Report gives New Orleans a ‘D’ grade for affordable housing
7th October 2019 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
On September 30, HousingNOLA unveiled its annual report card on the state of affordable housing in New Orleans at the Love Your City Hour event at the Carver Theater. The report card’s D grade showed the organization feels the city has not yet made enough progress to help longtime residents find affordable housing.
“While a ‘D’ is technically a passing grade, let’s be clear, we are failing when it comes to affordable housing in this city,” said Andreanecia Morris, executive director of HousingNOLA. “For the second year in a row, New Orleans ultimately lost more affordable opportunities than it created. This is damaging our city and reinforcing our inequities.”
In 2015, HousingNOLA identified the need for 33,600 new affordable housing units in New Orleans by 2025. To date, they have only seen 1,621 such units created, well below the pace needed to reach the 2025 goal. HousingNOLA’s strategy was a collaborative one reached with city leaders. The plan, titled “Housing for a Resilient New Orleans,” can be found on the City’s web site at https://www.nola.gov/home/buttons/resilient-housing/.
“The city is not honoring their own commitments,” Morris said.
While HousingNOLA’s report card (available online at http://housingnola.org/main/plans) found many failings, there are a few ones that Morris feels can be easily fixed. She expressed frustration that the number of affordable housing vouchers utilized by New Orleans residents has dropped by 800-900 over the past two years.
Why aren’t more vouchers being utilized? Morris said part of it is landlord frustration with the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO). Landlords can’t receive vouchers for properties until those properties receive an inspection. But Morris said there is a backlog of inspections, so many landlords get tired of waiting and abandon the program.
Morris added that some potential rental properties are siting vacant. In order to use the vouchers, eligible customers have to be referred to certain properties. But some properties aren’t receiving referrals, and thus are unused. This is bad for residents and frustrating for the landlords.
The summer 2019 spike in property taxes was also a blow to affordable housing in the Crescent City. Assessments in some neighborhoods saw home values skyrocket by hundreds of thousands of dollars, leading to a corresponding rise in property taxes that could force many New Orleanians to leave their homes.
“The assessor and the state tax commissioner cannot let the recent assessments stand,” Morris said.
The report card listed some positive developments. One was the City Council’s passage of the Smart Housing Mix Ordinance. The ordinance is designed to build and preserve lower-priced housing by requiring or incentivizing the addition of lower-priced homes and apartments within otherwise market-rate developments. Officials are still working on implementing the plan.
In other good news, Louisiana State Senator Troy Carter’s SB 79/80 passed. The bill gives New Orleans the chance to create tax freeze programs for long-term homeowners and landlords who agree to rent their units at an affordable price.
J.P. Morgan Chase committed $1.1 million to HousingNOLA to revitalize selected neighborhoods along the Claiborne Corridor to create more affordable housing opportunities and increase economic opportunities as well.
The Office of Mayor LaToya Cantrell took some issue with HousingNOLA’s findings.
“While the city appreciates HousingNOLA’s continued work on the affordable housing issue, the report card does not adequately reflect the city’s work and progress made on the issue,” said LaTonya Norton, press secretary for Mayor Cantrell.
Norton cited a 2018 $10 million award for multifamily rental housing, as well as an additional $7 million made available for multifamily rentals in 2019 as noteworthy efforts to assist New Orleanians in securing affordable housing. The administration also recently set aside $3 million for owner-occupied rehabilitation and $3 million in soft second funds for home ownership. Norton also said more assistance is still to come.
“We are just now starting to see projects breaking ground that were awarded at the beginning of the mayor’s administration,” Norton said.
These measures are not enough for some New Orleans residents. 56-year-old Adinas Perkins, a HousingNOLA community review team member, grew up in Hollygrove. She relocated after Katrina, but returned to New Orleans in 2015. At one point, a trailer in Jefferson Parish was all she could afford. Now, she pays $850 a month to rent a two-bedroom, one-bath home in Hollygrove, but makes only $961 a month from social security. She said she would like the city to institute rent controls to protect residents.
“Greed has taken over New Orleans,” Perkins said. “Our city should be ashamed.”
This article originally published in the October 7, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
