Homeowner Bio

There’s a sign in the yard at the house where Brenda Dupre Williams grew up that says “Roots Run Deep Here.”

For Brenda, whose father built their home on Gordon Street in the Lower Ninth Ward the year she was born, it couldn’t be truer. Both sides of her family – her father’s as bricklayers and her mother’s as educators – were deeply rooted in the Lower Ninth Ward. As a child, Brenda and her brothers would ride their bikes around the neighborhood, visit their father working, visit the shop he built for their aunt, a beautician, and visit their grandmother’s house. Their mother worked as a nurse at St. Claude General Hospital, not far away.

So when Katrina flooded the house with 13 feet of water in August 2005, Brenda didn’t just lose the house she had been living in for the past 10 years after her parents passed away, she lost her sanctuary and her father’s legacy to his children. What was left of the tight-knit community she grew up in was also washed away with the floodwater.

“My daddy said we’d never be homeless,” Brenda says. “He said, ‘Here’s our house, you should never sell the property. It’s really a legacy to us.”

When the storm was coming, Brenda, her son Patrick, his girlfriend, Debra and their daughter Annabella, who were all living in the family home, went to stay with friends in Hammond, La., on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain.

Brenda was 15 when Hurricane Betsy hit and flooded the Lower Ninth and since then, she says, ‘you know you don’t stay below the Canal’ when a Hurricane is coming.

It was in Hammond where she heard the newscaster say just how high the floodwater had reached.

“I’ll never forget, I heard him say Arabi was under 25 feet of water,” she says. “I looked at my son and said, ‘We can’t go home.’”

The family went to stay with one of Brenda’s brothers in California, but she was worried about imminent domain or the possibility of someone claiming destroyed properties.

When she came back, about seven weeks after the storm, it was still a scary site, she says.

"Everything was gray, as I recall it,” she says. “Two pines trees were down but they didn’t hit the roof. The houses around the corner were in the middle of the street.”

Fortunately, her father’s intricate brickwork kept the foundation and structure sound and the house was still standing. Brenda says she knows of at least five other houses he built that survived Katrina, too. Everything inside was destroyed, though, and the Ninth Ward was not yet habitable.

Brenda had friends who helped her find a place to stay, but the rent was exorbitant, she says. She eventually got a FEMA trailer, but suffered illnesses she believes were caused by it. She’s also stayed with relatives, mainly her uncle in Gentilly, but not having a permanent home wears on a person, she says.

In the wake of the storm, with a relationship strained by stress and an uncertain future, Patrick and Debra made the painful decision to adopt Annabella to a couple in San Francisco. The adoption is open, and Annabella, now 5, still comes to visit her parents and grandmother in New Orleans.

Brenda received money from Road Home, but not enough to cover the complete rebuild. She was also fearful of becoming a victim of contractor fraud.

“It’s so prevalent and the level that people were hurt is incredible,” she says.

She says it was scary accepting that fraud might happen, but she tried to find a reputable contractor and began work on the downstairs of the house. She did not receive enough assistance to finish what is left with a contractor, but she is paying SBP for her building materials so that it can be used for another family to move home.

Before the storm, Brenda worked as a secretary and in data entry and also had a telegram and event decorating company, which she lost in the storm. Now she is the full-time caretaker for her fiancé, Edgar, who has suffered from several strokes.

She said finding out SBP said yes to her application, was a huge weight off her shoulders.

“I’m hanging in there, but you know I’m right on the verge,” she says. “It was a relief to know that it was someone I trusted” that would finish rebuilding her house, she says.

Volunteers have helped her a few times since Katrina – cleaning out her flooded garage and maintaining her property – and she’s excited to work with them on her home.

“And now to say that I’m kind of like in the finish line and the volunteers who consistently help me maintain that, it’s really a gift, it’s a gift and a blessing,” she says.

And she says she knows her father would be proud that she has fought to keep the legacy her father left for her and her brothers.

“You always try to save your land,” she says. “It’s like a tenant or something in our moral fiber about holding on to something that’s important, the heart and home.”

In addition, Brenda looks forward to being home and helping to restore the Lower Ninth Ward to the type of place she grew up in. Even before the storm, Brenda was a concerned citizen, writing a newsletter about the community called “Lower Ninth Ward Concerns.”

“I could have very easily become acclimated in another area,” she says. “But I can always hear my father saying, ‘I built this for ya’ll to always have a place to be.’ It’s like home base. You know as a child it’s a game, but something about when you got back to home base, you felt safe. There is a sanctuary here. And that’s why I’m here.”