Master P. aka P. Miller has reportedly teamed up with President Barack Obama‘s HUD secretary Shaun Donovan to break ground on a new Housing Projects in his hometown of Hurricane Katrina ravished New Orleans.

The remodeled mixed-income housing development dubbed Marrero Commons after activist Yvonne Marrero was killed in the wake of Katrina is a brainchild of Miller and  represents his goal to be at the forefront of efforts to revitalize the lower income areas of the city.

“I want to be able to show these guys look at me. I changed my image, I changed my life and I had to grow up,” Miller explained. “I’m honored to be a part of the ground breaking alongside President Obama’s right hand man Secretary Shaun Donovan who shares the same goal as me, which is to help B.W. Cooper residents get back into their new homes.”

Secretary Donovan says as many as 30,000 families are still in need of Disaster relief to rebuild their homes.

“We worked closely with the state and the city to get services to them so we could help them with whatever challenges were keeping them from getting into a permanent home,” Donavan stated. “And as you heard today we made a number of changes to speed assistance to help rebuild homes.”

P’s development is said to be open by the end of next year.

Via: AHH

I’ve internally debated the effectiveness of Master P’s goodwill initiatives.  While I recognize his intentions are good, I do however question the effectiveness.  Now I’m sure I’ll get some comments from fringe citizens of the Highbrid Nation that will translate this as hate and that’s fine. 

But I want to point out how unfortunate we are not to have more leaders within our community with the intentions and financial backing of P. but that are more savvy than he is.  I just cringe when I see him make public appearances on 106 & Park wearing his bejeweled sunglasses and gaudy urban gear trying to promote his various “positive” initiatives.  I honor those initiatives but I just wish he had perhaps a better publicist or manager that could direct those efforts to the appropriate outlets. 

106 & Park is not the forum to be speaking about public developments.  That audience which is high school and junior high school aged kids don’t care about that, in fact they probably clown P. for being an old dude trying to still be hip hop.  They don’t understand his plight, his story.  Its not credible. 

On top of it, I just wish his presentation was more polished, his speech is horrible.  I understand he’s trying to speak to the youth…but the youth aren’t listening and aren’t the ones who need to be.  He needs corporate partners, other philanthropists to jump aboard.  He should be on CNBC, Good Morning America etc.  But who am I right?  Aight I’m off the soap box.