Posted on 01/31/2022 2:07:40 PM PST by nickcarraway
Only 6 of the 109 homes remain in reasonably good shape
Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation built 109 eye-catching and affordable homes in New Orleans for a community where many people were displaced by damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now this housing development is in disarray. The vast majority of the recently constructed homes are riddled with construction-related problems that have led to mold, termites, rotting wood, flooding and other woes.
At least six are boarded up and abandoned. Many residents have filed lawsuits that are still pending. That is, a nonprofit that built houses with input from Frank Gehry and other prominent architects amid much fanfare for survivors of one disaster then ushered in another disaster.
Structural and other problems are making many residents fear for their health. Make It Right, despite what its name might suggest, has not resolved these issues and has stopped assisting residents. Instead, the movie star-led nonprofit has apparently become defunct.
As an urban geographer who researches on housing development, I’ve been following Make It Right’s travails since 2018, when residents tried to get the New Orleans City Council involved and have municipal authorities inspect the homes. The situation has only deteriorated since then, highlighting the perils that can accompany nonprofit housing development.
Supposedly sustainable housing
Located in New Orleans’ historically Black and low-income Lower Ninth Ward, this cluster of affordable homes built between 2008 and 2015 was unusual for several reasons. Notably, these residences were sold, rather than rented to their occupants.
The architects who created these homes also tried to make them green and sustainable following a “cradle-to-cradle” philosophy that centers around the use of safe and reusable materials, clean water and renewable energy. All the homes had solar panels and energy-efficient heating and cooling systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Its the pitts
From what I’ve heard, the local conditions in New Orleans are absolutely brutal. Wood rots quickly, termites eat the rest and homes basically require constant maintenance.
I’ll bet they used untested materials that won’t work in that region
Road to perdition.
By no means am I coming to the defense of a liberal celebrity. Not one bit.
But....you come up with the cash. Hire folks to do a job. And expect them to do it.
That being said, anyone with the sense of a flea would know that anything done down there, needed some legitimate oversight and, also, some guarantees from the suppliers that their stuff would work.
If he was really interested in helping, rather than a publicity stunt, he would have hired a Project Manager or Construction Manager to go down there and make sure things were being done correctly.
Maybe he did. And maybe things did appear to be on the up and up and the plans and materials, as one other commenter stated, ended up being absolute junk. Or maybe he was taken to the cleaners since he didn’t having anyone keeping an eye on the hen house.
Yes. There was.
But a house that has been poorly built is going to always have problems.
And now they have no resale value.
a nonprofit that built houses with input from Frank Gehry ...
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That spells trouble right there. Gehry’s designs are noting if not impractical.
You bought, BOUGHT I SAID, a house.
Just a small correction.
For accuracy.
That's it in a nutshell.
“Cradle to Cradle (C2C) is about seeing garbage as an eternal resource”
“Sold” Not tented to occupants.
When people have been ‘renters’ all of their lives, they never learn how to FIX anything....
Shouldn’t building codes been in the picture somewhere?
Many of the houses lacked ordinary, essential features such as rain gutters, overhangs, waterproof painting or covered beams – all of which are necessary to withstand New Orleans’ subtropical climate and heavy rainfall.
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Unfortunately, the architect, Frank Gehry, was the hot ticket in 2005. But like many celebrity architects, he lacks common sense and doesn’t design a place to fit its environment.
IOW, “sustainable”, rather than “best practices for a low-lying, humid area near the water and occasionally besieged by hurricanes.”
I’ve seen houses in Northern Virginia where I’m pretty sure that the guy who did the final inspection didn’t even hit the brakes as he did it.
Anyone who has been around a boat, especially in a marine environment, knows that constant maintenance is required to slow down the inevitable decay. That takes money and effort.
NOLA’s Ninth Ward flooded during Katrina because it is basically low-lying swampland dripping with humidity on a relatively dry day. The houses might have been arrogantly designed, or poorly constructed by sorry, corrupt contractors and workmen (plenty of those available) — but the whole idea was unwise. There is a reason this is the “poor” area.
I remember watching a Dirty Jobs episode where Mike Rowe was helping New Orleans locals rebuild and recover in the aftermath of Katrina. They were battling mold, rats, mosquitos, etc. Quite disturbing.
Brad Pitt doesn’t care about Black people /ye
If I were Mike Holmes, I’d be really upset with Brad Pitt and this other group calling itself “Make It Right”. Holmes has built a whole brand around that trademark and for producing above-code quality dwellings. First thing I thought of when I read the article was how bad this made Mike Holmes look.
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