I. INTRODUCTION: ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE OF DISTRICT 95
As a Louisiana State Representative, Desiree Cook Calvin will stand as a voice of reason for the betterment of the residents of District 95, the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana. It has been said that, "United we stand and divided we fall." It is clear that if we do not act now, our state is approaching the "ultimate fall." According to the Council for a Better Louisiana, "Four years ago... Louisiana was approaching a fork in the road, and we needed to decide if we would choose a path toward progress or fall back into stagnancy." Today, "Louisiana is no longer at the crossroads, we're approaching the cliff. "
It is Desiree's view that our community, city and state are approaching that ultimate fall because we are divided along so many lines, whether economic, racial gender, social, regional or political. The focus has been on promoting individual interest and pet projects instead of the good of Louisiana as whole. Two years after suffering from the debilitating effects of Hurricane Katrina, many Louisianians are still entangled in the grasp of its yoke. Although many have rebuilt their homes or suffered little direct effect from Katrina, thousands are still left behind. It is our mandate to come together in one unified effort to create a better and stronger Louisiana by working to restore lives, focusing on families and rebuilding communities. We will work together to restore the lives of individuals by combating the increasing problem of homelessness, providing affordable housing and increasing the wages of the working poor. We will focus on families by educating our children, re-training our working parents for better jobs and creating home-ownership opportunities. Finally, we will rebuild our communities by fighting crime, repairing streets, providing accessible community based libraries, re-opening senior centers and community health centers, maintaining parks and recreational facilities, and supporting businesses and non-profit organizations.
II. RESTORING LIVES
In order to rebuild a stronger District 95, we must work together to restore the lives of people that have been devastated from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. We will work together to restore lives by combating the increasing problem of homelessness, providing affordable housing and increasing wages.
A. Homelessness
In our great state of Louisiana, no one should be denied the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing. However, it is now estimated that 12,000 people in the Greater New Orleans area are now homeless. This is double the estimate pre-Katrina, despite the substantial loss in the city's population as a whole. This figure evidences the fact that many of these individuals are not homeless because of their slothfulness, but they are homeless because they have not rebounded from Katrina's forced eviction. According to homeless advocates, these are not just the traditionally homeless, but individuals who rented or owned homes and worked for a living. The problem is compounded due to the fact that agencies that used to provide essential services to the homeless are now closed.
Desiree is committed to addressing the needs of the homeless. Desiree has worked as an attorney in the Housing Law Unit at New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation fighting for those individuals and families that were being evicted post-Katrina due to rental increases, problems with federal voucher programs and other reasons. Desiree truly understands how easy it is to become homeless. Accordingly, she will support all measures to restore the myriad of non-profits that previously provided services to the homeless. She will also advocate for adequate housing, job opportunities, counseling and medical services in order to eradicate homelessness.
B. Affordable Housing
Desiree believes that every working adult should have access to affordable housing. In the Greater New Orleans region, almost half the housing stock was severely damaged or destroyed due to the effect of Hurricane Katrina. Additionally, landlords and other homeowners have been forced to pay insurance premiums that have risen by 50 to 100% since 2005. As a result, rents have increased drastically from 40 to 70% over pre-Katrina levels.
Desiree contends that in order to combat the housing problem, we must swiftly repair damaged or blighted rental properties and put them back into the stream of commerce at affordable rental rates. The legislature has recently passed laws to induce a decrease in insurance premiums that should inure to the benefits of consumers and result in a decrease in rental rates. However, Desiree will continually review the market trends, and if necessary, sponsor legislation to ensure that working families are able to afford suitable housing.
C. Increasing Wages
Louisiana is ranked as the second highest in the nation in both our overall poverty rate and our rate of children in poverty. Additionally, only six states have a higher percentage than Louisiana of the "working poor" -those who earn less than one and one half times the poverty level. Most of these individuals are working-class single mothers who are raising their children. Desiree believes that people who are working full-time, over-time and sometimes even two jobs should not be struggling to pay their basic necessities such as housing, utilities, food and transportation. Therefore, Desiree supports a "living wage" by raising the minimum wage to a level that will ensure that their basic needs are met.
III. FOCUSING ON FAMILIES
We will focus on families through educating our children, re-training our working parents for better jobs and creating home-ownership opportunities.
A. Educating Our Children
One of the highest correlations to academic failure is poverty. Louisiana has the second highest rate of children in poverty in the nation. Accordingly, Louisiana schools are failing academically. All of our failing schools are high-poverty schools. However, research shows that if these children would receive early childhood education through pre-kindergarten programs, they can be academically successful.
Combined with the goal of eradicating poverty through increasing wages and retraining the working-poor for higher paying jobs, Desiree will support legislation to ensure that all children that live in areas plagued with severe poverty will receive an early childhood education.
Desiree knows that our system of public education can work. After all, she is a product of the Orleans Parish Public Schools. She attended Paul L. Dunbar Elementary School located in the Hollygrove area of District 95, an area concentrated with working-class poor families. She later attended Eleanor McMain Middle School and ultimately graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School. Desiree asserts that in order to solve our educational challenges we must return to the basic models that have worked in the past, integrate new models for changes in technology and the needs of the market place and continually search for cutting edge ideas to improve our system. We should create partnerships between schools that are high performance schools and those that are failing. If the system for success is working for one school, then the faculty at the low performance school can adopt that same system and customize it to meet the needs of their students. All schools, but especially low performance schools, should have extended after-schools hours for tutoring and counseling. Furthermore, each school should have extended hours for library and internet access. Finally, because failing schools are so far behind in achievement, these schools should have an extended year-round calender as opposed to a traditional nine (9) month academic schedule.
B. Retraining Our Working Poor
Louisiana has serious problems with our workforce. In late 2004, more than 70% of employers were having a difficult time finding qualified workers and nearly 1/2 said the skills needed for entry level jobs is increasing. Post-Katrina the situation is worse today. Accordingly, we must re-train our workforce for higher skilled jobs. Louisiana is ranked 48th in the nation for households with computers and internet access. This statistic clearly confirms one reason why our workforce is technologically behind other states. As the children in low performance schools are provided after-school tutoring and extended hours for access to the library and the internet, their working class parents should simultaneously be given access to these facilities for job counseling, computer and internet accessibility and training programs.
C. Home Ownership Opportunities
As a result of the Road Home Program, the state has bought back thousands of homes from homeowners who have elected to bypass the arduous rebuilding process. We should immediately resell these properties at reasonable rates, first to current Louisiana residents and those that have been displaced, and then to those non-residents that desire to relocate to Louisiana.
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IV. REBUILDING OUR COMMUNITIES
Finally, we will rebuild our communities through fighting crime, repairing streets, providing accessible community based libraries, re-opening senior centers and community health centers, maintaining parks and recreational facilities, supporting businesses and non-profit organizations.
A. Fighting Crime
Crime is an obvious problem in our district, the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana. Louisiana is ranked first in the nation for the murder rate per 100,000 habitants. We are also ranked first in the nation for prisoner incarceration. We are incarcerating the perpetrators of crime, but it is obvious that this is not the solution to the problem. In New Orleans alone, as of March 2007 at least 34 murders have already been recorded since the beginning of this year. This number already exceeds the murder statistics as of March 2006 which places the city in position to exceed the homicide rate for 2006. Experts say that most of the violence is connected to the illegal drug trade. In a lot of neighborhoods the drug market has gotten itself back together before anything else. There are entire neighborhoods of abandoned houses where dealers can hide their drugs and sell them without being detected.
In order to favorably change these statistics, we must come together on one united front to combat crime. We must realize that the problem is not simply a "policing" problem that can be solved simply by hiring more police officers and building more jails. We must have a collective effort that eliminates the myth that as long criminal activity is not occurring in one's neighborhood then that individual is exempt from its effects. This theory simply is not true. Crime is like a virus. It spreads until it infects all of us. It does not discriminate based on age, race, gender or economic status. Accordingly, in order to stop violence, we must fight crime from many different angles.
1. Create a systematic approach to rebuild neighborhoods.
Currently we are awarding Road Home funds to individuals randomly. We need to consider awarding the funds by neighborhoods to allow those communities to rebuild simultaneously. As individuals are rebuilding in these secluded areas, they are being robbed or murdered. In addition this isolation, reduces the possibility of obtaining witnesses. Moreover, we also should sell the properties in these neighborhoods that have been bought back by the Louisiana Recovery Authority in order to allow new families the opportunity to establish permanent housing.
2. Educate our youth to give them other choices for their future.
The director of the FBI office in New Orleans says, "You have a generation of young people here who are the products of an educational system that didn't educate, a judicial system of no consequences, and a culture of political corruption that has driven businesses away. What you have left is crack cocaine and an AK-47. They suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of the social contract of how to deal with people and how to resolve conflicts without using a gun." A professor in public health at Tulane University who has studied drug subcultures in New Orleans for 30 years states, "Most of these kids realize at age 15 that they're screwed and the only way to do anything in New Orleans is with the drug trade. And I ask them what they'll be doing at age 22, and they say, "I'll be dead." In order to combat crime, we must combat this way of thinking by educating our youth and showing them other viable options for their future. Too many of them are being mentored by flashy drug dealers instead of corporate executives, doctors and lawyers. We can show them other healthy alternatives through volunteer mentoring programs, after-school activities, tutoring programs and athletic programs. Studies have shown that children are more influenced by neighborhood values than by their home life because they spend more of their waking hours outside of the home. If children are exposed to other positive role models, concerned individuals and other healthy motivators, they can still succeed no matter what challenges are occurring in the home.
3. Create employment opportunities for non-violent offenders.
Once an individual has been incarcerated it is very difficult for them to find employment. Researchers have found that an increase in levels of employment correlates with a reduction in drug dealing, violent crime, and property crime. Desiree will support measures that encourage employers to hire individuals who have been previously convicted of a non-violent offense.
B. Repairing Streets
Our highways and streets are in extreme disrepair. It is estimated that it costs Louisiana drivers $425.00 extra per year for driving on deficient roads. This is almost twice the national average. In order for us to improve our communities, we must fix our streets.
C. Providing Accessible Community Base Libraries
Our public libraries are open to the general public. However, if school libraries are equipped with additional resources and computers and opened for extended hours, our children and their parents can have a community resource to encourage learning and development.
D. Re-opening Senior Centers
In order to rebuild our communities we must take care of our elderly population. Many of the elderly have returned to New Orleans because they have lived here all of their lives and contend that they are too old to start over somewhere else. We must re-open our senior centers to give them access to the assistance that they need, such as transportation, medical information and other services to support independent living.
E. Re-opening Community Health Centers
United Health Foundation ranks Louisiana as the 49th "least healthy" state. Almost 20% of the population does not have health insurance. On a larger scale we must create a system of affordable health care to all who need to seek medical attention. On a smaller scale, we must institute preventive measures to combat sickness and disease. We must re-open community health centers to address non-emergency services such as yearly check-ups, eye-exams, minor injuries and immunizations. This will address the need to resolve many medical problems before they reach death threatening stages.
Louisiana is also ranked 6th in the nation for birth's to teenage mothers and 1st in the nation for infant deaths. Desiree's background exemplifies her commitment to mentoring and encouraging teenage girls. She will work hard to ensure that our teenage pregnancy rate decreases by ensuring that all of our teenagers are thoroughly educated on the challenges of becoming a teenage parent. As stated previously, most of our working poor families are headed by single women rearing their children without the assistance of their fathers. Children without fathers in their lives are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. Therefore, if we stamp out teenage pregnancy, we also kill more severe societal ills at their root.
Notwithstanding, some of our youth may still become teenage parents. Desiree is committed to ensuring that teenage fathers are involved in the parenting process. In order to decrease infant mortality, both parties should be educated on proper parenting techniques, nutrition, CPR training, counseling, and afforded the necessary skill to protect their children from unexpected death.
F. Maintaining Parks and Recreational Facilities
We must provide healthy recreational programs for our children. Growing up in District 95, Desiree remembers a time when all of the parks consistently provided athletic programs for youth of all ages. These programs need to be expanded to give our youth other healthy alternatives to deter their participation in the drug subculture.
G. Supporting Businesses and Non-Profit Organizations
1.Businesses
The Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) released an updated report known as the Louisiana Business Recovery Report that examines the impact Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had on Louisiana businesses during the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2006. " Although this report shows some positive signs in terms of businesses returning statewide, it also clearly indicates that there have been and continue to be serious losses in our business community," said Andy Kopplin Executive Director of the LRA. "In particular, Cameron, Orleans and St. Bernard parishes continue to remain well below their pre-hurricane level of employers even 16 months after the disasters. The bottom line is that this report confirms our work on the ground which shows us that many businesses in the most devastated areas are still struggling to recover, and they continue to need our help." Desiree will promote the continued growth and development of businesses, especially those that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
2. Non-Profit Organizations
Many of our non-profit organizations have not re-opened after being destroyed by Katrina. These philanthropic agencies, churches and other outreach programs provides a vital framework to promote the hope, love, faith and charity that are essential components of rebuilding any community. Desiree will support measures to aid in the reestablishment of these organizations.
