Brad Pitt Builds 109 'futuristic' Homes For Homeless In NO
- Thread starter thernbroom
- Start date
Hopefully the jobs and schools are there (or at least being worked on), public transportation, good ones so these neighborhoods can be sustained and people have proper resources and services.
Seems like some elements are trying to make NOLA into some bourgeois white hipster yuppie theme park sterilized of all the types that actually give it it's culture and vibe.
I admittedly don't really follow NO progress but its interesting that I've only heard about housing targeted at retaining locals and lower income housing projects from entertainers and aid/community service groups.
Seems like some elements are trying to make NOLA into some bourgeois white hipster yuppie theme park sterilized of all the types that actually give it it's culture and vibe.
I admittedly don't really follow NO progress but its interesting that I've only heard about housing targeted at retaining locals and lower income housing projects from entertainers and aid/community service groups.
Larry Lobster
/-_-\
nikkas in here are so gullible 
White massa builds something they lose their minds, lol.
Inb4 "what have you done for black people?"
White massa builds something they lose their minds, lol.
Inb4 "what have you done for black people?"
ReggieFlare
Superstar
Brad strikes me as a genuinely good guy. Can't do anything but 
Brad piff
Even got a black daughter
Even got a black daughter
Rich Spirit
#LeveledUp
do tell
aXiom
Maximized Potential
nikkas in here are so gullible
White massa builds something they lose their minds, lol.
Inb4 "what have you done for black people?"
And we now return to our regular scheduled programming.
type shyt going on behind the scenes....
Typical dumb coli nikka
Apparently Brad Pitt traveled back in time and profited off the trans-Atlantic slave trade
Typical dumb coli nikka
Apparently Brad Pitt traveled back in time and profited off the trans-Atlantic slave trade
Doobie Doo
Veteran
That's the fukked up part about this. We see a white person doing something of nice for mostly people of color and we question his motives. But the real fukked up part is from examining history in America we aren't wrong for doing it. I get so on edge when I see white folks doing anything for people of color in this country just cuz history told us there is always an exterior motive.
Kwéyòl
Moon walking seeing moon people
do tell
I'd quote the whole story but I'm on mobile and can't get the link for some reason
In response to the floundering recovery effort, Brad Pitt, the Hollywood star, set up his own charity, the Make it Right foundation in 2007, pledging to build 150 new sustainable, flood-proof houses for those displaced from the Lower Ninth Ward. Pitt’s scheme allowed residents, many of whom had little or no insurance, to pay what they could and take out zero-interest loans to cover the rest.
But his well-meaning plan has seemingly fallen foul of its own grandiose ambitions.
Nearly a decade on, the foundation has spent $26.8 million on construction and completed 109 homes.
And despite high-profile celebrity backing and Hollywood fundraising galas, it is struggling to finance the remainder. In a further setback many of the homes already built have begun rotting.
“It’s just not a great solution to affordable housing issues,” says Laura Paul, of charity Lower Nine, which organizes volunteer labour and donations to help former residents in the district rehabilitate their homes.
“If I had that money, I could run my organisation, at its current capacity, for 170 years.”
Pitt’s futuristic pink, blue and green-painted solar-panelled homes – designed by world-renowned architects including Frank Gehry – today stand incongruously in their Deep South surroundings among the boarded-up, weed-choked bungalows.
Vanessa Rogers, 57, says her stairs and floorboards had to be replaced because of decay.
“A lot of it got rotten really fast,” the mother-of-two said. “It got so bad, I fell down the stairs. All the back porch and the deck’s got to be replaced, up and down. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done because of the kind of wood it is. It’s really bad.”
Make It Right say they were supplied defective “glass-infused” wood by the company TimberSIL, claiming it was unable to withstand the humid Louisiana climate. Almost all of the 39 homes built using the wood between 2008 and 2010 are said to already be displaying signs of rot and damp, despite the company’s
40-year guarantee.
Pitt’s foundation is now suing the company for $500,000 – the cost of the replacement wood.
“We’ve been here almost three years now,” says Mrs Rogers’s neighbour, Michael Burns. “I’m now in the process of treating it myself.
“The storm is one thing, but then keeping everything together is a whole other storm in itself.”
But his well-meaning plan has seemingly fallen foul of its own grandiose ambitions.
Nearly a decade on, the foundation has spent $26.8 million on construction and completed 109 homes.
And despite high-profile celebrity backing and Hollywood fundraising galas, it is struggling to finance the remainder. In a further setback many of the homes already built have begun rotting.
“It’s just not a great solution to affordable housing issues,” says Laura Paul, of charity Lower Nine, which organizes volunteer labour and donations to help former residents in the district rehabilitate their homes.
“If I had that money, I could run my organisation, at its current capacity, for 170 years.”
Pitt’s futuristic pink, blue and green-painted solar-panelled homes – designed by world-renowned architects including Frank Gehry – today stand incongruously in their Deep South surroundings among the boarded-up, weed-choked bungalows.
Vanessa Rogers, 57, says her stairs and floorboards had to be replaced because of decay.
“A lot of it got rotten really fast,” the mother-of-two said. “It got so bad, I fell down the stairs. All the back porch and the deck’s got to be replaced, up and down. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done because of the kind of wood it is. It’s really bad.”
Make It Right say they were supplied defective “glass-infused” wood by the company TimberSIL, claiming it was unable to withstand the humid Louisiana climate. Almost all of the 39 homes built using the wood between 2008 and 2010 are said to already be displaying signs of rot and damp, despite the company’s
40-year guarantee.
Pitt’s foundation is now suing the company for $500,000 – the cost of the replacement wood.
“We’ve been here almost three years now,” says Mrs Rogers’s neighbour, Michael Burns. “I’m now in the process of treating it myself.
“The storm is one thing, but then keeping everything together is a whole other storm in itself.”