New Orleans | MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

New Orleans public housing activist Sharon Jasper

Sharon Jasper says she’s poor and is demanding her “right” to her government-subsidized housing.

Sharon Jasper, a former St. Bernard complex resident presented by activists Tuesday as a victim of changing public housing policies, took a moment before the start of the City Hall protest to complain about her subsidized private apartment, which she called a “slum.” A HANO voucher covers her rent on a unit in an old Faubourg St. John home, but she said she faced several hundred dollars in deposit charges and now faces a steep utility bill.

“I’m tired of the slum landlords, and I’m tired of the slum houses,” she said.

Pointing across the street to an encampment of homeless people at Duncan Plaza, Jasper said, “I might do better out here with one of these tents.”

Jasper, who later allowed a photographer to tour the subsidized apartment, also complained about missing window screens, a slow leak in a sink, a warped back door and a few other details of a residence that otherwise appeared to have been recently renovated.

This is Sharon Jasper’s “slum.”

[Ted Jackson / Times-Picayune] Sharon Jasper sits in the living room of her voucher-backed private residence. “I might be poor but I don’t like to live poor. I thank God for a place to live but it’s pitiful what people give you.”

Nice TV, huh? Nice hardwood floors, too. Furnishings aren’t too shabby, either, are they?

BITCH.

By the way, Sharon Jasper isn’t just some random “victim” picked off the streets by activists. She IS an activist herself, according to none other than the New Orleans Labor Media Project, which is very much a part of the protests.

[T]he politicians, the government agencies and the developers have surrounded St. Bernard with a chain link fence topped by barbed-wire. And they’ve told hard-working, God-fearing people like Sharon Jasper to stay the hell out.

“Our families have been displaced all over the United States. Bring them back, then let’s talk about redevelopment,” Jasper argues.

Jasper is fighting back. She spearheads a tenant association that is working with the AFL-CIO’s Gulf Coast Revitalization Program to convince local authorities to rehabilitate rather than annihilate public housing stock.

“We, the poor working class, are the people who helped build this city,” Jasper says, jabbing her finger into the air, as if she were about to pull down the menacing barbed wire barrier. “We have a right to return. This is our home.”

Somebody call a waaahmbulance. As you might expect, there is plenty of housing available to her in New Orleans.

As housing activists continued to protest the proposed demolition of four public housing complexes, federal housing officials provided new details Tuesday about hundreds of public housing units available across New Orleans, with dozens of units ready for occupants in the B.W. Cooper, the former Desire and the Guste developments.

Housing officials said hundreds of private apartments where disaster or Section 8 vouchers can be used are also available to help meet the needs of displaced public housing residents, both in the short and long term.

Anyone else sick of the people of New Orleans who demand more, more, more, but apparently do nothing to try to improve their own situations (much less anyone else’s) themselves?

Anyone else here who pays his or her own rent or mortgage who wouldn’t mind having a home like Sharon Jasper’s, massive teevee and all? Oh, but she’s “poor” and doesn’t like living in that “slum.” Disgusting, disgraceful leech.