Chickens and The Wild West - Nader Mohyuddin

Balloon Festival in Albuquerque; French Quarter, New Orleans

Sometimes you don't really know a place until you leave it.

And leave New Orleans I did.

I spent my 4th of July "weekend" in what seems a virtual opposite of New Orleans today, despite sharing a variety of similarities. Albuquerque--my destination--and New Orleans are both cities with deep roots in history, with a well-preserved Old Town and French Quarter, respectively, keeping the traditions rich, colorful, and alive. Catholicism plays a role in both cities, though far moreso in New Orleans. Both are diverse cities with traditional race relations turning a new page with growing immigrant communities. Both are ridiculously hot in July.

But for every gutted house and FEMA trailer in New Orleans, there is a brand new, trendy housing development or office building going up in Albuquerque. While New Orleans' death rate skyrockets, Albuquerque's quality of life gets accolades from publications. Just this past year, Forbes ranked the city as the best in the country for business, with good scores across the board and the lowest cost of business in the country. High tech companies like Intel, and smaller boutique firms doing everything from genetics work to the first mainstream production of electric cars, to private jet design.

Even the landscapes are vastly different: where New Orleans is hugged by a mighty river, Albuquerque is built in the foothills of a gigantic mountain. And sometimes, it's the smallest of touches that make all the difference: where New Orleans roads are full of gigantic pot holes, complex mazes of one way streets, and parked cars on every curb, the usually boring-but-efficient interstate in Albuquerque has Native American artwork lining rocky median (there's not much grass around), stone lane dividers painted in an adobe and blue scheme to mimic the desert and the sky, and roads smooth as fresh butter.

Moonrise over Albuquerque and Sandia Mountain

I say this not to make New Orleans sound bad. It isn't. But it does highlight the tremendous challenges that lay ahead of this city, and what it needs to revitalize. Housing is certainly a big part of the puzzle. But in order to catalyze the renewal of New Orleans, better efforts must be made to attract business. Not many companies were attracted to the city before Katrina. It had little competitive advantage over other cities, and a variety of negatives (including a struggling public school system) that put it behind the rest of the pack.

But with the influx of federal money being pumped into this area (albeit mired in federal, state, and local bureaucracy), there is certainly money that can be spent on economic revitalization. Many local businesses, boutiques, and restaurants have re-opened, which is a beautiful sight to both a native New Orleanian and a free-market capitalist alike. But New Orleans could certainly take a page from Albuquerque's book to attract big businesses, which could give jobs to many, attract thousands to return home to New Orleans, and pump millions of dollars into the local economy. Tax holidays, fee and permit waivers, incentive programs, and selective land-grants could all work together to make New Orleans better than ever.

Like ABQ (an abbreviation people of all ages use, unlike ATL), New Orleans is a city without a tremendous amount of endemic resources that would attract business. Combine that with the disastrous effects of Katrina, and the comparisons to a developing country/economy are all the more apt. And just as post-colonial Latin America reacted to its export pessimism with the development of ISI strategy, so too could New Orleans help develop its "domestic" (local) economy through its specific policies. While this temporarily limits free-trade, it ultimately generates far more income mobility (if not equality), and an overall stronger economy with more jobs.

Central Business District during Katrina Flooding

A big hurdle to this is poultry. But instead of a chicken and an egg and an existential quandary regarding their temporal relation, theres about a thousand chickens and a thousand eggs, no one knows who came first, no one knows which egg belongs to whom (perhaps the other way around), and the resources with which to figure out this dilemma are available, but hoarded by a fat, slow farmer with whom everyone is frustrated, even the normally docile, mute eggs who have no means with which to even feel frustrated, but are frustrated no less.

Housing. Jobs. Schools. Infrastructure. City government. Environmental issues. Planning for the next hurricane. Crime. Clean up. Restoration. Revitalization.

You get the idea. But what comes first?

Developing affordable housing for New Orleans.

Despite my desire to use economics and the marketplace to restore New Orleans, I'm glad I'm doing housing development. Sure, it's part of the same puzzle, a feather on the chicken. But given all that coming home means to the people of this city--the people of any city--it's perhaps one of the most important steps in the whole process. Homes, porches, and evening conversations in the sunset wake all mean a lot to this place. Getting back to work and putting kids through school are no doubt hugely important, but having four walls and a roof make all the rest much easier.

Jackson Square and Saint Louis Cathedral, New Orleans

I thought I knew New Orleans pretty well in my month here. And I was amazed at the progress the city itself had made. Granted, Gentilly and Lakeview are still in shambles, and some areas of the Ninth Ward are in complete ruin. Those are enormous issues. But the flavor of the city, the jambalya mix of sweat, sin, and jazz that dances in the thick bayou air like smoke from a late-night cigarette, is already filling the lungs of New Orleanians throughout the city. I thought I had caught a whiff of it in my time here.

And maybe I did.

But leaving the city and seeing the progress other areas have made, and are still making, really throws into sharp relief the challenges facing New Orleans, the challenges everyone talks about but perhaps few actually have a real feel for, let alone solutions.

It is my hope, however, that come August, when we're moving out of our rooms and trekking back to our comfortable homes throughout the country and the world, that we'll leave with more answers than questions, with more solutions than problems, and with more conviction than hope.

A Savage Journey... - Nader Mohyuddin

A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

WE WERE SOMEWHERE on the edge of Central City, just north of midtown, when reality began to take hold.

The deadliest district of the deadliest city in America. Murders daily, violent crime amuck. And there we were: property development professionals, an accountant, a law student, and an acquisitions intern.

Why?

Lunch, actually. Were you expecting something a bit more substantial? I'll continue.

We had just taken a tour of the multi-family development units throughout dilapidated, abandoned apartments, schools, and churches. Some were well under development and renovation, soon to become affordable apartment housing for the elderly. It's part of HUD's Section 202 initiative, and my employer is working to develop those properties into quality housing for those New Orleanians who have spent decades and decades in the city they love and wish to return to.

But this isn't about housing. I spend enough time at work on that subject. I'll leave that for another time.

This is about lunch.

Terri, our head of finance, suggested Cafe Reconcile as a lunch destination, as she directed her sizable SUV along the bumps on Esplanade Avenue. Cafe Reconcile, I thought, interesting name. As we headed toward the restaurant, I noticed we were turning on to Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. Uh-oh, I worried. The street forms one side of the triangle-shaped area known as Central City, an area I was strongly told to avoid. And we're traveling down it? Surely there are eating options in safer parts of town...

We found a tight parking space and headed to the patio of the cafe. Opening the glass doors revealed a lively scene. Nearly every seat filled, the open kitchen roaring, waiters scattered about, scurrying from one table to another. Nice place, I surmised. Guess it's worth the risk of getting here. I still didn't understand the hype...evidently community leaders, business people, and public officials from all over the city frequent the place regularly. Walking to the table, I glanced at some of the dishes on other tables. Seemed well enough but...what was it about this place that attracted so many powerful people in New Orleans?

And that's when I met the owner.

Cafe Reconcile is really a beautiful organization. It's tough to call it a restaurant, it's so much more than that. The group takes at-risk youth from Central City and other areas of the city and puts them to work at the restaurant, to keep them out of trouble, to teach them valuable job skills, and mentor them to keep them away from the drugs, violence, gangs, and other elements in their communities that can completely ruin their lives. Sure, this business model has its hiccups: the teens forget an occasional order, maybe drop a drink now and then. But the smiles on their faces no matter what the difficulty, no matter what the issue. Our waiter was a young kid, with bright eyes, a starched white shirt and black slacks, and the brightest white teeth, which he flashed all the time through his brilliant smile. It never faded. You couldn't get waiters this nice, polite, and kind anywhere. Really remarkable.

For the record, I had a po-boy. Dressed, of course.


I looked at other tables. Lots of professionals and executives, enjoying a home-cooked style country meal in the roughest part of town, talking it up about every which subject. Like anywhere, "the storm" was a frequent conversation topic. It always. But still, looking around at the patrons, it was quite a thing to behold, but it paled in comparison next to the sight of the hard-working kids, their heads held high, their priorities in order, all thanks to the folks behind Cafe Reconcile.

I learned something that day, something that didn't have to do with adjudicated properties or the inconsistencies of real estate databases. I learned that even in the hardest of times, in the roughest of areas, the power of mentorship, of guidance, of holding out a helping hand to those so often deprived, can defeat all those forces which work to leave life in ruined squalor. Poverty, drugs, broken families, murdered loved ones...everyone working at Cafe Reconcile has seen these horrors first hand. And when all seemed lost, an amazing opportunity arrived to help change these lives for the better, to give them a running start in the working world.

With their big smiles, those kids reminded me that we cannot turn a blind eye to the roughest part of town. We cannot simply tell ourselves, "Oh, there'll always be a rough neighborhood in the city. There'll always be poverty. So what good can we do?" There's plenty. And the cafe showed that in a very real, tangible (and delicious) form. And on a personal level, as a capitalist libertarian, I was quite happy to see a non-profit, privately funded and managed organization provide such a social service, without governmental intervention or (potential) mismanagement. But the important thing is, lives are being changed, futures are being secured, and a better tomorrow lay in store for a group of kids fortune forgot.

Zagat might find fault with a few dishes, but no one can argue that Cafe Reconcile is a real gem. de Gaulle said something that seems really apt for the place, and really, for New Orleans as a whole. So, I'll leave you with that:

It is not tolerable, it is not possible, that from so much death, so much sacrifice and ruin, so much heroism, a greater and better humanity shall not emerge.