In the News: The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center
Visit the GNO Fair Housing Action Center’s website. Rebecca Waxman, a 2008-2009 AVODAH Corps Member, is currently working as a Fair Housing Assistant at the GNO Fair Housing Action Center.
New Hope for the Gulf Coast?
More than three years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Gulf Coast recovery faces serious challenges.Skyrocketing rents — 46 percent higher in New Orleans than before the disaster — have made it difficult for many residents to find affordable housing. That in turn has left many businesses unable to find needed workers. And some of the city’s neighborhoods, especially those that are home to people of color and of modest income, still remain vulnerable to catastrophic flooding.But advocates for an equitable and inclusive recovery see hope in the election of a president who has long championed the region’s needs.
“It means a chance for a do-over,” says James Perry, executive director of Americans for Gulf Coast Recovery, a citizens’ lobby created in 2006. “Katrina fatigue had become the norm, but this new administration has said Gulf Coast reconstruction is a priority. We’re already getting calls from people close to the administration asking about what they need to go back and correct.”
Perry, an attorney who also directs the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, makes the case that Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats owe their recent electoral successes in part to the region’s suffering.
Read the entire story here.
Lawsuit: Road Home unfair to black homeowners
From New Orleans City Business
Published: November 17, 2008
The Road Home is not a fair or equal one according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday against the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development and the Louisiana Recovery Authority on behalf of more than 20,000 black homeowners in New Orleans.
The suit alleges the formula that takes into account the pre-storm value of a home to determine the amount of rebuilding grants favors homeowners in majority white neighborhoods where property values are higher.
“(The Road Home program) falls far short of its noble promise by linking (the size of rebuilding grants) to the depressed values of their pre-storm segregated housing rather than to the cost of reconstruction,” said Joseph Sellers, a Washington, D.C., attorney acting as head counsel in the case.
The attorney estimated it would cost $1 billion to eliminate the disparity for a class estimated to include more than 20,000 black homeowners.
The LRA, which oversees The Road Home, said its program was designed to include an additional compensation grant to assist low-income homeowners who may have had low pre-storm values. It did not comment further on the lawsuit.
Sellers filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of five individuals representing the class of more than 20,000 and two fair housing organizations: the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center.
See the original article here.
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