New Orleans: Brad Pitt’s Ninth Ward Homes Abandoned, Falling To Ruin – IOTW Report

New Orleans: Brad Pitt’s Ninth Ward Homes Abandoned, Falling To Ruin

After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans, actor Brad Pitt founded the Make It Right Foundation to help rebuild the lower Ninth Ward. Originally promising to build 150 homes, Pitt’s nonprofit managed to put up 100 homes that are being offered at the market rate of $150,000 a piece .

The project homes that have not been sold are slowly being consumed by Louisiana’s rot and mold, some having to be demolished. Those individuals the purchased a Make It Right home have found their new homes need constant up keep. The foundation seems to no longer be active in the area and is not taking calls from residents.  More 

17 Comments on New Orleans: Brad Pitt’s Ninth Ward Homes Abandoned, Falling To Ruin

  1. I had the unfortunate experience of driving through that area in 2014 while installing equipment at the local school admin building. It looked like Katrina had hit just 2 or 3 months prior. 10 YEARS LATER! and not a noticeable improvement.
    How much Fed, state, and private donations went to that crap city? And for what?

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  2. Pitt invested time, effort and presumably a lot of his own money into the project. The article is unclear as to why some of the homes became rotten and dilapidated, but the key sentence in the article was a claim by an owner that Pitt’s organization owed them a moral and social duty to fix things.

    No, Pitt’s company owed the owners a contractual duty to make sure the homes were not defective. The structures in the 9th Ward were ruined by flood waters, and Make It Right undertook to build a lot of new homes in the area. There was no moral or social duty for Pitt to do this, nor is there a moral or social duty for Pitt to make sure the buildings were maintained.

    If the homes were defective, the owners should get their money back. But no one owed them a moral or social duty to build new homes or maintain the structures.

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  3. Snot Brad’s problem. Jimmah built habitats for humanity and queered energy policy. Right or wrong they did something. The only buildings that get made with the finest ingredients are State institutions of learning or commerce.

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  4. It seems, Pitt, a Hollyweird dweller, whose only building experience is probably watching crew build facades on backlots. Stay in your lane, Brad. Look pretty for the camera and stay ready for your close up.

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  5. Brad Pitt’s problem is that he does not know about construction for humid climates. A friend of mine told me that homes in Florida should NOT be made of wood, but of concrete block covered in a thin coat of stucco (which may fall off 10 years later). Humid climates also cause the mastic holding floor tiles in place to sheer after 7-10 years and that furniture needs to be replaced every 10 years as well. Being from the Canadian prairies, I did not know this. I am surprised that the contractors with whom Brad Pitt’s foundation worked, did not know about these problems.

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  6. A flat roof house in New Orleans LOL!!

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    “Pepper said many of the homes had architectural defects. Flat roofs in a rainy climate reportedly forced Make It Right to rebuild some of its houses. The foundation also reportedly used wood that started rotting quickly after the homes were already inhabited.

    Make It Right Foundation also had problems that extended beyond construction issues.

    The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority published a report in December that showed that Make It Right Foundation’s homes cost about $225 per square foot, given the average 1,400-square-foot size of houses it had built in the Ninth Ward.

    Laura Paul, executive director of housing nonprofit Lowernine.org, told the Star that her organization’s housing construction costs were way less, at about $50 per square foot. Paul said even energy-efficient homes, like the ones the Make It Right Foundation built in New Orleans, can be built for $120 to $140 per square foot.”

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  7. “It’s not like they gave them away, you’re talking about a company that went through $100 million…”

    $100 Million to build 100 homes…that’s $1 MILLION per home, and apparently not very well constructed homes.

    I wonder if the people who donated all that money to build houses have a clue about where all that cash actually went, because the majority of it sure as hell wasn’t used to build houses!

    But I bet plenty of leftard causes saw record donations.

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