Vultures of the Lower Ninth

In the fine tradition of the reading material at my old dentist's office, see if you can spot what's wrong with the following picture:


If you said, "The foundation columns for that house are unsteady piles of cinderblocks or poorly mortared bricks, all unattached to the house itself", you'd be both out of breath and quite correct.

If you said, "That 6x6 is neither attached to nor supported by anything on the near side", you'd be correct as well.

But if, based on the abundant evidence, you concluded that this New Orleans homeowner was defrauded by the contractors who skipped town with her money after doing only perfunctory work, you'd win the grand prize.

The standard deal in the Lower Ninth (as, I believe, in other places) is that the contractor negotiates with the homeowner a price for an agreed-upon list of projects. After that, the homeowner pays the contractor 40% of the total price for the first 40% of work. When that's complete, another 40% is paid, and then a final 20% payment is exchanged when the work is complete.

Of course, these deals are largely arrived at on a handshake basis. Worse, homeowners rarely know how to verify the bona fides of a contractor, and the government's done a phenomenally poor job of regulating the contracting market. As a result, the standard eventuality for work 'round these parts is that the homeowner pays 40% for the first set of work, lays out the second 40% and then finds that a) the contractor has skipped town without a forwarding address, and b) what work was done was of such poor quality as to require near-complete reconstruction.

Witness, then, the "beams to nowhere" (original phrase -- citations, please!) and disintegrating pillars above. Elsewhere in Miss Sheila's house, the uneven floors, sparse and improper screws and nails, cracked drywall and crooked doorways are salt in the still-fresh wounds left by Katrina. Mentioning contractors in any gathering of Katrina survivors is a surefire recipe for rolled eyes and strained, knowing smiles.

The work we do here isn't top-quality by any stretch of the imagination, but it is conscientious and it is honest and it is accountable, and damn if those floors aren't level when we're done with them.