[StBernard] A Low-Income Housing Battle Reveals Post-Katrina Tensions

[Westley Annis]

A Low-Income Housing Battle Reveals Post-Katrina Tensions 
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
CHALMETTE, La. - The parish of St. Bernard, a quiet, insular suburb just
east of New Orleans, has in the end agreed to allow housing for low-income
families.

But even though it is only a few hundred apartment units, it had to be
ordered by a federal judge. The parish has fought desperately to prevent
such housing and an influx of renters, at one point even approving a law
that prohibited homeowners from renting to anyone other than a blood
relative, before it was challenged and repealed.

The battle over low-income housing has been one of the most bitter that
anyone in the middle-class, mostly white parish can remember, one that has
stoked issues the region has been grappling with since Hurricane Katrina:
anger at the federal government and long-simmering class and racial
tensions. 

It also reflects widespread anxiety about just how drastically the area
changed after the floodwaters receded.

"I think people have adopted this issue as one that goes far beyond the
reality of its impact," said Craig Taffaro Jr., the parish president. "It
tapped into the soul of our recovery."

Providing housing for low-income families has been one of the most vexing
problems for the New Orleans area in the four years since the hurricane.
Tens of thousands of homes, many of them dilapidated, are still vacant. But,
in part because the houses that were destroyed were disproportionately for
low-income renters, market rents in the city are 35 percent higher than they
were before the storm, out of the reach of much of the city's work force.

The demolition of the four big public housing complexes in New Orleans in
2007 and the approaching end to storm-related federal assistance programs
have made these problems more critical, and their solutions more
contentious.

That is particularly true in the case of St. Bernard, perhaps the
jurisdiction hit the hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Nearly every one of the
26,000 houses there was severely damaged or destroyed. Ninety-three percent
of them were owned by whites. 

Four years later, over half of the parish residences are still vacant or
unoccupied, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. The
population, at around 37,000, is just more than half of what it was. Many
former residents sold their homes to investors. Thousands of people
displaced from elsewhere have moved in. 

The parish has not welcomed these changes.

In September 2006, the Parish Council passed a law that prohibited owners of
single-family residences from renting to anyone except blood relatives,
except by special approval by the Council.

Parish officials say it was intended to guarantee that neighborhoods would
consist largely of owner-occupied homes, with some accommodation for current
residents.

But advocates for low-income housing say it was a blatantly racist policy,
given the overwhelmingly white ownership in the parish. St. Bernard
officials dropped the ordinance after a lawsuit by the Greater New Orleans
Fair Housing Action Center. 

"It's loaded in a way no one can miss," said John Relman, a civil rights
lawyer who represented the center in the suit, adding that he had never come
across such a rule before.

Then, last year, a Dallas-based firm called Realty Advisors proposed
building four new apartment complexes, at $60 million, in the parish. Thirty
percent of the 288 apartments would be rented at market rates. The rest
would be set aside for low-income renters. 

Reaction among parish residents was swift. Amid grim forecasts of crime,
ghettoes and blight, parish officials declared a moratorium on building any
apartment complexes with five or more units. 

David Jarrell, an attorney for Sidney D. Torres III, one of the local
backers of the apartments, said the anger came largely from an aversion to
renters, even though a number of council members are landlords themselves. 

And race, Mr. Jarrell said, was certainly a factor.

"It is what it is," he said. "Anybody that says otherwise is being
disingenuous."

Parish officials denied that they were trying to keep out blacks, saying the
parish simply needs more houses, not apartments. They said they would not
object if the project involved filling up all the vacant lots already in the
parish instead of building new high-density housing.

"It's a very good idea if we needed it," said Earl Dauterive, the chairman
of the St. Bernard planning commission. "We just don't need it."

Despite the fury the development has stirred up, no one - neither the
opponents nor the supporters - knows what the likely racial makeup of the
tenants would be, and it is possible that few black families would apply to
live in the parish.

Race and class make for a complicated mix in this region. Proposed low- or
mixed-income developments have met with staunch opposition all over the New
Orleans area, in both predominately white suburbs and in primarily black
neighborhoods in the city limits. 

A development of 35 single-family, lease-to-own homes in the black
middle-class neighborhood of New Orleans East was blocked by the New Orleans
City Council in August. The arguments against it - that it would damage
property values and quality of life - were similar to those heard in St.
Bernard. The developer, a New Orleans native living in Atlanta, is
considering a discrimination lawsuit, even though almost everyone on both
sides of the issue is black.

James Perry, executive director of the housing center and a candidate for
mayor of New Orleans, said class animosity might be at the root of much of
this anger, though discrimination against the poor is not a violation of the
Fair Housing Act. It is illegal to discriminate against minorities, however,
and given that a disproportionate number of those who need affordable
housing in the area are black, he said, these arguments almost inevitably
involve race. 

Nowhere has the outcry against low-income housing been as intense as it has
been in St. Bernard, particularly since Provident Realty took the parish to
court this year. What followed was a season of acrimony, with parish
officials doing everything possible to prevent the development from breaking
ground. Construction has to begin by this fall if the developer is to
qualify for the special disaster-relief tax credits that would make the
development profitable. 

At every turn, a federal judge in New Orleans has ruled that the parish's
actions were simply camouflaged racism and last month ordered that the
parish move forward on the development or face steep daily fines. The parish
is appealing her rulings.

Parish officials, already angered by what they see as a failure of the
federal government to help them after Hurricane Katrina, were livid that a
federal judge was now a force in their rebuilding. Mr. Taffaro, in a weekly
column on the parish Web site, described the lawsuit "as a means to
perpetuate the breakdown of true freedom of American society."

At one hearing, a witness for Provident testified that a quarter of St.
Bernard residents could not afford market rents. But even many of the
parish's poorest residents oppose the apartments.

"We don't need it," said Frances Graf, 48, a resident who bought a FEMA
trailer from the government for $5 and who gathers daily with other
residents at the food bank run by the Community Center of St. Bernard. "It's
going to cause more problems. There ain't no jobs down here."

Those around her at the food bank agreed and said there was no shortage of
"for rent" signs in the parish.

Then there was that other objection.

"You know what it's going to bring," said Kathy Gonzales, 55, who lives in a
house owned by a relative of her husband and whose rent is subsidized by a
Section 8 voucher. "I'm not going to say it, but you know."