[StBernard] St. Bernard multifamily-housing battle opens new front

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard multifamily-housing battle opens new front

Published: Saturday, January 29, 2011, 10:00 AM

 By Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, The Times-Picayune 

For five years, St. Bernard Parish has been enbroiled in a debate over
housing ordinances that critics and a federal judge allege are racially
discriminatory and parish leaders say are designed to maintain the
single-family residential character of the community.

And now, the allegations are coming from a second federal front.

As parish government prepares for a federal court hearing next week to
defend itself against such accusations, the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development on Friday filed a complaint against it on an identical
charge.

HUD officials say they've already conducted an extensive investigation into
St. Bernard zoning and housing practices after receiving discrimination
complaints, and that the filing of the complaint officially commences a
process that could quickly put the matter before the Justice Department.

"HUD has received and addressed a number of allegations that St. Bernard
Parish has created obstacles to those who want to provide and obtain
affordable rental housing in the Parish, and that those obstacles
discriminated in effect and intent based on race," said Bryan Greene,
general deputy assistant secretary in HUD's fair housing department. "Based
on our investigation, we can make a separate action that could conclude in a
referral to the Department of Justice."

Greene, who is head of the fair housing department, helping the department's
presidentially appointed heads carry out enforcement issues, said that the
investigation will "go very quickly" -- taking days to weeks, not months.

St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro was informed on Thursday by the
governor's office about the impending HUD action, amid fears it could
jeoporize about $91 million in HUD funding stipulated for the parish.

Councilman Wayne Landry said the HUD accusations are unfounded.

"Shame on the federal government," he said. "I think governments should have
a fudiciary responsibility to protect people's property value, and the
government just isn't considering the devestating long-term impact
multifamily housing could have on the already unstable St. Bernard real
estate market."

Time and again, a federal judge has ordered St. Bernard to cease practices
that she has said intentionally attempt to keep African-Americans out of the
parish and thus violate the federal Fair Housing Act.

Swaths of St. Bernard's storm-ravaged landscape were -- and still are --
ripe for planning, rebuilding, molding and reimagining the future of the
parish. Yet within such possibility rests decision-making that has the power
to shape not only post-Katrina housing stock but St. Bernard's racial
demographics.

Zoning ordinance

The legal battle, and now the HUD investigation, center on parish officials
and many vocal constituents' aversion to additional multifamily housing,
often equated throughout the years with violence, blight and drugs.

The HUD investigation focuses broadly on zoning ordinances the Parish
Council passed in December 2009 that eliminated any multifamily housing as a
permitted use in five zoning areas it previously was allowed.

Now multifamily housing is only permitted in R-3 zoning areas, and through
types of Planned Unit Developments that require special approval.

And according to a review of parish zoning maps, R-3 zoning areas are specks
amid the parish's dominant single-family zoning, likely representing less
than 1 percent of landscape.

Parish officials have maintained that there is enough multifamily in the
parish, but they could not immediately provide statistics.

Landry contends he's against multifamily housing because it would drive down
real estate values.

"They will say that we are against a certain group of people, but that is
just not true," Landry said. "I'm not saying that some people from St.
Bernard aren't racist. ... I'm saying my opinion has to do about the market
and that adding more rental units, more multifamily housing will make that
market plummet."

Newspaper cited

The upcoming federal court hearing focuses on the denial of four
mixed-income multifamily apartment complexes proposed for Chalmette that has
been in and out of the court system for the past two years.

In the summer of 2008, Provident Realty Advisors, the proposed developer of
the four 72-unit apartments, had inquired about the project and it seemed
ready to go forward.

Then an August 2008 editorial ran on the front page of The St. Bernard Voice
that U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan later cited as containing
"camouflaged racial expressions" and as key to stirring the backlash that
would ensue.

"Should St. Bernard residents be concerned? Ours was a crime-free community
of homeowners with a deep appreciation for shared values. ... Is that now
threatened?" the editorial stated. "The fact that each development mentions
that it will provide 'supportive services in a community facility including
... after school programs on a voluntary basis, adult basic education, and
personal finance' may provide some insights into the background of the
intended occupant."

It also expressed the fear that the 288 apartments would develop into "a
ghetto with drugs, crime, vandalism, and violence."

A few days after that editorial, the Parish Council introduced another
12-month moratorium on multifamily housing. And shortly thereafter, the
Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center and Provident Realty
Advisors, the proposed developer of the apartment complexes, filed suit.

Parish officials scolded

It was not the New Orleans fair housing center's first rodeo.

Earlier that year, the center and a local resident had settled for about
$150,000 and Berrigan had a issued consent decree prohibiting St. Bernard
from further violating the Fair Housing Act. The suit alleged discrimination
due to a November 2005 moratorium on multifamily housing and a 2006 "blood
relative" ordinance that severely restricted rentals by only allowing the
rental or occupancy of single-family residences to anyone other than a blood
relative without first obtaining a permit.

And in March 2009, Berrigan sided with fair housing center once again,
determining that "the historical backdrop to the consent decree and the
prior ordinances and the swift introduction of this ordinance only three
days after the editorial" was "indicative of the racial and class animus
underlying the (moratorium) ordinance."

Later in 2009, the parish's Planning Commission repeatedly denied routine
resubdivision requests needed for Provident to proceed with construction.
That eventually led to two more contempt-of-court orders by Berrigan.

In the final contempt of court order, she scolded parish officials for not
abiding by her decrees and said she found "the continuing recalcitrance" of
the officials "to be deeply disturbing."

"Since the fall of 2008, certain St. Bernard Parish officials have
repeatedly taken actions to thwart, delay and derail the proposed
developments," Berrigan wrote in that September 2009 order. "This court has
repeatedly found the stated justifications given by these officials to be
unsound, contrived, pretextual and racially discriminatory."

"Defendants are not free to defy this court simply because they think they
know better," she later added.

Costly to taxpayers

And for the three contempt violations, St. Bernard taxpayers have paid
dearly.

In November, the parish was ordered to pay about $1.2 million in legal fees
on top of the $150,000 from 2008 for similar discrimination findings.

That $1.35 million doesn't even include the parish's own legal expenses for
the more than five-year-long court battle.

St. Bernard approved Provident's building permit after the September 2009
contempt-of-court ruling, but that permit has since expired.

And while Provident now has the financing in place, company officials say it
took longer to obtain the needed tax credit investments to finance the $60
million construction because of the economy and the tax credit deadlines.

When Provident came back to the parish for a renewal, the parish denied the
request, stating the Parish Council had since changed the parish's zoning
ordinance in a way that now prohibits multifamily developments on the
Provident parcels.

The sites of the proposed developments are zoned C-2, mixed-use commercial.
That's one of the designations the parish had changed in September 2009,
just a few months after Berrigan's last contempt-of court finding.