[StBernard] While St. Bernard razes, N.O. holds back, creating contrasting landscapes

[Westley Annis]

While St. Bernard razes, N.O. holds back, creating contrasting landscapes
by Chris Kirkham and Michelle Krupa, The Times-Picayune 
Saturday August 29, 2009, 9:30 PM

In the chaotic weeks after Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters receded from New
Orleans and St. Bernard Parish, returning residents and political leaders
faced a confounding dilemma: what to do with more than 100,000 flooded
homes, representing nearly 60 percent of the parishes' combined housing
stock.


Less than a month after Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers' estimate of
the volume of debris created by the storm assumed that every building that
stood in the floodwater for longer than a few days would be leveled. 

It was thought that entire sections of New Orleans would be bulldozed, the
structures too fragile to rebuild. In St. Bernard Parish, officials said 80
percent of all properties could well be razed. 

A touchy waiting game ensued. Officials had to balance countless individual
circumstances calling for delay with a need to improve the surroundings for
those who returned. 

Four years later, distinct approaches have emerged in the two parishes: St.
Bernard has proceeded with an aggressive pace of FEMA-financed demolitions,
tearing down nearly one-third of its pre-Katrina housing in an attempt to
rid neighborhoods of homes that could go unoccupied for years. 

New Orleans has been much slower to bulldoze, often trying to allay
preservationists concerns, as well as some residents' post-storm fears of a
land grab in vulnerable areas. What remains is a city with about one-third
of its residential structures unoccupied. 

"It's two very different views of the future, and none of us knows which
view is right," said Wade Ragas, who analyzes home sale trends for the New
Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors and has done studies for St.
Bernard. "The St. Bernard strategy is that they're trying to resize for a
long-term smaller community. Orleans seems to be on track to think, 'We will
get back to our old population; we hope that people will instead
renovate.'¤" 

Both approaches have drawn some criticism. 

The active demolition tactic has brought complaints from some homeowners who
said they weren't notified until it was too late. The more hands-off
approach has left homeowners frustrated over lingering blighted shells that
drag down their neighborhoods. 

At the four-year mark, St. Bernard has nearly completed its demolition
program, with 7,666 homes brought down since the effort began in 2006. The
parish anticipates only a few hundred more demolitions through the end of
the year, the parish's deadline for federal reimbursement. 

In New Orleans, despite having more than seven times as many pre-storm
housing units as St. Bernard, only 6,312 properties have been demolished
since Katrina. But the bulk of New Orleans' demolitions were handled by the
corps in the early months of recovery -- many at the request of owners. 

Since City Hall took over the tear-down program in late 2007, just 1,629
homes and 33 commercial buildings damaged by the storm have been brought
down, with FEMA footing the bill, agency records show. The city has used
separate federal block grants to raze 402 buildings unrelated to Katrina. 

But the window for FEMA-financed demolitions in New Orleans has ended, along
with St. Tammany Parish. It is slated to end in September in Slidell, and in
October in Jefferson Parish. Plaquemines Parish, like St. Bernard, has until
year's end. 



Different housing stock 

For St. Bernard, the challenge is rebuilding from the ground up. For New
Orleans, it's repopulating within an existing shell. 

In many ways, the sweep of the destruction in St. Bernard has made the
cleanup task less complicated for policymakers and residents. Unlike in New
Orleans, where flood damage ranged from minor to catastrophic, nearly all of
St. Bernard's housing stock was under deep water, meaning residents who came
back were unified in their resolve. 

The character of the housing stock differed, too. The dense collection of
one-story 1960s and 1970s ranch homes in Chalmette were subject to less
neighborhood and preservationist scrutiny than historic cottages in New
Orleans. 

Before tearing down properties across a vast swath of New Orleans, City Hall
must secure approval from a pair of panels that weigh historic and planning
priorities. 

"We had to strike a balance," said Winston Reid, Mayor Ray Nagin's code
enforcement chief. "St. Bernard did not have to go through all of the
historical processes. They didn't have preservation interests. They didn't
have the stakeholders that we did because of our unique housing stock." 

In a quirk of recovery vocabulary, "demolition" in New Orleans initially
meant simply hauling away the remains of structures that had collapsed or
floated off their foundations into public rights of way. 

With structures that were not literally toppling over, the wrecking ball
generally was seen as a last resort. More often, officials gave property
owners -- particularly those waiting for insurance or Road Home payments --
as much time as possible to clear the blight, Reid said. 

Officials were keenly aware of financing shortfalls, as well as residents'
distress over rumors that whole neighborhoods would be leveled for green
space or industrial use, he said. 

"Some people panicked," Reid said. "They had concerns about us taking their
property. We needed to calm those fears. The goal was to clear hazardous
situations. The goal was to revive the heartbeat of New Orleans." 

Not everyone has been a fan of the city's deliberate pace. Critics have
complained that the months-long wait for committee hearings, along with
officials' inclination to extend deadlines to allow owners to comply with
the code, repels investors and makes life miserable for neighbors. 

City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, whose district experienced
catastrophic flooding, said she sympathizes with residents who lacked the
resources to return. 

But she said the Nagin administration should have done more to figure out
why lots were blighted, then targeted owners "living in comfort outside of
the state." 

"When you have stuff that is falling down, when you have properties that
have grass 6 feet tall, when there is clearly no effort to even cut the
grass, board up the doors and windows so vagrants cannot get in," she said,
"that demonstrates total neglect and abandonment, not only of the home but
of the community." 

Reid acknowledged problems but said his staff tried hard to maneuver the
gauntlet of opposing interests. In many cases, he admitted, the decision to
give property owners months or years to gut houses and tend lawns backfired.


"We did what we felt was right by the people," he said. "Unfortunately, you
have some people who abandoned their (obligation) to be a responsible
landowner to their neighborhood." 

'Just start the process' 

In St. Bernard, where nearly 80 percent of the parish's housing units had
severe damage, according to federal estimates, the immediate post-storm
demolitions were often obvious structural problems. Owners also gave parish
contractors the authority to demolish, happy not to pay the costs
themselves. 

Parish inspectors fanned out across the neighborhoods in 2006 and 2007,
documenting homes without records of building permits and compiling a list
of street addresses for condemnation. The Parish Council in early 2008
approved a huge list of more than 5,000 condemned properties. 

Residents were notified by letter. They could appeal the condemnation by
meeting with a three-member citizen panel and showing any of the following:
the proper permits, evidence of repairs that met codes, proof that the
property was tied up in litigation, proof that Road Home money had recently
come through, or evidence the house had recently been sold. 

The committee then forwarded a recommendation to the parish's Office of
Safety and Permits, which decided whether the home would be demolished. 

Thousands of homes, some that were sold to the Road Home program, came down
with little opposition. But earlier this year, some residents and former
residents began to complain that the parish was overstepping its authority
in tearing down homes they wanted to keep. 

Many of the houses were in various stages of disrepair: some gutted, some
windowless, many lacking basic utilities. But residents who wanted to save
them thought their lots had more value with homes on them, even if the homes
were in bad shape. 

"It got to the point where the parish said, 'Look, just start the process of
the house, do something with it,' " said Anita King, president of the
Chalmette Vista neighborhood association and a member of one of the citizen
review panels for demolitions. "They didn't want to tear houses down. The
parish wanted people to come back. ... But it got to the point where they
said, 'I'm not coming back, but you're not going to do something with my
home.'" 

Dozens of property owners filed temporary restraining orders to stop
demolitions. Parish President Craig Taffaro changed course last winter,
signing agreements with homeowners that set specific timelines for making
progress on repairs. 

Concrete slabs still dot much of the parish, with the Louisiana Land Trust
two months into a massive slab-removal contract that will eventually tear
out 3,400 slabs from Road Home properties and possibly another 3,000 slabs
from private properties. 

Neighborhood groups and parish government have lots of ideas for post-slab
St. Bernard: larger lots through a "lot next door" program; pocket parks on
vacant street corners; and community lakes and ponds to improve drainage. 

"If you turn back, almost as if to watch a movie reel of the development of
St. Bernard, that's exactly what you had," Taffaro said. "There were empty
lots, and over time houses filled in those lots, and eventually developers
moved into another area and repeated that same process. So what we're faced
with is doing the same thing." 

New wave of demolition 

With federal financing no longer available, Mayor Ray Nagin's code
enforcement director said his office is taking a new approach to the
estimated 66,000 unoccupied residential properties -- about one-third of all
New Orleans addresses -- that still dot the landscape, an untold number of
them beyond repair. 

Reid, the code enforcement chief, said he expects "another wave of
demolition" to begin soon. This one will be financed by limited block grant
dollars and focused less on the state of individual properties than on
strategies for enticing investors and improving quality of life that have
the support of neighbors. 

In coming months 1,500 homes, mostly in newer sections of Gentilly and
eastern New Orleans, are expected to be demolished by contractors with the
Louisiana Land Trust, the nonprofit holding company for parcels sold to the
Road Home. Most of the structures are more than 50 percent damaged and lie
below the base flood elevation. 

The empty lots will be turned over to the New Orleans Redevelopment
Authority for sale to neighbors or developers, an agency official said. 

Ommeed Sathe, NORA's director of real estate strategy, said his agency's
decisions also hinge in part on whether a parcel with a house on it is more
likely to attract a buyer. 

That depends, he said. The agency is inclined to tear down properties with
little historic value in low-lying areas, in part because restoring an
existing home usually poses a greater flood risk than building to new,
stricter standards. 

"The derelict properties that have been abandoned are a real disincentive to
investment in these neighborhoods," Sathe said. "We hear in the
neighborhoods all the time that they'd rather have a demolished house than
an unsightly, rat-infested house sitting out there."