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A few months following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hollywood star Brad Pitt positioned himself as the architectural saviour of a working-class black neighbourhood, The Lower Ninth Ward, in New Orleans in the US.
Lower Ninth Ward was among many areas in New Orleans that had been severely damaged and there were questions around whether the low-income neighbourhood was worth rebuilding, Bloomberg reports.
Neighbourhood residents and activists pushed back, insisting Lower Nine deserved rebuilding.
In 2007, Brad founded Make It Right, a non-profit whose mission was to build affordable housing to help the residents of Lower Nine. The actor (now 55) pledged to build 150 new homes using cutting-edge design, The Mercury News reports.
Over the course of the following seven years, 106 houses were built, but construction came to a grinding halt in 2015. Residents began complaining about structural flaws, with many of the homes starting to fall apart.
“Make It Right seems to have made it blight,” wrote Lens, a local investigative publication. Even Architectural Digest, which had previously praised the project asked, “Where Did Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation Go Wrong?”
Constance Fowler, a resident of Lower Nine, told the Daily Mail that her next-door neighbours had to move out due to mould in their home, causing the neighbour’s wife to fall ill.
“People have problems with porches, roofs, walls falling apart,” she said.
“There’s six out of seven homes right next to me that have had significant repairs.”
A spokesperson for Pitt declined to comment but the Hollywood star denied last year that he was to blame for the deteriorating homes, Daily Mail reports.
Sources: Bloomberg, The Mercury News, Daily Mail
