Building a Common Ground

Walking through the lower ninth district of New Orleans is, in a lot of ways, like walking through the ruins of an historic Roman city. It has a distinct feeling of emptiness and desolation, as if history had outrun the place and made it into a museum before its time. At the very edge of the district, caught in a groin between the Mississippi River and the Greater New Orleans Bridge, is Common Ground Relief Center.

As its location implies, Common Ground Relief Center is not your typical non-profit. Founded in the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina, the organization was primarily focused, at first, on environmental rehabilitation and oil spill mitigation. Several tankers had split open during the storm, and their contents were widely distributed across the lower ninth ward (New Orleans’ largest district). Soil damage was so endemic that, to this day, lead deposits are too high to allow for safe planting, and raised beds have become the default approach for all garden operations.  

Thomas Pepper, current director of Common Grounds, has been living in New Orleans since before the flood. During our interview he took me over to the bookshelf and picked out a paperback called "The Great Deluge." The cover showed a picture of the lower ninth one day after the flood. A barge had made its way over the levies, and had come to rest about 100 feet from an old Victorian two story. "That’s the house we’re in now," he said, pointing to the Victorian. "The water was up to the second floor."

In the months and years following Katrina, Common Grounds evolved into much more than an ecological restoration project. "We were supplying thousands of meals to flood victims and had our clothing distribution tents set up after the water subsided," says Pepper. Volunteers were recruited to the center from all over the world to help with reconstruction projects like gutting damaged property, building houses, and establishing community gardens. "The average was about 2,500 volunteers a year," he explained. "But we are expecting more this year."

To accommodate the high volume of volunteers, in 2009 Common Grounds acquired a headquarters on Deslonde Street in the west side of the lower ninth. The house was severely damaged during the flood, but restored several years later. Now it has its own vegetable garden and a cross section of landscaping that runs along the home’s eastern façade. Up to around 20 volunteers can board there at a time, and about 30 more in the house next door, which functions as an extension of the main headquarters and the office for the new legal clinic.

The Common Ground legal clinic emerged as an alternative for low-income families or community members who were, for lack of an attorney, rendered helpless or displaced during the rebuilding process. Legal advice is offered on an income-based sliding scale, and the clinic, originally open only six hours a week, is now open for seventeen. Many residents lost their insurance papers or succession claims in the flood, or lost money due to contractor fraud.

"You had guys who would come in dressed in suits and tell people that they could rebuild their house for cheap," says Pepper. "But they were just scam artists. Some of them did a bad job, and some of them wouldn’t even touch the houses."

Nearly seven years after Hurricane Katrina, the lower ninth ward of New Orleans is still struggling to recover itself. There is currently only one school in the entire area, serving kindergarten through eight grades; and one high school which has been talked about, but remains un-built. Until a few years ago, a grocery store was not even present in the entire district, so locals were forced to purchase all of their food from nearby gas stations or convenience stores. It will be a very long road to recovery for New Orleans, but with the aid of organizations like Common Ground, and of volunteers from all over the world, there is hope that the city will one day thrive again.  

Common Ground Relief Center

commongroundrelief.org