Reopen Charity Hospital!

New story on Indymedia about real estate speculation in and around lower Mid-City.

It would seem that the Times Picayune was out to defend a $30 million dollar New York-based investor as a "low-income" housing saint when in fact his interest in the area is much more aligned with the GNOBEDD scheme and LSU's "Taj-Ma-hosptial," and the huge rents it'll all bring if successful.

It really is all about making a new hospital work for the wealthy, not the poor.

A key paragraph of this story is buried in the second half. David Crais, a New Orleans/Chicago venture capitalist sent an email to some of the GNOBEDD's movers and shakers back in April explaining among other things that:

“...lastly, I am also working with a New York based investor who now owns almost 200 parcels of land in the mid-city Biomedical Corridor and in Downtown New Orleans. He is with an investment group who began purchasing property in early 2006, right after the storm, and continues to buy to the present. We spent several hours together last Monday night, to almost midnight, going over the exciting plans for the area. He and his group is very interested in the ideas for granular businesses in the region and also plans for symbiotic (like a Medical Mart) and support business opportunities in medical, tech, healthcare, and trade. At least two reps from their group will be returning to New Orleans in the next two weeks. I'll be with them while they're in NOLA and we'll be discussing more specific opportunities.”

This would seem to flatly contradict Kate Moran's story on Pincus Friedman that ran in the Times Picayune, shortly after she received this very same email.

It'll be interesting to see what comes of this revelation.

The bigger picture is that:

"Major investors have created enormous economic and political pressures on LSU to build its $1.2 billion hospital in lower Mid-City. Casual observers might think that the pro-Charity vs. LSU teaching hospital conflict is an argument over two competing plans to bring health care back online in New Orleans. It is not. The difference between the two camps is in fact much more fundamental with the pro-Charity coalition valuing health as a human right versus LSU and its supporters valuing health care as a business anchor around which an industry can grow, land values can inflate, and hospitals can make money."

Health care as a commodity, or health care as a right?

LSU's $1.2 billion dollar hospital, or reopen Charity?

You decide N.O.