I had expected to write an upbeat note about how life was moving forward for my family in Houston. Instead, I am pleading on behalf its black middle class that lives largely in the section of the city known as New Orleans East. They live in the neighborhoods you have not heard mentioned in any news coverage: Lake Barrington, Lake Bullard, Kendall Estates, Eastover, Lake Willow, Spring Lake and Lake Carmel.

A reliable source in the mayor's office says that the recovery plan is to plow under, bulldoze the homes of the doctors, nurses, lawyers, school teachers, engineers, and other professionals who live in New Orleans East. Many of the homes have sat in turgid, contaminated water for more than two weeks. The city believes that once the waters recede these homes will be uninhabitable. Some may be and some may not be. The decision should be made house by house, rather than condemn a whole community.

If New Orleans East is deemed too toxic, its residents ,may not be able to return to their homes to retrieve whatever momentos of their lives they can salvage. Insurance companies will write designate the homes as flood damaged and pay off less than half the homes' value. In many instances, homeowners will have substantial mortgage balances even after the insurance pay off. My sister, Critty, who lives in the East will be among them.

This will be the destruction of the city's black middle class. Many of these families are one generation and one pay check away from poverty. They have worked and sacrificed a great deal to be where they are in life. For some like my sister who has lost both her home and her livelihood, her private medical practice in the East, the two combined losses may be more than she can bear.


My sister's story is just one of many. There are thousands like her living in the East. The homes they purchased in the East were symbols of how far they had come, the embodiment of the American dream in brick and mortar.The black middle class did not abandon the city when times got bad. They stayed and paid the taxes. They deserve better.

The story of the city's poor has been well documented in the past weeks since Katrina. But the stories of the city's black middle and professional class have been ignored. It's as if they don't exist. Why does the media cover white homeowners and bemoan their loss of property, but not black homeowners? It will be a crime if the city is rebuilt over the destruction of this community.

Can the city afford to lose its black middle class? Can it afford to drive away doctors, lawyers, government workers, teachers? Is the city abandoning all of the ninth ward, the lower nine and the East? Not just the geography, but the people too. What hope for a future does the city, state and federal governments offer to the members of this community? Where are they in the plans for a new New Orleans?

I am pleading that you pass this along to newspapers, media, politicians, activists, anyone who might listen, anyone who might care. Why is New Orleans proposing to destroy its black middle class?

Kate Hymes