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That's one prong of the Tulane approach. The other is a series of ingenious ways Mason has found to put the brains and resources of the university to work in the city's poorest neighborhoods (average annual household income: $5,300). By recruiting large numbers of students and faculty to work in projects and by opening Tulane's campus to residents of public housing, Tulane has gone far beyond simple management of real estate. Some 150 faculty and 500 students from Tulane and nearby Xavier University now venture forth regularly to C.J. Peete, where they do everything from private tutoring to teaching courses on health, parenting, job training, teen pregnancy and high school equivalency. They help residents find jobs, and provide seed capital from the program's budget, as well as know-how, to help them start small businesses. So far, the program has helped 1,000 families.
In other Tulane-run tenant programs, 354 jobs have been found for residents, 600 youths have been placed in basketball and other sports programs, and 10 summer camps have been started.
Fully half of the city's 13,500 housing units will be torn down in the next five years. In their place will rise $750 million of new housing, planned by Tulane and HANO and financed by the Federal Government. In once forbidding places like Desire, new single-family units and community centers are already on the drawing board. "The stuff we are doing is cutting edge," says HANO executive director Michael Kelly, an architect. "We're going to be reshaping neighborhoods."
After only two years it may seem premature to call Tulane's stewardship an unqualified success. "They have a long way to go," says Kevin Marchman, HUD's Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing. "But they have made more progress in the last two years than we have seen in the last 25. What is going on in New Orleans is a local miracle." That, at the least, ought to keep the money flowing.