Simple solutions to simple problems

Louisiana University chieftans have been talking recently about having too many students.

Due to a handshake agreement, I can't name names but recently I heard a brief talk by the head of a local public university who was proudly describing the course of action he took when faced with a surplus of aspirant students.

"We doubled the price."

For him, it was a no-brainer. That is what you do when demand outstrips supply, right? That this policy clearly discriminates against poorer applicants is a consequence of the marketplace.

I wonder if it occurred to him that an alternative choice for an institution of higher learning looking to deal with over-enrollment would be to raise the academic standards for admittance.

I can tell you that this University head honcho was not Chancellor John Lombardi of LSU, though he shares Mr. Lombardi's strategy.

The Chancellor of LSU is already on the record favoring higher tuition for his students instead of the consolidation of university boards populated by people who make enormous six-figure salaries from the money students and their parents often go into debt to pay into the system.

To Chancellor Lombardi and his compatriot from another public institution of higher learning in Louisiana, consolidating university patronage positions and raising academic standards is the bad choice here.

I think they're confused about what their mission is.

Politics, Race, Class, and Building Permits Collide in New Orleans East

Yesterday, State Rep. and current Mayoral candidate Austin Badon, State Senator Ann Duplessis, and State Rep. and erstwhile candidate for Congress Cedric Richmond held a press conference to blast Mayor Nagin's decision to halt the issuance of all building permits in New Orleans East for 30 days or more.

Within hours, the City of New Orleans reversed its policy and agreed to once again issue permits.

Very interesting stuff, since the City of New Orleans had originally adopted the policy to halt building permits in the East as a result of a law put in place by those very same group of legislators, with support from Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis.

It all stems from the controversial Levy Gardens project under construction directly adjacent to the wealthy enclave of Eastover. Levy Gardens is controversial because it is a multifamily, mixed-income development, which means that there will be low income residents directly right next to an exclusive golf course community.

It lead to the establishment of the Eastern New Orleans Neighborhood Advisory Commission and the passage of a state law last year by Duplessis, Richmond, and Badon that gave that commission the power of review for before the city can building permits in the area.

It's a fascinating controversy on many levels. For one, there is the city's acute affordable housing crisis and its impact on poor and minority communities:

James Perry, head of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, said Duplessis is missing the point. The Fair Housing Act covers a policy's impact, not its intent, and blocking multifamily housing disproportionately hurts minorities, he said.

Perry also doesn't buy the argument that multifamily housing causes concentrations of poverty. He said apartment complexes thrived in the east until the local economy, once humming on NASA and oil industry jobs, tanked.

"The role of community leaders has to be to show we're open for business and say, 'If you come here with your business, we have enough rental housing for your employees, ' " he said. "But for now, it's been that New Orleans East is open if you bring homeownership, and that says, 'Don't come here, don't come here, don't come here.' "

But the intersection of race and class doesn't break down into the too-typical poor blacks v. rich whites paradigm. Residents of Eastover, the aforementioned cooperative between Richmond, Badon, Willard-Lewis, and Duplessis, and the Eastern New Orleans Neighborhood Advisory Committee are primarily black but also primarily wealthy. The developers of the Levy Gardens are white and wealthy but the future residents would likely be poor and black.

The other element is planning policy. Aren't residents supposed to have some say over the types of developments built under the zoning master plan being put together by Goody Clancy? Does the fact that building permits for Levy Gardens had already been issued prior to the zoning master plan ordinance make moot the right to review being asserted by Eastover residents?

The whole thing seems wrought with double standards on all sides. How do we solve the city's affordable housing crisis without building affordable housing units? What what are the different development restrictions on multifamily construction in places like Uptown and the French Quarter? With so much hurricane damage in the East, shouldn't all residential construction be welcome? Hasn't New Orleans East been the slowest neighborhood to recover population? Plus how do you handicap the politics of the situation? Badon, Richmond, Willard-Lewis, and James Perry are running for higher office or were running for higher office as this controversy has unfolded.

A lot to consider, no?

"Frightening"

CNN is reporting that McCain surrogate Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico has determined Senator Obama to be "frighteningly inexperienced" on foreign policy.

That's an interesting linguistic decision.

On the plane home from Austin I sat next to a very pleasant woman from Baton Rouge. She, after I told her what I had been doing in Austin, asked me "are you supporting Obama?"

I said "absolutely yes."

She "never ever could because he frightens the bejesus out of me."

I civilly scratched the surface for five to ten minutes. She hates handouts and used that term consistently, remarking that people from New Orleans expect too much from government. Of course, I reminded her what we've tended to receive in response to our "expectations."

As I grew upset with her increasingly evident racial bias, which I'm not going to quote, I pivoted the conversation away from politics to her family life.

She lives in a gated country club community in Baton Rouge.

So much for stereotypes.