[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish officials want review of rental supply; fair housing group seeks contempt order

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish officials want review of rental supply; fair housing
group seeks contempt order
by Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune 
Wednesday June 10, 2009, 6:13 PM
As the fallout from a federal fair housing lawsuit over four mixed-income
Chalmette apartment complexes continues to mount in St. Bernard Parish,
parish leaders were in Baton Rouge Wednesday asking a state board to take
another look at the amount of low-income rentals already in the parish. 

St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro and Councilmen George Cavignac,
Fred Everhardt and Wayne Landry went before members of the Louisiana Housing
Finance Agency to argue that St. Bernard is already saturated with
subsidized rentals that threaten to destabilize the entire housing market --
without adding four more 72-unit complexes. 

The housing agency allocated low-income housing tax credits last November
that are crucial in financing construction of the four proposed Chalmette
apartment buildings at the center of the court dispute. 

"We're not a community that can afford to exclude anyone," Taffaro said. "We
can't afford to exclude affordable housing, market-rate housing, subsidized
housing. But what we cannot afford also is to unbalance that formula." 

Wednesday's discussion came as the plaintiffs in the fair housing case,
Provident Realty Advisors of Dallas and the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing
Action Center, filed a motion in federal court to hold St. Bernard Parish
officials in contempt of court after they blocked Provident's attempt to
move forward with construction in April. The federal court case centered on
a parish ban on construction of large apartment complexes, which the
plaintiffs argued was a "racially discriminatory" attempt to prevent the
four mixed-income developments from moving forward. 

U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan in March ordered the Parish Council to
rescind the building moratorium, but a month later the parish's planning
commission denied Provident's request to resubdivide the four lots. In May
the developers tried to appeal the commission's decision to the Parish
Council, but members directed them back to the planning commission. 

In the motion, Provident and the fair housing center claim the latest
decisions by the commission and the council are "a continuation of their
discriminatory efforts to keep potential African-American renters out of St.
Bernard Parish." 

The plaintiffs have requested a hearing on June 24, and want Berrigan to
order the parish to pay all attorney's fees and potential damages to
Provident resulting from the delays. 

The parish has appealed Berrigan's previous decision. 

On Wednesday, Taffaro limited his comments several times because of the
litigation, at one point saying "I'm not allowed to ask you guys to pull the
tax credits." 

That prompted a quick response from housing board member Allison Jones, who
said, "You guys can do whatever you want, but it'll be over my dead body." 

Taffaro and the councilmen said recent statistics compiled by real estate
consultant Wade Ragas show that St. Bernard has a much higher percentage of
affordable rentals than surrounding parishes. 

The statistics showed that rentals make up about 20 percent of St. Bernard's
housing stock, but that 44 percent of those rentals are subsidized by either
Section 8 vouchers or the FEMA rental assistance program. By comparison,
Regas' stats show that rentals in New Orleans make up 53 percent of the
housing stock,but 24 percent of those rentals are subsidized. 

Landry said the large supply of rentals is "driving down the prices for
homeowners." And Cavignac argued that the average rental rate in St. Bernard
is at or below what the Department of Housing and Urban Development
considers "affordable." 

But Jones noted that the statistics cited by the St. Bernard officials
directly contradicted statistics given to them by another real estate
contractor. Those statistics showed much higher average rents in St.
Bernard, but were compiled using rental rates as of 2006. 

In the end, the housing agency members said they would review both sets of
data and come to St. Bernard to get a sense of what was happening on the
ground. 

Chris Kirkham can be reached at ckirkham at timespicayune.com or 504.826.3363.