Short-term rentals make New Orleans neighborhoods something else | Opinion
Earlier this month, I took Jerome Smith a commemorative copy of the newspaper page naming him one of the 300 people who has helped make New Orleans New Orleans. And then we sat inside the Treme Community Center, and Smith, with no prodding from me, began talking about the forces that are undoing the city.
The conversation began with Smith describing what he’d like to see in the space formerly occupied by a monument to Robert E. Lee. Well, actually, it began with what he doesn’t want to see there: the image of another person. Instead of building another statue to a person, Smith said he’d like to see something that captures the spirit of people in the neighborhood greeting each other with “Good morning” or “Good evening.”
I don’t have the artistic vision or the artistic aptitude to convert Smith’s idea into a tangible work of art. I can’t picture how a monument that captures the spirit of New Orleanians greeting each other would look. But I do know this: that people only erect monuments to people and things they believe are lost. They only put up monuments to people and things they believe are in the past and worthy of being remembered.
So even though Smith didn’t come out and say that he misses the way people in his neighborhood would reliably greet friends and strangers, I have no reason to believe he’d be thinking about a monument to that spirit of salutation if such a spirit remained a dominant characteristic of the neighborhood.
Speaking to everybody – acknowledging another person’s presence – is important across the South, but not even Mississippi prepared me for the importance New Orleanians – the black ones at least – put on speaking. More times than I can count, I’ve witnessed New Orleanians arrive late to a meeting or event and interrupt the proceedings with a greeting. If you ask me, in those situations, a wave or a nod of the head would suffice, but I think it goes to show that there are some people in this city who consider speaking a mandate and not an option.
These are the same people who don’t understand and can’t figure out the new people in their neighborhoods who don’t have the decency to speak when they pass.
But friendly neighborhood greetings aren’t the only thing that’s missing. Gesturing toward North Villere Street, Smith said, “On these streets, there’ll be no Trombone Shorties.”
Everybody knows that the biggest music stars from Treme grew up playing music, but the way Smith tells it, it’s more accurate to say they grew up in a neighborhood where music was play. Little kids mimicked what they saw the bigger kids and the adults doing. One day before Hurricane Katrina, at the corner of Orleans and Claiborne, I saw exactly what Smith was describing. A group of children was pretending to be St. Aug’s “Marching 100.” One could tell which band they were mimicking by looking at the drum major, i.e., the child high-stepping with a broom stick pointed skyward. A white bedsheet was fastened around his neck and flapping behind him. On that sheet, the letters S and A had been scrawled one on top of the other.
If there will be no more Trombone Shorties on the streets of Treme, that might be because there are fewer and fewer shorties. Over and over again one hears the complaint that entire blocks of Treme have been completely or almost completely depopulated of families who call the neighborhood home. Those blocks have, for all intents and purposes, become hotel districts.
It has become more profitable, significantly more profitable, for property owners to rent to revelers and sightseers who will only be in town a day or two than to rent to individuals or families seeking a permanent address.
Not only does a glut of short-term rentals displace the people who know to say “Good morning” and “Good evening,” but it also displaces those children who might grow up to shut down the Acura Stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
On Thursday, May 24, the New Orleans City Council started pumping the brakes on the runaway short-term-rental market in the city. A temporary ban introduced by Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer would affect 72 percent of the short-term rental licenses that have been issued. In Uptown, the Lower Garden District, Central City, Marigny, Treme, Bywater and parts of Mid-City and the 7th Ward, short-term rental licenses will only be issued for homes with homestead exemptions, that is homes that are generally owner occupied.
There will be no changes for people who are renting a room in their house or the other side of a double.
The short-term rental debate pits the financial interests of individual homeowners against the communal interests of a neighborhood. Until now, the individuals have been winning. Many have been raking in money hand over fists in neighborhoods that are missing the music of trumpets and drums and the music of “How ya mama’n’em?”