Marc,

Now that Easter has passed, and the season of Lent and sacrifice has ended, I have started indulging my guilty pleasures again. For me this means inordinate hours watching home improvement television. I admit it. I am an HGTV, Style Network, DIY junkie. Like any good political pundit I watch plenty of PBS, CNN and MSNBC. But for me, nothing compares to the pure voyeuristic indulgence of peeping into other people’s kitchen’s, living rooms and master baths as they make sometimes wonderful and sometimes pitiful decorating decisions. But I must admit that my pleasure is dampened a bit after spending last week in New Orleans.

I traveled to NOLA with a dozen students from my Environmental Justice course. They were spending spring break doing service learning. During our time in New Orleans we were privileged to witness a very different kind of home improvement. Nearly three years after the storm, thousands of Orleanians are still  gutting their homes, living in trailers and trying to revive  devastated communities.Their will and optimism is astonishing in the face of the enormous  obstacles they still confront from insurance companies, FEMA, and  local and state governments.

In a city with skyrocketing rents,  severely limited housing and a spiraling crisis of decent shelter: public housing residents and their advocates in the city just lost a  protracted battle to save their undamaged homes.  Instead of repairing and reopening subsidized housing for the poor  people who make the tourist economy possible, HANO and HUD are tearing down hundreds of units that sustained no water or wind damage in Katrina. If New Orleans was the subject of a 24 hour cable channel “home  improvement tv” would take on a very different meaning. I don’t think  many of us would tune in to watch. It is much easier to turn away from the protracted suffering and our continuing collective failures in New Orleans.

Melissa