Post-Katrina property transfers could start soon

NEW ORLEANS - The city's main redevelopment agency could soon receive the first of thousands of properties the state bought from hurricane-affected homeowners after Katrina in 2005.

Mike Taylor, executive director of the Louisiana Land Trust, or LLT, said the only thing stalling the flow is an agreement between the city, state and his group, which handles properties the state bought through its homeowner aid program, Road Home.

The agreement is in the final stages, Taylor said, and he hopes to have one finalized, clearing the way for the first transfers of property, in "a week or so."

The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority would be responsible for putting the estimated 4,450 bought-out properties in New Orleans back into commerce or to use for such things as urban gardens or green space.

The agency, known as NORA, has been trying to position itself to act quickly once those properties become available. It's been soliciting redevelopment plans in neighborhoods around the city and initiating expropriation cases and programs to let homeowners buy the lots next to them. The goal has been to cluster redevelopment of LLT and other available properties as best as possible and not have bureaucratic processes further delay getting people into homes.

"We're eager to get started and test the process now," Richard Monteilh, NORA's acting executive director, said Tuesday. He hoped to have the deal done by Friday.

Nearly 3 1/2 years after Katrina and the levee breaches left 80 percent of the city underwater and damaged or destroyed much of its housing stock, at least 70 percent of the city's pre-storm population, by one count, has returned. But reminders of the storm remain: decaying homes still stand empty in some neighborhoods and the population of some devastated areas — where businesses have been slow to return and infrastructure rebuilding has lagged — have been far slower to come back.

Many of the properties the city will inherit from LLT are in hard-hit areas like eastern New Orleans, Gentilly and the Lower 9th Ward.

One of NORA's focal points is "Pontilly," the neighborhoods of Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods and the site of what's hoped to be the city's first large-scale redevelopment since Katrina. Housing developers are lined up, and Monteilh said NORA wants 20 lots cleared as soon as possible so model homes — meant to test the appetite for new homes in an area where a golf course, infrastructure improvements and redevelopment of a former shopping center are planned — can go up.

Ommeed Sathe, NORA's director of real estate and development, said LLT will remain in control of the bought-out properties until demolition is complete.

Taylor estimates 9,000 properties will be transferred, over time, to 27 parishes. "Properties" doesn't automatically mean houses; Taylor noted many sites were previously cleared of storm-damaged homes, and LLT, charged with delivering "clean properties," is working with the firm CDM Inc. to oversee the demolition of up to 4,000 more, plus slabs left behind.

He said CDM will work with local communities in deciding what standing homes to demolish and what to salvage for rebuilding. He expects "several hundred" properties statewide to be rehabilitated.

He said LLT, with a budget of about $195 million, will handle maintenance costs for the properties for at least a year. Those costs, for such things as cutting the lawn, were a concern for NORA, which has limited cash and wanted to ensure it didn't move too quickly and flood the housing market.

While NORA had hoped to begin receiving properties last year, Taylor said that was "more a hope than an achievable goal," citing a list of requirements that had to be met and work done before that could happen.

Sathe said it's been frustrating to work amid "a lot of moving parts" and not be able to give the public firm deadlines for property availability. But Monteilh said there's been enough frustrations to go around and at this point, NORA is just eager to get started.

"Right now," Monteilh said, "we'd love to have a couple hundred (properties) in our possession."

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