the agency's local partner organizations will soon begin providing specialist care and food to 9,500 of the most severely malnourished children and mothers in Mogadishu itself.
"Living conditions in Afgooye are some of the worst I have ever seen," said Noor. "I couldn't see a single shelter fit for human beings, and thousands of people have nothing to sleep under or protect them[selves] from the searing heat and heavy rains. I saw sick children lying on the floor with diarrhea and disease. I saw a young girl who had been shot in the head, fleeing with her family. People told me they expect the situation to get even worse in the next few weeks—more people are going to be killed or forced to flee for their lives, and the humanitarian need here is going to keep rising."
Oxfam warned that if the newly erupted fighting continues, it will become even more difficult for aid agencies to respond to the escalating needs. Somalia is already one of the most dangerous places in the world to deliver humanitarian assistance, with 40 aid workers killed since the beginning of 2008. The agency called on all parties involved with the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law, and allow for the safe provision of aid to all who need it.
"Local Somali aid workers, who are working tirelessly to get help to thousands of people, need support from the rest of the world. The recent fighting has made the humanitarian crisis in Somalia even worse, at a time when nearly half the country's population is already in desperate need of aid. Families are struggling to cope with a lack of food and basic services, and the worst drought Somalia has seen in more than a decade," said Noor.
]]>What is most surprising is not all of Mississippi is poor, or last in every development category. There are regions in Mississippi that rank on par with the richest state in America (Connecticut), and there are regions that rank on par with the least developed countries in the world.
This study illuminates the sharp disparities in opportunity between regions and between races within the state. The report forces us to acknowledge who is thriving, and who is being shut out. It is clear that we cannot forge ahead while leaving so many people behind.
"In Mississippi, where we work with 13 state and local organizations such as the NAACP, this report clearly illustrates the conditions residents were struggling with even prior to the hurricanes of 2005—limited access to education, lower incomes, and shorter lives—and argues for a comprehensive solution for recovery," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America.
Given the profound economic and social challenges facing Mississippi, and more broadly working families in the US today, this report comes at a crucial time to help policy makers use precious resources to ensure all Mississippians have access to the American Dream.
]]>Its danger—splashed across satellite images in spirals of angry red and yellow—could not be discounted. But still. They had all just returned from one grueling evacuation. Could they turn around and leave home again?
That's the question that haunts so many of the preparedness meetings Whitney attends in her role as a community organizer and executive assistant for one of Oxfam America's local partners, Bayou Interfaith Shared Community Organizing, Inc., or BISCO. And it's the question for which there is no real answer.
"A lot of people took the money they use to pay bills and used it for evacuation costs," said Whitney. "Now they're back home and their bills are due and they don't know what to do and they hear they have to leave again? Not in this life time."
It's hard to say which worry is worse for Louisiana residents: the possibility of a second storm or the evacuation that may precede it. Evacuations are costly, exhausting, and disruptive on many levels.
With Gustav, Whitney was lucky. She and her teen-aged son, who has Down syndrome, got an early start—to avoid getting stuck on the highway—and found a welcome refuge in the home of Whitney's sister in Tallahassee, Florida. They stayed about a week, avoiding the hotel bills that many other families have to swallow.
On average, what does it cost a family of four to evacuate?
"$250 a day, easy," said Whitney. "They're going to burn at least one tank of gas to get there and one to get back—so about $120 for fuel. And $125 to $130 a day for a hotel. Plus three meals a day. That's about $100 dollars. And those are the bare necessities."
Add it all up, and you've taken a big bite out of any family's budget. Factor in the disruptions—the missed days of school, the lost income from work—and the dread of multiple evacuations becomes clear.
"People don't have the wherewithal—financial, emotional—to get out," said Whitney. "Back-to-back storms, people say ugh. They're not going to leave. It's too hard."
Convincing some people to join even the first evacuation of the season can be a challenge, said Whitney. And that's particularly true for old-timers who have weathered other storms, even severe ones such as Hurricane Betsy in 1965. That storm, with gusts reported up to 160 miles per hour, left 75 people in the US dead.
But Whitney pointed out that some of the natural defenses that once helped to keep people safe—the coastal islands and marshlands that absorbed some of the energy from earlier storms—have eroded. And waterways built by oil companies in recent decades now funnel dangerous amounts of water inland during violent storms.
"The elderly don't realize those things," said Whitney, adding that it took the graphic details from a study on storm surge to convince her own mother about the wisdom of evacuating in advance of Gustav. Public awareness programs that BISCO is promoting feature work done by the Louisiana State University Agriculture Center and the LA Sea Grant Program. It shows what could have happened to Thibodaux if Hurricane Rita, which struck three years ago, had hit just a little west of where Gustav did. Despite being the highest part of Lafourche parish, a large portion of the city would have been under water, some of it five or six feet deep, Whitney said. Lafourche Parish would have had extensive flooding and most of neighboring Terrebonne Parish would also have been flooded. BISCO has been working hard to educate the public about the danger of storm surges—and to pay attention to more than just the wind speed of top-category storms.
What's the solution to all of this?
Improving the safety of communities would help, said Whitney, and that way perhaps fewer evacuations would be necessary. Healthy marshes along the coastline are one of keys to that safety, she added.
"Man has destroyed that protection and now we're forced to get out to survive," Whitney said. "Before, people could prepare. They could board up, stock up on supplies. They knew how to protect themselves from the furor of nature because nature itself provided protection."
Restoring the marshland would restore some of that security, said Whitney.
"The technology is there, but the political will is not," she said. And that's where BISCO comes in. Grounded by generations of families who have made southern Louisiana their home, the organization is determined to change the political landscape.
"Our goal is to work with communities and networks across the country to help build the will to save the coastline," said Whitney.
]]>"At least a third of the houses we've seen have sustained wind damage," says Oxfam's Kenny Rae, who has visited many of the towns south of Thibodaux, Louisiana.
If Hurricane Gustav visited our home towns, most of us would consider it a major disaster, but in coastal Louisiana, Katrina set the bar of dread so high that this level of destruction is a huge relief.
Yet, when it comes to questions of poverty and vulnerability, Gustav picked up where Katrina left off. An Oxfam assessment team touring the most troubled areas is finding that solid homes held up relatively well in this storm, and that the worst destruction was visited on trailers and more vulnerable houses.
The Native American community of Isle de Jean Charles, which is located in what may be the most exposed location in the hard-hit parish of Terrebonne, has experienced "terrible damage," according to Oxfam's Kenny Rae. "Houses have been ripped off their foundations. We saw one leaning on a levee."
Since the hurricanes of 2005, Oxfam America has been working with a network of local partners on the Gulf Coast, focusing on poor communities whose needs have fallen through the gaps in the government response. Hurricane Gustav is a new chapter in the same story.
"Oxfam will work with our partners in the area to ensure that these communities receive the federal funds they need to rebuild their homes and their communities," said Minor Sinclair, who directs Oxfam America's development programs in the United States.
"We'll work on ensuring that temporary housing assistance gets to those who need it most—and quickly. And that rebuilding dollars prioritize low-income communities."
But first, the short-term needs. Damaged roofs, for example, need to be covered quickly with tarps before rain destroys home interiors. And community aid providers have their own problems: many have to repair their offices immediately or find new ones. As partner organizations begin to gear up their work, Oxfam is standing by to support them for projects that can't wait.
"Thousands of Louisiana families are returning home today to find their homes damaged by Gustav," says Sinclair. "I hope that this country's generous spirit—whether through FEMA or through private donations—continues to stand with these families in their time of need."
]]>Although the force of the storms was an act of nature, what the American people have since witnessed—an uneven and often incompetent recovery effort—is the result of deliberate human acts. If we refuse to address this as a nation, it will go down in history not only as a failure of leadership, but also as a failure to hold our government accountable.
Two fundamental indicators, housing and jobs, provide stark proof of the stalled recovery. Full recovery is possible only when affordable homes are coupled with secure, decent jobs. Without quality jobs and affordable housing, low- and moderate income families are unable to return to their former lives. Decent wages allow people to return home and recreate vibrant communities by providing the necessary workforce to rebuild the region.
The situation grows increasingly critical, but despite challenges, there is a way forward. We face a historic election; the next president of the US must guarantee a just, equitable, and complete recovery. America must take immediate action to ensure that people struggling to rebuild their communities get the support that their hard work and innovation demand.
]]>But with fuel prices rocketing and dock amenities still in short supply, making a living from the ocean has become next to impossible for the couple. They depend on their social security checks and Geneva's schoolteacher's pension.
"I ain't made a profit in three years," said Joseph. "The boat supports itself, but that's it. It's so hard to make a living."
Disaster has compounded that challenge for the Rosses and countless others on the Gulf Coast. But they are not alone. Millions of Americans face similar struggles trying to earn a living, to stay healthy, and to educate their children in a country where the American dream has become more myth than reality for many people.
That truth emerges—sharp and stunning—from the pages of a new report that, for the first time, provides a human development rank for each state, congressional district, and ethnic group in the US. Called "The Measure of America," and supported by Oxfam America, the report takes tools long used to analyze the complexities of developing countries and applies them to one of the richest nations in the world. The report was written by Sarah Burd-Sharps, Kristen Lewis, and Eduardo Borges Martsin. Its goal is to deliver a clear picture of what life is really like for many of the 305 million Americans in a country where the average income among the top fifth of US households in 2006 was almost 15 times that of those in the lowest fifth—or $168,170 versus $11,352.
"The American Dream has drifted beyond the each of many, while fading from view among others," say the authors in their executive summary. "To reinvigorate it, to make it real for millions of middle-class and poor Americans, the stagnation and decline of middle and low incomes must be reversed, and opportunity must once again reach down to the lowest rungs of society."
That mission—to give poor people a fair shot at opportunity; to ensure their basic rights and dignity—lies at the heart of Oxfam America's US regional programs in the southeast. One of them is concentrating on helping the Gulf Coast recover from the devastation caused by back-to-back hurricanes in 2005.The second program seeks to reform the food system so that those who produce the food that feeds our nation—the low-wage farm and meat-processing workers—can secure their rights to decent work and improved conditions in their communities.
When Katrina and Rita barreled into the Gulf Coast, the damage they left was enormous—and indiscriminate. Regardless of their means, everyone in the paths of the storms got slammed. But not everyone has benefitted from the multi-billion-dollar recovery—funded by American taxpayers—that slowly has been restoring what the wind and water swept away.
In Mississippi and Louisiana, many of the region's poorest residents continue to struggle toward recovery. The persistent inattention of state and federal policy makers to meeting the needs of the most vulnerable people has compounded the storms' destruction.
Walk through storm-battered Biloxi, Mississippi, and the disparities in the recovery become clear. Remodeled hotels glimmer and luxury condominiums have sprouted just blocks from narrow streets where many people still live in temporary trailers.
"We need affordable housing: not projects, but homes that people can pay for on a living wage in Mississippi," says Sharon Hanshaw, a lifelong resident of the city who longs for the old neighborhoods to come alive again. She's executive director of Coastal Women for Change, an Oxfam partner organization founded following the disaster. Its goal is to empower local women to participate in the recovery. "New houses mean new life."
After the hurricanes hit, Oxfam's first response was to work with its local partners and provide emergency assistance to people. That response has now grown into a five-year, $12-million program focused on Mississippi and Louisiana. Working through local organizations, the program's goal is two-fold. The first is to ensure that the regio's most vulnerable people have access to safe and affordable housing. And the second objective is to ensure that workers in the hospitality industry—including those employed by restaurants, hotels, and casinos, as well as the construction workers now rebuilding those facilities—can land jobs that will allow them to achieve a decent standard of living.
By working with local communities to understand, demand, and ensure their rights, Oxfam's objective is to influence the outcome of the recovery and to help bring equity to the country's poorest states.
To the authors of "The Measure of America," it's a job that will require an investment of both will and financial resources on the scale of the Marshall Plan—a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction effort that helped to rebuild Western Europe following World War II. According to the report, about 12 million people live in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and together their three states have the lowest human development index scores of any region in the country—and that was before the consequences of the storm were factored in.
"On key measures of human development, the region today is at the level of development the country as a whole experienced 18 years ago. It has the nation's lowest levels of educational attainment, shortest life expectancy, and lowest incomes," say the authors.
"A Gulf Coast Reconstruction Plan, encompassing far-reaching humanitarian, social, political, and economic aims would expand choice and opportunity for the people of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi."
Expanding choice and opportunity for farm and meat processing workers is also going to require some far-reaching change. Oxfam America's program to improve conditions for some of the country's lowest-paid workers in the rural southeast employs a number of tactics including consumer campaigns that pressure employers to offer workers better pay.
"By working at multiple levels, the program addresses the issues of declining wages, low union density, gender and racial discrimination, high rates of occupational injury, and abuse due to the immigration status of workers," said Guadalupe Gamboa, Oxfam's worker rights program officer.
Farm workers, of whom there are an estimated three million, are among the poorest laborers in the country. Half of all individuals earn less than $7,500 a year, and half of farm worker families earn less than $10,000 a year—wages that are well below the US poverty threshold. Most workers get paid on a piece-rate basis, and because of their poverty they often live in overcrowded and substandard housing that routinely violates federal regulations. Food processing workers—there are about 800,000 of them in the US—face similar stressful economic and social conditions.
Besides poverty wages, both groups of laborers face dangerous working environments. Accidents and exposure to toxic pesticides are among the regular risks for farm workers. Meat packers are often forced to work at blinding speeds using razor-sharp knives, risking accidents and cumulative stress injuries.
But momentum for change is building. Oxfam-supported campaigns against some of the biggest names in the food industry—Yum! Brands (owner of Taco Bell), McDonald's, Burger King—have coincided with the public's increasing concern about food safety, motivating people to mobilize in support of farm workers. All three companies have agreed to pay some of the field hands in their supply chain a higher wage.
Building on those successes, Oxfam is now supporting a major campaign to organize 5,000 workers at Smithfield's Tar Heel, North Carolina pork processing plant—the largest of its kind in the country.
"Low-wage workers in the rural southeast, particularly people of color, immigrants, and women working in agriculture and food systems have a right to decent work and improved conditions," said Gamboa. "And we'll know they've secured that right when we see their increased power through collective bargaining, fair compensation, and worker leadership."
]]>"It's a victory," said Kimberly Miller, a state policy specialist for Oxfam America. "It's always a good thing when you see money going into housing needs."
But it's a victory tempered by reality. Advocates say there are still enormous unmet housing needs and $100 million will hardly begin to cover them. Further, the allocation pales in comparison to the $600 million in federal grants the state intends to spend on redevelopment of the Port of Gulfport—money that was originally earmarked for housing restoration.
Late last week, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave its blessing to Mississippi's plan to apply that $600 million in grants to the port, the third busiest container port in the Gulf of Mexico. The decision deeply disappointed housing advocates who have fought hard since September to convince HUD and Mississippi officials that people need help more than the port does.
Shortly before HUD released its decision, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour announced the $100 million allocation for workforce housing—a move some said was timed to quiet complaints that low-income residents weren't getting a fair share of the federal housing reconstruction dollars.
"It's not that we're asking for a second helping," said Roberta Avila, director of the Interfaith Disaster Task Force. "We're saying look, there's this huge unmet need and our state can do better than it has been."
Barbour has said the port restoration is crucial to the state's economy and essential to the revitalization of the region. The Mississippi Development Authority has predicted port improvements will generate 5,400 maritime-related jobs by 2015.
But housing advocates say the needs of people who have lost their homes must come first in this recovery.
"Nobody down here is against the port expansion, but not at the expense of people's housing," said James Crowell, president of the Biloxi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). "There's a long way to go in terms of housing and we're at the peak of a recession and that may cause even more problems with rebuilding homes. We just feel this is the wrong decision at the wrong time."
In an analysis presented in December, the Biloxi-based STEPS Coalition noted that the state's current plans to restore housing fell woefully short of the need, particularly for renters. Of the 37,105 storm-damaged units affordable to people earning very low incomes, the state expects to replace just 5,700 of them says STEPS. All together, the organization says unmet housing needs total nearly $1.9 billion.
"Restoration of affordable housing is absolutely vital to coast recovery," said Barbour in announcing the $100 million workforce housing program. He said he expects the money will produce between 2,500 and 4,000 housing units. In September, the Mississippi Development Authority issued a request for construction proposals. The state plans to announce the first round of winners toward the end of February.
But Mississippi's long history of marginalizing its poorest citizens has left some people unimpressed with the governor's offering.
"Virtually, we have a plantation economy here—since before the Civil War—where the wealthy make money off poor people's labors," said Sister Martha Milner, citing the huge difference in dollars for the port versus what will go toward workforce housing. A housing advocate, Milner represents the Sisters of Mercy on Mississippi's Gulf Coast.
"The community that's hurting is that community that's always marginalized—the low-income workers," she said. "His concern is not for those folks—even though he talks about it. That's not where his concern is."
So where does all of this leave the people who are still camped out in trailers or have yet to return to the state because they can't find affordable housing?
They are disillusioned, depressed, and angry, said the NAAACP's Crowell.
But housing advocates are not done fighting yet. Some are turning to US Representatives Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) for hope. The legislators, who are, respectively, chairman of the Committee on Financial Services and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, have indicated they would be willing to hold hearings on how the federal recovery money is being spent on the coast.
Diane Yentel, a policy analyst for the National Low Income Housing Coalition said that only 23 percent of the $5.4 billion in community development block grants the state received has gone to low- and moderate-income people. Normally, 70 percent of the block grants are designated for those income groups. But because of the scope of the storm, Mississippi and Louisiana both got permission to reduce that figure to 50 percent.
Congressional hearings on where those grants have gone could draw attention to Mississippi's continuing need, and set the stage for a supplemental budget request.
"This issue in Mississippi is the impetus for the hearing, but we're hopeful they'll take a broader look at community development block grant spending throughout the Gulf Coast," said Yentel.
]]>Miss Betty will be the first recipient of the Lift House, a hurricane-resistant home designed in collaboration with architecture students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Terrebonne Readiness and Assistance Coalition (TRAC), and Oxfam America. Lift House prototypes could soon dot each of the bayous of Terrebonne Parish—and maybe sprout beyond them, too.
A groundbreaking, held in mid-January, capped months of design work, student and staff visits to the parish, and the hard-earned permitting required to get any new idea off the ground. On that cold gray day, on the concrete foundation where her house once stood at the base of a levee, Miss Betty found herself laughing as Reinhard Goethert, the MIT professor leading the project, handed her a present.
"We thought we'd give you a kite "to take advantage of the altitude," he said.
They were flying high at last.
The design for the house reflects both the local style and the need for the structure to withstand the assault of howling winds and hurricane flooding.
"They look like they belong down here," said Peg Case, TRAC's executive director. "We took great care in making sure MIT understood that outside is important." People in the south do much of their living outdoors on their decks.
"I assume this house will be here and that won't," added local architect E.A. Angelloz, standing on the site of the new house and pointing at its neighbor, a low-to-the-ground bungalow of indeterminate age. "Another thing people don't take into account is shifting debris. By being up, you avoid the debris. The stuff will move underneath it as opposed to through it."
And the piling foundation, designed by local engineer Joseph Kowle, will ensure that the house stays put when all that water and debris does slop by.
Materials specified for the Lift House include a cladding of Hardie Board—a fiber board impregnated with cement that is water proof and won't dent when projectiles come hurtling at it. A broad deck that wraps around the house and a roof with a generous overhang provide plenty of outdoor living space and a comfortable amount of shade.
"We're very sensitive to making sure we don't waste energy," said Goethert, who directs MIT's Special Interest Group in Urban Settlement, or SIGUS. The house will be well-insulated, well-ventilated, and made from durable materials constructed in a way that will help them last, he said. That overhanging roof, for instance, not only protects people from the sun, but it will protect the exterior walls from heavy downpours.
Some of the ideas incorporated in the design are indigenous to the area, said student Zachary Lamb, such as the large volume of attic space. The cushion of air inside serves as a natural insulator helping to keep the house below it cool.
Elevating houses was once more commonly practiced in the region than it is now, Lamb added, noting that many of the area's older houses were built off the ground. When slab foundations became the new hot thing half a century ago, Louisianans started to build them, too, setting aside their more sensible traditions—and paying the price.
MIT's original idea was to build the Lift House on the ground where teams of volunteers could work on it easily, and then hoist the completed structure onto its pilings. Affordability is one of the key objectives of the design, and, to achieve that, construction will depend heavily on volunteer labor. Goethert also points out that building the house on the ground and lifting it later is safer for everyone who might work on it.
But with this first prototype, TRAC plans to hire professional builders who traditionally work from the pilings up. Volunteers will be recruited later to help finish the interiors.
The immediate goal for the partners in this enterprise is to get all the construction kinks worked out with this first house so that future ones can be built efficiently—with volunteer hands. MIT students will evaluate the cost differentials between building on the ground and building above it. Is it cheaper to carry many loads of materials up to the top of the pilings in numerous trips as you're building, or to pay a flat fee to have the structure hoisted when it's done?
Students will also complete a report that MIT plans to share with other aid groups interested in doing similar construction work in coastal areas. The report details the lessons MIT has learned in the course of this initiative.
And what's the most important one?
"Make sure you get a (local) architect and an engineer up front," said Goethert, adding they know what the local building requirements and issues are. "It helps you make decisions."
At a camp for volunteers in Houma, La., MIT students were still wrestling with some of those decisions on groundbreaking day—and getting feedback from Gordon Case, TRAC's construction manager who has intimate knowledge of what works and won't work among the independent breed of people who live along the bayous.
What would be the best way to offer more shade on the Lift House decks?
Plants were the solution one cluster of students was exploring. They were hard at work on a design for a trellis that would support a bower of confederate jasmine climbing from the ground to the deck.
"It's an evergreen,"" explained Marika Kobel. "It flowers in the summer and turns red in the fall. It's a way to give shading without creating a structure that will rip apart in high winds."
Case listened carefully, and offered a thought.
"You have to think, too, how many people are going to want vines growing up their house," he said, hinting at a cultural difference the students might not have been aware of.
Closed tight with a central bolt, a heavy set of shutters in another part of the camp had drawn a small crowd of students. They were evaluating their handiwork, which was good enough to win Gordon's praise.
"I like the design," he said. "The way it looks. The durability. They're going to last because of the material: cedar."
Undoubtedly, durability will be one of the features Miss Betty may prize most in a house perched at the edge of a bayou whose waters stretch off to the horizon. The storm surge from hurricane Rita totally swamped her previous house.
"We want to make sure we're building a house to last," said Peg Case.
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