[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish on hook for legal fees in rental ordinance fight

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish on hook for legal fees in rental ordinance fight
by Mary Elise DeCoursey, The Times-Picayune 
Thursday July 03, 2008, 5:09 PM
St. Bernard Parish will have to pay $123,771.92 in attorney fees to a
fair-housing advocacy group that sued the parish in 2006 over a
controversial rental ordinance. 

The payment comes in addition to the $32,500 settlement that the parish
agreed to earlier this year with the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action
Center. The ordinance, which the Parish Council adopted in September 2006,
required council approval or owners to rent homes to anyone who was not a
blood relative. The ordinance applied only to single-family homes that had
not been rentals prior to Hurricane Katrina. 

But fair housing advocates said the ordinance, particularly the blood
relative clause, violated the federal Fair Housing Act. In challenging the
ordinance in federal court, they argued that since the parish's
pre-hurricane population was around 93 percent white, the blood relative
clause would largely exclude nonwhites from renting. 

Council members removed the blood relative clause in December 2006, amending
the ordinance to demand council approval of all rentals of single-family
homes that had not been rentals prior to the hurricane. 

The payment will be covered by the parish's general liability insurance, and
the parish is not planning to appeal, St. Bernard Parish President Craig
Taffaro said Thursday. 

"We just remain focused on the overall recovery of our community, and this
is one aspect of it," Taffaro said. 

Lucia Blacksher, general counsel with the action center said the group will
continue to monitor the applications coming in for the conditional use
permit. 

"The court retains jurisdiction for three years," Blacksher said. "If we ID
a possible violation of the consent agreement and aren't able to resolve it
between the parties, then we can file a motion to enforce the decree." 

The parish still faces a suit against the ordinance filed by Your Home
Solution Louisiana, an investment group from Florida. 

Taffaro said the parish is sticking by its ordinance. 

"No, the rental ordinance is not causing us trouble," he said. "But like
anything that's worth standing up for we are accepting and responding to
challenges by those people who may disagree with us."