St. Bernard Project

Today we started work with the St. Bernard Project. This is a grass roots organization started to help the people of St. Bernard Parish refurbish there homes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We had our orientation with them this morning and one of the leaders described the people of St. Bernard. They are working class people who mostly OWNED their home for GENERATIONS! They have a very strong sense of family and typically the whole family lived on the same street or block. Kids saw and/or talked to their grandparents daily. Their aunts and uncles and cousins all lived on the same street and you went to school with your cousins. When you grew up you wanted to buy a house on the same street as you folks. Quite often houses were informally passed from one generation to another without a trip to the town clerks office to oficially change the name on the deed. So when Katrina hit and all of these houses were flooded it was impossible for homeowners to prove that they actually owned the house and the land. She told us that somewhere between 60 and 70% of the people who lived in St. Bernard prior to Katrina owned their homes. She emphasized that they were tax paying, hard working, family oriented people!

The other big point that they made during that orientation was that it is important to get the word out that there is STILL a lot of work to do to put the parish back together. 100% of the parish was destroyed as a result of the flooding. The other interesting thing that I learned today was that in just 2004 the Army Corp of Engineers reccommeded that people in St. Bernard no longer needed flood insurance because they were so well protected by levees and there had not been a significant storm since Hurricane Betsy in 1965! Since the median income of families in the parish is about $37k it makes sense that many people who were carrying flood insurance discontinued it.




After orientation we were sent to our worksite for the day. We were scheduled to work on a house on Livingston st. Our job was to finish priming the walls and to start laying down the lamanent hardwood floating flooring. I did some painting and then worked with Wally and Sid to lay the flooring in the front bedroom. It turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be. Julia and Kim (our St. Bernard Project site overseers) did a demo for us to teach us how to properly lay the flooring. The thing that I liked the best about Julia's demo was that she emphasized to smartly use the flooring material so that if we don't use a box they can send it to the next house to get that home owner home faster! It was hard work - I guess sitting behind a desk for a living does not prepare me well for a full day of laying flooring and painting! I am very tired tonight, but feel pretty good about what I was able to accomplish.






On our way home we decided to stop by Miss Lillian's house on Munster. Last year when we were here we sheet rocked her home. It was great to see her and her house finished! The look on her face when she opened the door and saw us there was priceless! What a great ending to a good day!