[StBernard] Judge delays ruling on St. Bernard Parish rental ordinance

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Tue Jun 3 23:16:07 EDT 2008


Judge delays ruling on St. Bernard Parish rental ordinance
by Bob Warren, The Times-Picayune
Tuesday June 03, 2008, 3:52 PM
A federal judge on Tuesday said she would wait until the St. Bernard Parish
Council amends its controversial rental property ordinance before ruling on
a request to formally suspend its enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance did not say when she would issue her ruling.
Martin Stern, an attorney representing the St. Bernard Parish Council, said
he expected the council to amend the rental ordinance during its meeting
later Tuesday night in Chalmette.

A group of investors, mostly from Florida, sued the parish in March,
claiming the post-Hurricane Katrina ordinance violates their property rights
by requiring all single-family homes that were not rental units prior to the
hurricane to receive council permission before being rented.

The parish in April agreed not to enforce the ordinance against the
investors, who had bought and renovated some 80 flood-damaged homes. The
investors, doing business as Your Home Solution Louisiana, did not seek
council approval before renting out some of the homes.

Parish officials have said the ordinance is intended to protect
post-hurricane property values by preventing the market from being flooded
by cheap and poorly-maintained rentals.

Plaintiff attorney Henry Klein argued that the ordinance sets property
owners on a time-consuming process of notifying area neighbors, paying a
$250 fee and bringing the request to both the council and parish Planning
Commission. "It's an unduly oppressive administrative process," he said.

Klein also complained that the penalties for violating the ordinance --
fines of up to $250 per day, as well as wording in the ordinance making a
violation a possible misdemeanor criminal offense -- has had a "chilling
effect" on tenants and property owners.

But Stern said the parish handles the notification process for applicants
and, to date, has only denied one permit because the property was in the
Murphy Oil spill buyout area. He estimated that 40 permits have been granted
and said another 110 or so are in the process.

"The plaintiffs are holding themselves above the law," he said.

The suit by the Florida investors marks the second challenge to the
council's rental ordinance. In February the parish paid $32,500 to settle a
lawsuit filed by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center that
claimed an earlier version of the ordinance was racially discriminatory
because it included a clause requiring council permission for homeowners to
rent to anyone who was not a blood relative.





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