[StBernard] Replacing lost housing is off to a slow start

[Westley Annis]

Replacing lost housing is off to a slow start 
Updated 4/17/2006 12:26 AM ET
By Mindy Fetterman, USA TODAY

One idea for new housing in the post-hurricane, post-flood New Orleans is a
tiny yellow "Katrina Cottage" that can withstand a hurricane's winds. If it
gets wet inside, you just hose it out - no mold. It will cost about $35,000.
Another is a 20,000-lot development with "New Orleans-style" homes on a farm
next to a golf course in a neighboring suburb. The homes will cost from
$150,000 to $250,000.

A third is an "urban loft" condo development with a pool on the roof at the
edge of the Warehouse District near the French Quarter. Prices not
announced.

And the flashiest: A gleaming steel-and-glass tower, 70 stories high, with
condos that will cost much more than any of the above. It would be the
tallest building in Louisiana. The name on the tower: Trump.

"Everybody's drooling, waiting for the building boom to begin," says Rick
Whitney, a small developer who has 16 properties in the New Orleans area.

That hasn't happened yet.

Despite tentative plans announced by a few developers, and new flood maps
out last week that give homeowners some guidance about how high above ground
to rebuild, the housing purgatory that has gripped New Orleans for more than
seven months remains. And it won't ease soon.

The new home construction plans announced so far target wealthy buyers, even
out-of-towners who might want a "weekend place" in downtown New Orleans.
They're being built in the "high and dry" land near the unflooded French
Quarter or in a suburb miles away.

When built, they'd replace a fraction of the nearly 250,000 homes in the
metro area that were damaged when Hurricane Katrina ripped through in late
August and the levees failed, flooding some areas of town with 14 feet of
water.

None of the developments are aimed at replacing the tens of thousands of
damaged and uninhabitable homes in lower- or middle-class areas such as the
Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview or St. Bernard Parish.

Some individual new homes are being built by historic preservation groups
and charities such as Habitat for Humanity and Catholic Charities of New
Orleans, which announced this month it would build 4,000 rental and elderly
housing units. More than 50,000 homeowners have gotten permits from the city
to repair their homes, and many are.

Even though the "Katrina Cottage" would be a replacement for low-income
homes, it's just an idea. The cottage is envisioned as a modern-day "Sears
house," like the mail-order homes sold by the retailer in the early 1900s.

"It's a tale of two cities right now," says developer Roger Ogden, co-owner
of the Canal Place Mall downtown, which was looted and burned after the
hurricanes. It reopened in February.

"We have the historic infrastructure, the French Quarter, the Museum
District and others, that are back open," he says. "But in the outlying
suburbs of Orleans Parish and St. Bernard Parish, where the extensive
flooding caused mind-boggling destruction, nothing much is happening yet."

Waiting to decide 

In New Orleans, it's still a waiting game.

Property owners had been waiting for advice from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency to tell them how high to rebuild to qualify for flood
insurance and rebuilding money. Last week FEMA said buildings must be at
least 3 feet off the ground and meet its base flood elevations. Buildings in
the lowest-lying areas might have to be raised up to 11 feet. Most
homeowners were reluctant to rebuild until the new flood maps came out. It
could take more than a year for governments to OK the guidelines.

Renters have had to wait for their landlords to decide what to do, too - 47%
of New Orleans' housing was rental property,

The state of Louisiana is waiting for congressional approval for an
additional $4.2 billion it wants to fund a proposal to subsidize homeowners
for up to $150,000 for damage (minus insurance), provide low-interest loans
to rebuild, or buy property outright for up to $150,000. The House has
approved it; the Senate has not.

Property owners are waiting to find out how much money they'll get from the
federal government if they abandon their property. Until then, city and
parish governments can't decide if they want to redevelop it. Until then,
developers can't decide where to build.

Some Louisiana parishes (the equivalent of counties) are considering ideas
for rebuilding that are coming from meetings called charrettes (French for
"carts"), being led by a group of so-called New Urbanist architects brought
in by the state. And separate neighborhood meetings still are underway to
try to assess how many people will return. That will help governments decide
which areas get rebuilt first.

Walter Leger is head of the Louisiana housing recovery plan that is awaiting
Congressional approval.

But personally, he's like many in New Orleans: He can't decide what to do.

His home in St. Bernard Parish was flooded with 14 feet of water, which
killed the 45 trees around it. He doesn't know if he should rebuild. Will
the levees hold for this hurricane season, which starts in June? Or is it
time to sell and move to higher ground? What will his neighbors do? If he
rebuilds, would his house be the only one on the street for years?

"I haven't made a decision yet," says Leger (pronounced Ley-jere). "And
that's one of the fundamental problems in New Orleans."

A little yellow house 

One of the most innovative ideas for housing is a cottage that a group of
architects is proposing be built to replace homes destroyed throughout the
Gulf Coast.

The 170- to 1,700-square-foot cottage could be bought as a kit from a home
repair retailer, such as Lowes or Home Depot, and assembled on a lot. Or it
could be pre-made by a manufacturer and delivered by truck. Traditional
"stick" construction could be used to build it from a set of architectural
plans.

The cottages can withstand 130-mile-an-hour winds and can be built with
plastic-foam-core concrete panels that won't mold. The houses cost $100 a
square foot.

A homeowner could live in the tiny cottage while building a bigger house,
then use it for a studio or workplace. Or it could serve as the "kernel" of
a house, and be enlarged later.

"Everybody loves the idea that they can order a house that would be cute and
nice and turn up, and that's the end of it," says architect Marianne Cusato,
who designed a 770-square-foot cottage shown in St. Bernard Parish last
month. "People see them and want one in their backyard."

Her "Katrina Cottage" is one of several designs being proposed by New
Urbanists architects, a loose collective of architects that is advising
Mississippi and Louisiana on how to rebuild. They get their name because
they design communities with homes, retail stores, schools and offices
within walking distance, in an old-fashioned, town-center way.

Officials in both states are lobbying to have Katrina Cottages replace FEMA
trailers that are being provided as temporary housing. But FEMA says that
would require a change in federal law. Negotiations continue.

"We're proposing a new model of housing, to replace 20,000 FEMA trailers in
our communities with something akin to the Katrina Cottage," says Gavin
Smith, director of recovery and renewal for Mississippi. "They're more
livable and more in keeping with our coastal architecture. They're safer and
can be anchored on elevated foundations."

The New Urban Guild early this month showed 16 Katrina Cottage designs at a
national manufactured housing show to strong interest, says Steve Mouzon,
co-founder of the guild. One company signed a contract to make them.
"Everybody wants to be first out of the gate" if the government approves
spending money for the cottages, he says.

A slow pace on the ground? 

Some criticize the seemingly slow pace of planning and rebuilding in New
Orleans and Louisiana compared with neighboring Mississippi. Many blame the
federal government for being slow to approve money to support homeowners.

"At this point, seven months after the storms, people are discouraged that
there are not programs outlined to help them," says Patricia Gay, executive
director of the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans.

Charrette planning meetings have been held in all 11 Mississippi towns
devastated by hurricane winds (flooding was not the issue there), and 10
have adopted the plans. Only Biloxi declined, because its city government is
continuing an earlier development plan supported by its casinos.

But in New Orleans and Louisiana, property owners - and the governments -
have been more reluctant to accept planning advice from outsiders.

An Urban Land Institute plan for New Orleans, released right after the
hurricanes, called for major sections of the city near Lake Pontchartrain to
be abandoned for parks and wetlands as the area is rebuilt. That set off a
public outcry about property owners' rights and abandonment of some poor,
African-American neighborhoods. The plan died.

Even help with FEMA trailers has caused controversy. Property owners don't
mind them set up in an individual's backyard, but there's been resistance to
putting groups of trailers together. Two weeks ago, Mayor Ray Nagin
suspended construction of FEMA trailer parks after neighbors in the upscale
Lakewood Estates objected to trailers being installed there.

Only one neighborhood in New Orleans plans to host the urban planning
architects for meetings on how to rebuild their neighborhood, the
middle-class African-American neighborhood of Gentilly. The meetings begin
tomorrow. Yet, reaction has been mostly positive to the plans, which have
been adopted in St. Bernard Parish next door, and Cameron and Vermillion
parishes on the western edge of the state.

"I hate to second guess those on the ground, living with it every day," says
Bruce Karatz, the CEO of KB Home, the national home builder which has
announced plans to build homes in a nearby town (Developers' plans, 3B).
"But the institutions and entities (in New Orleans) have not been able to
get much going on the residential side."

That might be true, New Orleanians say.

But they say that's because the damage is so widespread and so devastating
that it takes time to work through all the issues of rebuilding.

"Whatever happens in New Orleans, it's not going to be some grandiose, Big
Brother, you-do-it-this-way-or-go-to-hell kind of plan," says developer
Ogden. "It's democracy in action. The individual property owner will have a
say. The neighborhoods will have a say. The city will have a say. The state
will have a say. And all of the others (insurers, bankers, the federal
government) will have a say," he says.

"It's not the best in terms of speed," Ogden says. "But it's who we are."
 

  
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