New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods. 73 of them. Each one of these neighborhoods has its own flavor, its unique characteristics, and residents who can tell you about people who were brought up there and went on to do something notable.

Claus Sadlier grew up in Old Metairie. It’s possible you don’t know who Claus is. If you’ve stopped at a coffee shop to grab a cup of joe to go - Claus is the guy who invented the paper cup you got your coffee in.

Back in the early 90’s, when to-go coffee was still sold in Styrofoam cups, Claus created an insulated paper cup. And sold the design to Dixie Cups for $170 million.

Claus went on to invent other stuff as well. Then in 2013, having conquered the world, he followed his heart back to New Orleans. He bought a home in the French Quarter and decided to use some of his good fortune to celebrate a singular New Orleans neighborhood and its claim to fame: prostitution.

In September 2024, after years of research, planning and design, Claus Sadlier opened The New Orleans Storyville Museum.

It’s been many years since New Orleans had a legal sex-worker district. But we’re still a city that proudly runs on our reputation for fun - from restaurants, bars, and  drinking on the street, to music festivals and corporate conventions.

A lot of this hospitality and tourist industry – and its allied occupations like security, sanitation, and infrastructure maintenance – is powered by people who don’t make a lot of money.

As the city gets more prosperous, these folks, who are the heart and soul of New Orleans’ economy, don’t benefit from gentrification if they don’t own a house. And if they’re renting, they can end up being priced out of their neighborhood.

That’s where Oji Alexander’s business, People’s Housing Plus, comes in. People's Housing Plus is a property development company. They buy land, build houses, and sell or rent them. But only to low and moderate income New Orleanians.

By controlling every step of the process, from financing through construction, houses are affordable. And with a stewardship program that continues after a sale, continued maintenance is affordable too.

It’s sometimes hard to describe to people who don’t live in New Orleans exactly what makes it such a unique place. Yes, it’s physically beautiful to look at, the food’s great, there’s always good music, it’s relatively affordable, and the climate is – with a few exceptions – mostly pleasant. But none of that adequately explains the actual experience of living here.

The next time you’re looking for a way to explain what that’s like, you might point to this episode of Out to Lunch. You could describe it  like this:

“In a historic building on the most exclusive tree-lined avenue in the city, as streetcars rattle by, a successful design engineer who invented the paper coffee cup and built a museum celebrating jazz, gambling and prostitution, has lunch with a property developer building houses for low income citizens – and nobody’s in a hurry to get anywhere when it’s over.”

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

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