NEW ORLEANS — Nearly four years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, housing for the Gulf Coast’s most vulnerable residents remains scarce and continues to mar other significant progress made in the region so far, experts told a Congressional field hearing yesterday and today.

While community groups and local leaders have made enormous strides in rebuilding and reclaiming many neighborhoods throughout the Gulf Coast, federal and state aid programs — most notably the Road Home program — have failed to live up to their promise.

“The progress of housing recovery at the community level has been very uneven and has led to racial and social inequities,” Dominique Duval-Diop, senior associate in the PolicyLink office in New Orleans, said at Thursday’s hearing. “We may have missed the opportunity to create sustainable and resilient communities — communities that are able to initiate and invest in their own recovery and redevelopment.”

The Congressional field hearings are being conducted by Rep. Maxine Waters, chairwoman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity. The hearings will continue place today at Lawless Memorial Chapel, Dillard University, 2601 Gentilly Boulevard, New Orleans.

Other experts who testified included:

• Davida Finger of Loyola Law Clinic
• Allison Plyer of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center
• Laura Tuggle of Southeast Louisiana Legal Aid
• James Perry of Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center
• Cynthia Wiggins, a public housing resident
• Angela Patterson of Unity of Greater New Orleans
• Anita Sinha of the Advancement Project

The experts look at a wide range of issues, including:

• The difficulty homeowners faced in navigating the Road Home program
• Significant New Orleans rent increases since 2005
• Ongoing difficulty for elderly, disabled, and low-income households who formerly lived in HUD-assisted homes that have still not been replaced
• Fair housing violations that are prevalent post-Katrina.
• The growth in the homeless population from 6000 to 12,000 since Katrina.

In 2007 and 2008, PolicyLink undertook major studies of the three major housing rebuilding programs: the Road Home homeowners program; the Multifamily Rental Program (funded through Low Income Housing Tax Credits and Disaster CDBG funds); and the Small Rental Repair Program.  Significant challenges remain in each of those programs.

In particular, the Road Home grant formula has had a more negative effect on those whose damage estimates were higher than their home value. Those whose damages were greater than their pre-storm home value - 47.3% of all applicants rebuilding in place - fell on average $69,000 short of the money they need to rebuild.

This was a particular problem in low-income, predominantly black neighborhoods in New Orleans. More than 60 percent of households in New Orleans East and the Lower 9th Ward have gaps over $40,000, compared to 49 percent citywide and 33 percent statewide. The average rebuilding cost gap for those communities were $65,000 and $68,000, respectively — a mammoth sum for low-income residents struggling to come home.

But insufficient government programs are far from residents’ only concerns, Duval-Diop says.

“Many recipients face insufficient rebuilding grants, contractor fraud, a high-cost environment, inability to access additional credit, and home-title succession challenges that delay or deny funding for the home repair.,” she said. “Our analysis found that the

majority of homeowners choosing to rebuild in place did not have sufficient resources to fully recover their homes.”

For more information on Gulf Coast rebuilding, please visit www.PolicyLink.org

The Washington Times’ Christiana Bellantoni has a great front-page piece today about the state of New Orleans’ recovery — and how President Obama may use the lessons learned there as a blueprint for a broader recovery across America.

From the piece:

So far, Mr. Obama’s policy toward the region has mirrored his plan for the nation - an emphasis on green jobs, pulling people from poverty, and housing help.

“Those things just feel like huge gestures,” said Kalima Rose, senior director of the Louisiana recovery effort for PolicyLink.
“What we’ve learned here in Katrina is going to be important in what the president is going to implement in other cities now - job initiatives and addressing the housing crisis - stuff that was pretty much dismantled over the last administration,” she said. “The fact alone they admit homelessness is a really big problem is a huge change.”

Ms. Rose, whose advocacy group advised the Obama transition team on urban policy, said she has seen the president lay down a liberal blueprint when talking about Gulf Coast recovery - from housing assistance and infrastructure projects to more funding for unemployment insurance included in his economic stimulus plan.

Also, check out the video that accompanies the piece. It highlights the snails-pace recovery in the Lower Ninth:

Can you believe it’s been almost three years? Three years since the levee breaks? Three years since the Superdome? Three years since President Bush making promises in a generator-lit Jackson Square?

But three years out, where are we? How much progress has really been made? According to a new report released today by PolicyLink, we’ve seem some progress the past year, but not nearly enough — especially when it comes to the bedrock issue of housing for Louisianans. Far too many residents still can’t afford to rebuild their homes or find an affordable place to rent.

The new report, “A Long Way Home: The State of Housing Recovery in Louisiana 2008,” shows that while some progress has been made during the past year, thousands of residents who want to return home are facing a critical rental housing shortage, inadequate rebuilding grants and a recovery plagued by red tape and ever-changing rules.

The report (which I co-authored along with my colleagues Kalima Rose and Dominique Duval-Diop) analyzes the three major federally funded housing recovery programs – the Road Home (for homeowners) and the small and large rental programs (for renters). Together, these programs allocate nearly $12 billion in federal recovery funds to restore housing in Louisiana.

Some key findings:

• In New Orleans, 4 of every 5 Road Home recipients rebuilding their homes did not get enough money to cover their repairs. Statewide, more than 2 of every 3 face the same predicament.
• Statewide, the average Road Home applicant fell more than $35,000 short of the money they need to rebuild their home. The shortfall hit highly flooded, historically African-American communities particularly hard.
• Nearly 40,000 low-income homeowners received an average of about $27,000 each from an additional Road Home grant program designed to help vulnerable residents.
• Renters still face huge hurdles—only 2 in 5 damaged affordable rental units statewide will be repaired or replaced with recovery assistance. In the New Orleans metro region, it’s an even more dismal rate of 1 in 3.
• The national credit crunch and personal financial vulnerability keeps many mom-and-pop landlords from being able to rebuild through the small rental repair program. Meant to restore more than 10,000 rental homes, the program has completed only 82.
• Nearly 28,000 families nationwide still rely on disaster rental assistance, with 14,000 in the greater New Orleans metro region alone. There will not be nearly enough affordable rental units on the market by the time the assistance runs out in March 2009.

The election season provides another chance to put the issue of Gulf Coast rebuilding at the forefront of our national dialogue. Let’s hope we’re at a very different place in the process come Year 4.

Housing Trust Funds have a long history of producing diverse affordable housing options at the local level.

Housing advocates have been working hard to bring this idea to scale and create a National Housing Trust Fund to build 1.5 million affordable units in 10 years. Most of the units would help people that pay over 50% of their income towards housing costs, something more and more Americans can relate to as costs of living rise.

But just as it seems we are inching close to securing much needed resources to build affordable rental housing, someone’s always got to throw a stumbling block in the way. As Monday’s editorial in the New York Times points out, the National Housing Trust Fund that has just emerged from Senate committee would redirect the first year’s pot of money to a foreclosure prevention program.

Sounds good, sure — but this is instead of the House’s version, which sends the money to rebuild much-needed housing on the Gulf Coast. The fact that the Gulf Coast’s own Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) is leading the effort to funnel money away from the Gulf is particularly painful, but would come as no surprise to those fighting to rebuild communities across the coast.

There is a severe need for funds to build affordable rental housing in the Gulf: in the most devastated parishes, Louisiana only has money allocated to rebuild 1/3 of the 82,000 units of rental housing destroyed; Mississippi has received waivers of low-income requirements on the vast majority of its recovery dollars and moved $600 million of its housing recovery dollars to rebuild their port; and Alabama currently only has the funding to help one-tenth of those that applied in Mobile County for help rebuilding their homes.

There is still a housing crisis in the communities of the Gulf Coast – almost 3 years out families are getting kicked out of trailers with formaldehyde fumes with nowhere to call home. One year of this Fund could significantly contribute to housing production in the Gulf Coast and help ease the immense need.

It’s unfortunate Gulf Coast residents are being forced to compete for money with those swallowed up in the foreclosure crisis. The politicians in Washington must figure out a way to handle both of these pressing housing crises with compassion and vision.

Photo of New Orleans’ Musicians Village by Flickr user Cherie’, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Guardian, the UK’s premier newspaper at covering in-depth issues in the States, today features an insightful piece on the “epic housing crisis” facing New Orleans. The article highlights the startling rental housing statistics researched by Annie Clark and Kalima Rose in the landmark PolicyLink report, “Bringing Louisiana Renters Back Home.” (pdf) The article features quotes from Ms. Clark, as well.

There are few incentives for landlords to renovate their rental properties. The Louisiana Recovery Authority’s “Road Home” program offers incentives for “small rental property owners” but it is not popular with mom-and-pop landlords, according to Annie Clark of progressive policy and research institute PolicyLink.

“A landlord says, ‘Yes I am going to rehabilitate my rental units,’” Clark explained, “but then he or she has to get a bank loan which is then paid back by Road Home. Banks are very hesitant to give loans to people this way.”

Clark added that Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has rehabilitated only about 1,500 units of the 4,600 units it has set aside for seniors, the disabled and poor working families in New Orleans. “HUD really has shirked its responsibility in these units,” Clark said.

The full piece is definitely worth a read to get a sense of the depth of the housing crisis still ongoing in New Orleans.

As you can probably tell from previous EquityBlog posts, one of the highlights of this year’s Regional Equity ‘08 Summit was the plenary panel surrounding “Trouble the Water,” a post-Katrina documentary that earned the top documentary prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

For those who haven’t had a chance to see any clips or hear the heroic stories of Kim and Scott Roberts — the young New Orleans couple at the heart of the film — please take a minute (actually, six and a half minutes) to watch this video dispatch on the Entertainment Weekly web site. You won’t want to miss this film when it is finally released later this year (Check back here and the film’s site for release news)

A crowd of more than 1,000 packed the Grand Ballroom at the Regional Equity ‘o8 Summit Thursday to see clips of “Trouble the Water,” a powerful new documentary about post-Katrina life in New Orleans.

Executive producer Danny Glover joined with the film’s directors, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, and the film’s subjects, Kimberly and Scott Roberts for a passionate and inspiring discussion about the film and the issues of equity and equality is raises.

The documentary follows Kim and Scott for more than a year as they face the storm (via gripping hand-held camera work as they were still trapped in their home by floodwaters) and try to recover and start a family. Critics are already raving about the film, including awarding it the Grand Jury prize for best documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

As Glover pointed out, though, the Roberts’ story is not just an tale isolated to post-storm New Orleans. It reflects the inequity and injustice we see all over the country.

“In Detroit, Chicago, New York, communities have been left behind,” Glover said. “This is an epidemic.”

Lessin said she hopes the film can serve as a catalyst for equitable change across the country, as activists, advocates, policymakers and people from the faith community come together to watch the real life struggles of Kim and Scott and strategize ways to create more and better opportunities for all people.

To find out more about the film, please visit the film’s homepage, www.TroubleTheWaterFilm.com.

Producers are eying a late summer or early fall theatrical release.

For more information about what PolicyLink is doing to help Louisiana recover more equitably and how you can help, please check out www.PolicyLink.org/Communities/Louisiana.