We drove to New Orleans for two weeks to work with Habitat for Humanity in the Ninth Ward doing our third year of hurricane rebuilding. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are finally getting somewhere, but it will still take years to rebuild. While there we found ourselves filmed for an episode of This Old House. Interesting how many takes are needed for a spontaneous appearing show. In a landscaping scene, Don shoveled dirt off a pick-up truck so many times that he had to shovel it back on in order to shovel it off again.
The Musicians’ Village was started by Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr to help bring the music back to N’Awlins. Too many of those who played in establishments around the city left when Katrina blew in. Until now, many had no hope of a decent home to live in if they came back.
Located in the upper ninth ward, Musicians’ Village will have about 70 houses, 90% of them owned by musicians, clustered around a central green-space and the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a building with practice space, opportunities for music lessons, a recording studio, and a performance area. The houses are typical Habitat for Humanity homes—modest three bedroom, one bath homes, with a full front porch, tool shed out back, and no garage. They are lined up for several blocks with varying front roof lines; some are L-shaped instead of the usual straight back rectangle. The striking differences come with the colors—striking contrasts or subdued and coordinating, but all different colors. The Hardi-plank siding and wood trim are paintable, and paint them they do. Brick red with pink trim, shades of blue or green, salmon with white trim, bright purple with lavender or gray trim. Musicians are sometimes said to hear in colors; their artistic souls certainly show expression here.
It is heart-breaking to see how many homes are still a wreck with the owners having no money to restore them. In the blocks surrounding the new houses in Musicians Village, many houses are still boarded up. Some have campers or FEMA trailers parked in front while the owners try little by little to fix up their ruined homes. Businesses in the poor areas are not all reopened either. People have to drive to the wealthier parts of town to buy groceries, because the local supermarkets are still closed. But everywhere people are working—cleaning out, tearing down, rebuilding. It will still take years. Habitat for Humanity NOLA plans to build hundreds of houses in the next few years —this from an affiliate that built only a few homes a year before Katrina.
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