Support for a Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together.

Together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you and it is absolutely health in crisis.

I mean, we're going to have people living in cars, living with friends, living underneath bridges unless we figure out how to fix it.

The home construction industry warns of a housing crisis.

We want to make sure that we have two legitimate seats within legitimate opportunities.

Louisiana's congressional map under a deadline from redrawn districts.

I support whatever he does because he's been such an amazing governor for our state during this time.

A legacy chat with First Lady Donna Edwards.

Hi, everyone.

I'm passing here.

And I'm Karen LeBlanc.

Louisiana makes a major step in closing the digital divide With access to more than $1.3 billion in federal funding, the broadband equity access and deployment program, known as Bead, ensures that every citizen has affordable, reliable, high speed broadband access.

Louisiana is the first state authorized by the Biden administration to request access to federal funding from beeD, a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration's Internet for All initiative.

The Beat program is $42.45 billion state grant program authorized by President Biden's bipartisan infrastructure law.

Rising homeowners insurance premiums, mortgage rates, and construction cost have created the perfect storm for new home construction.

Homebuilders across Louisiana are competing for fewer customers, especially first time homebuyers.

As market forces upset the supply and demand, homebuilders are warning of a housing crisis ahead.

In Wagman, a bedroom community in Jefferson Parish, new neighborhoods are under construction.

The tough sell here and throughout Louisiana is not the selling price.

It's the cost of ownership.

When factoring in homeowners insurance and in some cases, flood insurance.

The mortgage plus SRO is pricing many people, especially first time homeowners, out of the market.

I think the general trend that you will see is that there is a slowdown in construction.

And part of that is because of the costs and the affordability, because of the increase in mortgage rates.

Dan Mills is the chief executive officer of the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans.

We're having some challenges.

The Home Builders Association is focused on the American dream, trying to get people into the homes and affordability and our market has been a real challenge, compounded by significant issues with insurance as well as supply chain issues.

In the wake of the pandemic.

We're seeing fewer people move out of their homes and thus we have less homes on the market available.

So that confluence of of aspects is is suppressing an expansion in home development right now.

We got a 30% increase in cost in a year and a half, 30%, 30%.

And the unfortunate thing is, once they get there, they very rarely come back down.

Randy Noel served as chairman of the National Association of Homebuilders in 2018.

While we're building great new homes, resilient, withstand disasters for the area, they're being built in energy efficient, much more energy efficient than we've ever built before, lowering their utility bills.

We still got half of America can't afford to buy one of those new homes, much less a first time homebuyer.

Well, and we used to build in America 800,000 houses a year for first time homebuyers back in 1789.

We're down to under 100,000.

It's just that bad.

The housing crisis, fueled in part by rising insurance rates, is literally leaving people without shelter.

Here's what's happening.

So you are a first time homebuyer and you can't afford to purchase a new home.

You rent.

But rent is rising because insurance rates for multivan only housing is skyrocketing to being passed on to the renter.

It is absolutely a housing crisis.

I mean, we're going to have people living in cars, living with friends, living underneath bridges unless we figure out how to fix this.

The Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for November 2023 shows that the shelter index increased 6.5% over last year.

This year, Louisiana adopted more stringent building codes in an effort to curb rising homeowners insurance rates and entice more insurance companies to write policies.

And those codes represent the most stringent building codes on the Gulf Coast today.

So they address one of the major issues that came up during and that is preventing water inflow when shingles are removed from a roof, a fortified roof that prevents water intrusion is now code on new home construction.

Insurance companies provide a rate break for a home with a fortified roof for existing homes.

A grant program is available to help homeowners defray the cost of retrofitting their roof to fortified standards or code roofs.

In the state of Louisiana don't last ten years, even though the 30 year warranty on them, they they they aggregate so fast in a climate that after ten years, they're not strong enough to withstand the heavy winds we got in the storm.

The insurance companies are starting to send out letters to ask about the age of your roof because they know if your roof is more than five years old, it is not fortified.

So you're going to have the option of fortifying it from the top side by replacing your roof.

If your roof's only 3 to 5 years old, you probably don't want to do that.

So it is possible to come from the underside the attic side with a special type of spray foam and steel, again around every sheet of plywood clothes to sell polyurethane.

Spray foam works to seal a roof from water intrusion and secure it up to the standard of the fortified roof code.

And one of the certified fortified contractors with a grant program for the part of M insurance adds, We're finding that is much less costly than taking the roof off and redoing it.

So if we can watertight that deck, we can prevent those damages and mitigate the costs of the insurance and make it more amicable for them to come back into business.

In our state, homeowners have another tool to lower their insurance rates by hiring a qualified inspector to do a wind mitigation survey of the home.

Do you brought your house up to the current building codes?

You had a form with this inspector that you feel that gave it to the insurance companies, and the insurance companies were mandated to give a discount on that one, in effect in six, I think.

And and we had a lot of inspectors at the time and but it never really caught on.

There are programs that open the door to homeownership for first time homebuyers here.

And Wagman.

In this particular neighborhood, there is a program known as a home opportunity mortgage.

It offers 100% financing, no PMI, which is private mortgage insurance.

It's not income based, but it is zip code specific.

And in this case, majority minority areas.

Many homebuilders believe lowering home insurance rates goes a long way in making homeownership affordable while amping up demand for new home construction.

The houses are being built better, so they're not going to have as much damage.

There's a new home.

The cost piece of it I don't want do about that.

Just pray to God that people's wages go up to catch up with it and then the insurance piece of it.

New homes are getting better rates right now than existing homes.

But if they can't sell their existing home because of insurance rates, because of where they're built, they can come by my home.

Louisiana lawmakers have until January 30th to draw a new congressional map after a federal judge extended the deadline.

The current congressional map is the subject of a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups claiming that a single majority black voter congressional district violates the voting rights Act and does not reflect the latest census data.

Governor elect Jeff Landry takes office on January 8th, leaving time to convene a redistricting session before the court order deadline.

Here's the latest on the legal dispute.

The American Civil Liberties Union is proposing a Louisiana congressional map with congressional districts two and five as majority black districts.

It's one remedial plan.

One proposed map as a possible solution to create fair representation in Congress.

For Louisiana's African-American voters, the current map of the state is passed.

Lets the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans into one congressional district.

When our map is separated, those two metropolitan area in the two different districts make sure that black voters are not passed into one district despite the differences in their living situation.

We don't believe ours is the only map, and we're interested to see what the legislature comes up with.

Try to comply with the voting rights Act.

Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings set the stage for Louisiana's legal showdown over its congressional redistricting.

We think the Supreme Court victory in Alabama is an enormous statement about the strength of the Voting Rights Act.

And we've also seen a recent win in Georgia following that.

So we're eager to see the legislature come back into session as soon as possible.

We're hoping that they will take the opportunity to do exactly what the district court required of them to draw a new majority minority district that would help black voters in Louisiana get fair representation consistent with the Voting Rights Act.

Do you have faith that the Louisiana lawmakers are capable of doing this, given the current political climate?

We're always hopeful, and we think that if anything, the case we've proven so far has given them a clear roadmap to how to draw a new majority black district in Louisiana.

At issue is Louisiana's current congressional map, which has one majority black voter district.

Despite 2020 census data showing that African-American comprised roughly one third of the state's population, you don't have strong opinions as to where the second majority black congressional district is.

As long as we have a second majority.

That is right.

That is correct.

At the end, we want to make sure that we have two legitimate seats, whether legitimate opportunities, not with narrow margins that don't take into effect the the disproportionate amount of voting participation.

Louisiana Congressman Tori Carter, a Democrat, represents District two, the state's only black majority congressional district.

District two includes most of Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish.

The majority of the river Parishes and portions of East and West Baton Rouge Parish.

It balances the playing field that gives cover to those individuals who feel like because their ideological views and philosophical views don't match up with those in the Republican Party would better match up with a Democrat.

And then they have the opportunity to have their voices heard greater in the nation's capital.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has extended the deadline to January 30th, 2024, for lawmakers to redraw Louisiana's congressional boundaries.

Governor elect Jeff Landry takes office January 8th in time to convene a redistricting session before the court deadline.

Although the incoming administration has not committed publicly to calling one, I'm hopeful and optimistic that this governor and this legislature will do the right thing this time, particularly since we've had so many directives from the court saying either you do it or we will.

If lawmakers fail to create a congressional map that is not in violation of the Voting Rights Act, the case heads to Louisiana's middle district court for a federal judge to decide.

When Donna Edwards took on the role of Louisiana's first lady, she came with three goals for finding Louisiana's foster care and education system and creating a mechanism to fight against human trafficking.

After eight years in office, Ms.. Edwards has seen her goals become a reality with the Louisiana First Foundation.

In this in-depth interview with the First Lady.

She reflects on her legacy.

Let's rewind to 2016.

So you become the first lady of Louisiana, and there's no training school for this position.

It's something that you have to figure out on your own.

What was your vision for the role and did it evolve over the years?

You know, there is no job description for the first spouse.

And so the only job requirement was that is that you have to be married to the governor.

And so I you know, I fit that job description.

I qualified after 34 years of marriage.

So, you know, it did it evolved.

I knew what I wanted that I knew.

I. I started learning about the mansion.

And so I the first thing I did is I got involved with wanting to repair.

There was a lot of things that needed to be updated here.

I knew that needed to happen.

Invited Alice Foster over and and a group that had helped her.

And so we started that process of building up the foundation or starting a new foundation because the other one had been laid to rest.

So we started the Governor's Mansion Preservation Foundation, started raising money, working with other people, started working with interior designers, raised over $1,000,000 plus to refurbish and preserve this mansion.

That's the first thing I did, because that was in front of me.

The second thing, as a former music teacher, I wanted to to bring awareness that that was something that we needed to keep in our public schools.

And all schools was music art movement.

As a former music teacher, having left the classroom in our small town of Amy, they didn't replace me.

And so all of those children every year that had been teaching and those that I had left, you know, now had a new music teacher, it saddened me.

And so, you know, we know studies show that music, art and movement enhance the other core subjects.

That is data statistics, all of that shows.

And so I knew I wanted to bring awareness to the need for us to teach music, art, move in our schools.

So I was going to do something with that.

So that's where I started.

That's where you started.

And of course, that ended up giving way to that entire movement that you created, which was teacher music, art movement, which you just mentioned.

Right?

And then also it was all under that umbrella for the Louisiana First Foundation.

So I started the foundation, Louisiana First Foundation, and then came the Teach music art movement, Teach man.

I started Teach Man because as a former military wife and just in the south, we use ma'am a lot.

And so it kind of brings about respect.

Yes, ma'am.

No, ma'am.

Thank you, ma'am.

And so teach ma'am pretty much says respect the arts.

And so that's where that came from.

Yeah.

And you were talking a lot about your your history as a public music school teacher.

Do you think that there was anything else that you learned from that job that you took into this one that kind of prepared you for public service?

I think John, Bill and I both value people, value people from all walks of life.

And we both walked into this position with that same feeling and wanting to make things better.

And, you know, coming from a very small community, a small area in a meet and having served that community after leaving the military, he was the president of the class.

I was present auxiliary building up the community that we were in.

We both live by their philosophy.

Leave it better than you find it.

Right.

And so together we built a playground in our community.

And so we brought that same mindset here.

Him on, obviously a larger playground, this state and you know, here in the governor's mansion.

And then taking that idea of the teach music art movement and then loving the children and then realizing that our Department of Children Family Services and the children that are there in the foster care program and then they end up in the states or in the states hands are our children.

And so I wanted to be a part of that and what I can do to support them, to help them, because they needed some love and help and they need encouragement because caseworkers are most often like teachers and educators, they oftentimes pull out of their pockets to help the children.

So.

Right.

And I actually do want to talk a little bit more about the work that you did with Louisiana's foster children and what's unique about this program is that it linked churches and faith based organizations with these foster groups.

So how else has your faith influenced your work while you were in office?

So we came up with the idea if every church, because we have over 4000 churches in our state, we have over 4000 children in foster care at any given time.

And so and this kind of go together, right?

And so if every church in our state would consider recruiting one family within their church and that one family goes through the foster care program and become a certified foster family, and then the church wrap themselves around that family and that child, Are those children.

Can you imagine what that would do for those children in our state or our communities?

We would take care of all the children and then we would literally take care of every child in our state.

That's huge.

And it wouldn't be hard.

It's not like we have a we have to have a program.

I have to do is stand up in church and say, who in the congregation is a is a foster parent who in the congregation knows someone's a foster parent?

What can we do to help them this week?

Can we bring them food?

We love food in Louisiana.

We can bring them food this once a week.

Can we offer to support them in afterschool programs?

Maybe there's a tutoring program, maybe there's a basketball.

We have basketball in our community.

You know, offer to help them with clothing.

Maybe they need prom dresses or maybe there's a, you know, some school clothes offer to help them with tutoring.

There's all kinds of things we can do to help.

But I encourage the churches to step up and be a part of that.

And so that's something I will continue to do even after leaving office.

Well, another aspect of the Louisiana First Foundation was human trafficking.

It is you mentioned in other interviews that you didn't know much about human trafficking before taking on the role as first lady.

So what compelled you to get involved with this?

Well, I didn't.

And I'm embarrassed to tell you that I didn't.

And I say that quite often.

And it's one of those situations that once you do know it, when you hear about it, you can't unhear it.

Once you know that it's right here in your own community, which it is.

It was in our community.

And I meet you can't walk away from that and you can't say, I don't want to have a part of that.

These are children, the average age of a young girl in our state of Louisiana that is trafficked is 13.

And so you have to say, what can I do?

How can I help with this situation?

And I knew I could possibly leverage this leadership role at some level to be a voice for the voiceless, to help in some way.

And what can I do?

What could I do?

And so I just started reaching out to others, you know, and talking about it and speaking out about it.

And we started working and through the office, the governor's Office of Human Trafficking Awareness.

Dana, Dr. Dana Hunter, we were able she was able to just really work hard to train law enforcement.

We traveled the state, had summits around the state.

I've had my own Zoom summit.

We've went from 300 people attending to over 600 800 people from around not just our state, the country, other countries.

Now, I've started the National Coalition for the Prevention of Human Sex Trafficking with other for spouses around the country.

And I'll continue to do that, spreading awareness because it's happening in every state.

Well, eight years is a lot of time for hindsight.

What is the most difficult aspect of being the first spouse?

We've had a lot of trauma.

A lot of things happen over these last eight years.

You know, the 2016, we had multiple tornadoes that year.

We had shooting here in Baton Rouge.

We had officers killed.

We had we had the that blood of 2016, I was going to say a 100 year flood.

And I pause because I think now they're saying it's what, 300, 400 year flood, something even bigger than that, longer than that.

But that was just in one year.

It's a lot.

And to watch your husband go through that and to watch our our friends and family members in our state go through, that was hard.

And then all the hurricanes that we've had and COVID and the drought and the fires and salt in the river, it's just been a lot over this last eight years.

And so but, you know, I believe that God put him here for this time because his military experience really played a huge part in how he governed our state.

And is there anything that you'll miss?

I'll miss a lot.

All the dismissed the people you know, this has been such a joy, a humbling and an honor to be here in this governor's mansion.

And we have really tried very hard to open it to to remind people that this is the state's home.

It always is.

Is so much fun when children come to visit.

I come down and I welcome them to the governor's mansion.

And I say, did you know that this is your mansion?

And their eyes get really big right now, like, Yes, this is your mansion.

This is the state's home.

And so to be able to share this with the people of the state and remind them that this is their home and to take care of it and to leave it better than I found it has been such a wonderful, rewarding experience.

So what's next for you after all of this is over?

I'm going home to be a grandmother.

Yes, I'm very excited about that.

And I'm to take some time to rest and and I'm going to keep working in my foundation and working hard to continue bringing awareness of the need to support foster children, the need to remind people about human trafficking and making.

We have some great laws, but continue making our laws tougher and harder and remind people that, you know, if there are no buyers, we wouldn't have this issue.

And then also continue talking about the need for music art movement because, you know, we had John Bettis here the other night and wow, that should remind us all why there's a need for music art movement in our schools.

Right.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

Just slightly.

According to the most recent data from the Louisiana Department of Health, our state records 30 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Lack of access to quality health care, racial disparities and social determinants of health are all factors in Louisiana's poor maternal health outcomes.

In this latest episode of Louisiana Spotlight, we analyze how Louisiana got here and what we can do to improve.

Here's a sneak peek of Louisiana Spotlights Birthright.

I'm Tiffany Dietrich.

I'm a licensed midwife.

We are at Sage Birth Center in New Orleans.

It's the first freestanding birth center.

We've been here for about two years.

I have had a birth center in California for about 13 years, and I started doing birth work in the nineties.

I was initially licensed in Washington State and then practicing in California and then most recently here, Louisiana.

Midwifery model of care is very focused on education.

It's informed consent driven.

We have a very specific demographic of clients that we take that are appropriate to birth in an out of hospital setting.

In reality, that's most women in pregnancy.

We provide all of the prenatal care.

We do the birth, we do all of the postpartum care and education.

And the amount of time that we spend in visits is a big part of improving birth outcomes in the South are outcomes are very poor for mothers and babies.

Particular for women of color.

And we know that if you look statistically at outcomes with midwifery based care, it's much better.

You can watch the full Louisiana Spotlight episode on December 19th at 7 p.m. on OPB.

That's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything anytime, wherever you are with our LP app, you can catch LP news and public affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook and Instagram for everyone at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Karen Lalor and I'm crossing here.

Until next time.

That's the state we're in.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together.

Together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Zeigler Foundation and the Zeigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.