[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish Council meets in executive session to discuss housing-related legal issues

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish Council meets in executive session to discuss
housing-related legal issues
By Bob Warren, The Times-Picayune 
September 23, 2009, 11:05AM
The St. Bernard Parish Council met in closed session for about an hour this
morning to discuss the parish's ongoing legal issues involving a New
Orleans-based fair housing agency.

The council banged the meeting to order at 8 a.m. and immediately moved into
executive session to discuss litigation filed against it by the Greater New
Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, which has taken issue with several of
the council's post-Hurricane Katrina rental housing ordinances.

The council emerged from the executive session after about an hour and
adjourned the meeting without taking any formal action.

The meeting had been hastily called Tuesday night.

Parish government has most recently been embroiled in a legal fight with the
Fair Housing Action Center and a private company, Provident Realty Advisors,
over Provident's efforts to build four mixed-income apartment complexes in
Chalmette.

Provident and the Fair Housing Action Center say that parish government's
efforts to block the apartment complexes, and earlier council efforts to
tightly restrict rentals in St. Bernard, violate the federal Fair Housing
Act. Parish officials contend they are trying to keep the parish's rental
market from becoming too oversaturated.