[StBernard] Housing debate in St. Bernard reflects post-Katrina landscape

[Westley Annis]

Housing debate in St. Bernard reflects post-Katrina landscape
by Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune 
Saturday July 18, 2009, 8:43 PM

For nearly three months, meetings about the mixed-income apartment complexes
slated for Chalmette have drawn standing-room-only crowds to the St. Bernard
Parish government complex.

A steady stream of speakers walk up to the microphone, each voicing
unbending opposition to the complexes they say will send the parish's real
estate market into a tailspin and unravel the investments made in their
parish since Katrina. 

"To have outsiders tell us what we need is ludicrous," said Polly Boudreaux,
a Meraux homeowner who has seen formerly owner-occupied homes in her
neighborhood become rentals, speaking at a recent hearing. "We're not an
unthinking, racist people. We are people who made calculated choices to
reinvest in our neighborhood." 

In the year since the plans for four apartment complexes were unveiled, the
controversy over the subsidized rental units has become one of the
touchstone issues in St. Bernard's recovery. 

Political opposition to the complexes, including a parishwide building ban
on new apartments at one point, spurred a fair-housing lawsuit and earned
the parish a federal judge's rebuke. 

But St. Bernard has continued to press its case that there are already
plenty of affordable rentals in the parish and that adding more will drive
down home values. Parish officials are now asking a state housing finance
board to withdraw the tax credits that are crucial to financing the
apartment complexes. 

Similar community uprisings against low-income housing have occurred
throughout the New Orleans area since Hurricane Katrina, as federal
government subsidies to re-engineer affordable housing patterns collide with
neighborhoods and municipalities that oppose them. 

Shifts in housing patterns 

Historically, New Orleans has held the largest share of subsidized housing,
despite an outgrowth of jobs and population to suburban parishes. And recent
studies predict that Orleans Parish will continue to shoulder the vast
majority of the lower-income housing for the metropolitan area: 70 percent
of the region's subsidized housing in the entire region but only 27 percent
of its population, based on 2012 projections by the Bureau of Governmental
Research, a nonpartisan New Orleans research organization. 

The BGR report found that subsidized housing in New Orleans is already a
higher percentage of the city's total housing than before Katrina, up to 18
percent from 10 percent of the entire housing stock. The report estimates
that number will grow to 25 percent, based on projections of planned new
units. 

The mixed-income plans in St. Bernard Parish call for 288 apartments split
among four separate buildings. About 200 units would be reserved for people
earning below about $30,000 a year, with about 57 of those units set aside
for those earning less than $20,000. 

Because St. Bernard's post-Katrina housing stock has been in flux, residents
and parish politicians contend that the 288 units will create an oversupply
in a parish that already has many more subsidized rentals than before the
storm, thus further driving down property values. 

They argue that hundreds of new rental properties have opened since the need
for affordable housing was measured by the state and the apartment
developers, Provident Realty Advisors of Dallas. Many of those new units are
single-family homes that were converted to rentals because owners couldn't
sell them. 

Statistics bear out some of their concerns: Based on BGR's projections for
2012, St. Bernard would rank second behind Orleans Parish in the percentage
of subsidized rentals making up the housing market. Subsidized rentals would
make up 25 percent of the housing market in Orleans, according to the
projections, and 11 percent in St. Bernard. 

In addition, a recent report on St. Bernard recovery by local real estate
expert Wade Ragas noted that, as before Katrina, about 20 percent of the
parish's current housing stock is made up of rentals. But analyzing Section
8 vouchers and rental subsidy numbers from FEMA's Disaster Housing
Assistance Program, or DHAP, he noted that 44 percent of its current rental
market is subsidized, up from a scant 7 percent before Katrina. 

New Orleans' housing market, by contrast, is 53 percent rentals, 24 percent
of which are subsidized. 

"Huge increases in public-service costs accompany this shift at a time when
St. Bernard government is struggling to fund and provide basic resources,"
Ragas noted in the report. 

That shift worries some parish residents and politicians. 

"That's not what we were before the storm; that's not what we should have to
be after the storm as we try to recover our community," Parish President
Craig Taffaro said when he and three councilmen went in front of the housing
finance board in Baton Rouge last month to press their case. 

St. Bernard landlords also report high vacancies despite some of the lowest
rents in the region, $500 to $700 for two-bedroom single-family homes. 

Vouchers versus tax credits 

But affordable-housing advocates draw a line between voucher programs such
as Section 8 and DHAP, programs that are tied to an individual tenant rather
than a housing unit, and low-income housing tax credit apartments such as
the ones proposed in St. Bernard. 

Already, many DHAP renters have faced evictions as the government's rental
subsidy dwindles in the program's final months. 

"They don't provide necessarily permanent long-term affordability, because
it's something that's subject to being relocated at any time," said Laura
Tuggle, who manages the housing law unit with Southeast Louisiana Legal
Services. "I don't buy the issue of, 'We have plenty of affordable housing.'
I don't know any community that ever has enough affordable housing." 

In St. Bernard, the estimate is that about 40 percent of the 1,000 to 1,300
people in the DHAP program will transition into Section 8. So far the parish
has 362 people enrolled in Section 8 vouchers, which are government
subsidies that pay landlords the difference in rent so that tenants don't
pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. 

The parish still has to process 462 more DHAP participants. St. Bernard is
processing the current DHAP list, but the parish is not accepting new
Section 8 vouchers after the program was capped late last year. 

Since the storm, government programs such as the low-income housing tax
credit developments in St. Bernard and the Road Home small rental program
were developed to rebuild permanent affordable housing units lost by the
storm. Both of those initiatives have many units planned, but few actually
built. 

The number of low-income housing tax credit units financed in St. Bernard,
288, is relatively small, out of more than 12,000 total units financed for
the region. Of that, New Orleans is slated to get nearly 9,000; Jefferson
Parish, more than 2,000; and St. Tammany Parish, nearly 900. 

Unlike traditional public housing, low-income tax credit developments
require outside investment. Tenants must fall into certain income brackets,
but each property manager sets requirements for background checks on
renters. In addition, property managers must maintain the units for a
minimum of 15 years and adhere to state and federal inspections or risk
losing the tax credit investments. 

Dynamics of housing 

The fair-housing lawsuit was filed by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing
Action Center and Provident after the St. Bernard Parish Council instituted
a construction ban for new apartment buildings last September. The
plaintiffs claimed the parish's construction ban intentionally discriminated
against minorities. 

U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan ruled in March that the ban was
discriminatory and ordered the parish to lift it. 

Pinpointing the geographical need for affordable housing is nowhere near an
exact science, especially with the ever-changing dynamics of the New Orleans
area. Population, income and rental rates are constantly in flux. 

St. Bernard politicians have taken issue with the statistics used to allot
the 288 units in their parish, saying the numbers showed outdated rents and
housing stock. 

But even the most recent housing-needs assessment report by the Louisiana
Housing Finance Agency shows that St. Bernard is still in need of 132 more
rental units, even if the 288 federal tax credit units and more than 700
Road Home small rental units were built. 

That's far less than the 3,200 units the agency said were needed in St.
Tammany Parish or the 13,800 units thought to be needed in Jefferson Parish.


Kalima Rose, a senior director with PolicyLink who has dealt extensively
with housing issues, said many suburban parishes, unaccustomed to housing
people at a wide range of income levels, might initially recoil at a more
regional approach to the changes in affordable housing since Katrina. 

"Because St. Bernard wasn't making a contribution to that in the region, and
there's public resources going to help rebuild the region, it's now
incumbent on them to provide housing for people in the region," said Rose,
who served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the St. Bernard court
case. 

As it stands, the 288-unit complexes are still on hold, as the developers
try to get the parish's planning commission to allow a resubdivision of the
properties so construction to proceed. 

And both sides will be back in court again early next month, after the
plaintiffs asked Berrigan to hold St. Bernard in contempt when the planning
commission denied the requested resubdivision in April. 

Chris Kirkham can be reached at ckirkham at timespicayune.com or 504.826.3321.