BUYOUT IN WORKS (Nagin's new plan for New Orleans)

[Wordie]

Thanks to new DUer DeltaLady, who is too new to post, for locating this article...

BUYOUT IN WORKS
Five parish leaders agree to make thousands whole
Monday, February 13, 2006
By Gordon Russell, Frank Donze and Laura Maggi
Staff writers

In a major development that could at last provide definitive options to New Orleans-area homeowners sitting in limbo, the leaders of the five metropolitan parishes hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina have signed on to a plan to offer owners of flood-damaged houses the choice of a buyout at full, pre-storm market value or a renovation grant to cover most repairs.

The program, which New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has cheekily titled the "Failed Levees Homeowner Recovery Program," is the most detailed blueprint for making homeowners whole since the apparent death of legislation by U.S. Rep. Richard Baker that would have allowed owners of flood-ravaged homes to recoup 60 percent of their equity.

The new plan, surprisingly, would be more generous than Baker's in some cases, although probably not in the case of high-priced homes or homes with large mortgages. The grants, whether for buyouts or renovations, would be capped at $150,000, while the Baker legislation would have settled the mortgages of homeowners who sold, regardless of the size of the mortgage. Under the new proposal, those with mortgages well above $150,000 might be more apt to use the money to renovate and continue paying their mortgage, rather than take the buyout.

There are still numerous caveats: Most important, the plan needs the approval of key state officials and the White House. Nagin, who acknowledged that the initiative is a work in progress, said it is designed to jump-start the region's moribund economy by putting money in the hands of homeowners quickly.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1139851504244790.xml

Although this addresses only owner-occupied housing, the article also includes plans for $1 billion in CDBG funds that will go toward affordable housing, so it sounds positive. It's about time!

[Liberty Belle]

1. Kick!

[ReadTomPaine]

2. Bush will kill this.

No cash for his people, no deal. Wait and see.

[Barrett808]

26. Or Hurricane Season 2006 will kill it

Or 2007, or 2008...

[bliss_eternal]

3. So the area won't be taken over by corporate interests?

I've been hoping and praying that those that want to return to the area and rebuild their homes could do so. I don't want to see people forced out by those with more money.

[seriousstan]

4. So now the area will be "gentrified". Improved. Updated. The buyout

is for the owners not the renters.



As a landlord, I can respect this.

:evilgrin:

[Wordie]

6. Yes, it's for the owner-occupiers, and not for renters or business owners.

But the article mentioned that there are other funds being earmarked for affordable housing, and that it's anticipated that other funds will also become available later.

Again, there may be a lot of details that we're not seeing here yet.

A few more details from the article:

In describing the proposal, Nagin articulated for the first time how he plans to carry out the land-use recommendations of his Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which called for convening meetings of residents of the city's 13 planning districts over the next four months to determine in part which neighborhoods are likely to rebound and which are not.

The plan further recommended that, in areas not deemed viable, the city use eminent domain "as a last resort" to buy out homeowners.

Nagin said Friday that he does not support that provision, which he sees as a violation of property rights. However, he said he wants the planning process to proceed, and as an outgrowth of it, he envisions every neighborhood being categorized as either viable or not viable.

[SoCalDem]

11. There's affordable, and then there's "affordable"

There were tens of thousands of poor people who lived in rather rickety homes for very little rent. They could do this because the owners of the homes had long ago paid them off, and were probably content to have them occupied, rather than vandalized.. They will be ahppy to take the money and run...leaving those renters totally unable to return, even if they wanted to.

I seriously doubt that ANY plan would include people on assistance. As a city, NOLA had a population of poor that more or less 'came with the place'. They have been exiled for the most part, and will not be welcomed back.

The services they need are no longer available, and frankly, they are a liability the emerging city cannot afford.

People with a mortgage of $200K will HAVE to take the settlement money and use it for repairs. If they don't plan on repairing it, the money would just end up with the bank...not with them as a "start-over-somewhere-else stake".

If you have a paid off home, $150K might get you set up somewhere else, but with everything gone, it would not be much to start over.. better than nothing, but not enough.

Most of these people have lost jobs, cars and possessions too, so it won't go all that far.

[mom cat]

18. Buy out or Sell out. Renters do not matter in a capitalist system,

only property owners.
Thanks for keeping us posted. :yourock:

[Wordie]

21. You're right, affordable housing projects often don't serve the poorest.

They generally are targeted at those who make a certain percentage of the median income in the area, but the very poorest are frequently underserved.

It would be helpful if the funds could be targeted based on the poverty levels of renters who lived in the area before Katrina. For instance, if there were X% who were at 50% of the poverty level, then X% of the CDBG funds should be targeted for projects that would provide rental housing for them, if Y% were at 30% of poverty level, then Y% could be reserved for projects serving that population. Maybe the numbers could even be adjusted a bit to give a little more help to those at the very bottom, as even a strategy like this would not be really enough to help those folks who really have nothing.

Hah...what an idealist I am, huh?

$1 billion in CDBG funds sounds like an awful lot, but housing projects are really expensive. I wonder if there is a requirement for matching funds.

And Bush's much trumpeted "ownership society" programs, while a good idea in so many ways, also don't help those at the very bottom. What good does downpayment help do for those who could never pay the amount of a mortgage, even at reduced interest rates?

[mom cat]

39. you are as bad an idealist

as me. Never lose it!

[pitohui]

27. it's a good plan

i do not understand why renters would need a buy-out, they have no property to buy out, there is already a rental assistance plan for renters, but if we are serious abt saving new orleans rather than just in re-creating a colorful slum for tourists, we need to save the homeowner -- the tax base of the city

the nagin plan is capped at $150K and is clearly aimed at protecting the modest homeowner from ruin

it won't do much to rebuild lakeview but it should help the modest homeowners in gentilly and other areas where homes run around $75K

baker was okay as far as it went but it was only going to offer 60 percent of equity and 100 percent is better than 60 percent in my math book

a better plan would be to acknowledge that some areas shouldn't be rebuilt at all and to fully compensate people in those areas NOW so they can get a headstart on relocating elsewhere, yes, that does mean use of eminent domain where it is needed, but no politician has that kind of courage, well, maybe ron forman but he is not going to be elected so it's a moot point

this five parishes plan may be imperfect but it's an imperfect world and it's way way way better than nothing

[Wordie]

5. The plan is still being worked on, apparently, but it looks like it may

help people who want to stay. It still requires a lot of approvals, and it may be there is some opposition to it. But it does seem, at first reading, to be a step in the right direction. The test will be in the actual details, of course.

[PassingThrough]

7. This is the same plan MS is doing already. They start later this month.

Nagin needs to go. MS has been implementing this plan since the Feds decided to give the states billions. MS starts taking applications for the grants at the end of the month. Nagin is slow and late yet again. I had high hopes for Nagin but he is clearly in over his head.

[Sgent]

8. A a White Mississippian

I have two, two word phrases:

Trent Lott
Mostly White

The Gulf cost is about 75% white, compared to NOLA's 65%+ black.

[PassingThrough]

9. Um, where do you get your stats on southern MS???

Regardless, the money was given to both areas and NO actually got more. The difference is that the MS coast has competent leadership and La does not. MS staredt making plans for the grants before the bill was approved. La is just now thinking about maybe doing something sometime.

[Sgent]

12. Stats come from

Biloxi Mayor.

Mississippi has recieved about $160,000 per FEMA claim filed, LA less than 75K to date.

Note those numbers are total federal expenditures in state / total fema resident claims.

[PassingThrough]

13. That is due to La not filing the claims. Biloxi as well as other Coastal

cities have filed the detailed claims required. The whole problem comes down to state and local governments in La. Well, actually is NO that has the issues and not the other coastal cities in La. Notice Slidel is not crying because they have competent leadership.

The problems in NO have nothing to do with race or national politics. NO's issues are fault of the governor and mayor. Theit party affiliation is not important. Their poor job performance is.

[azureblue]

14. Wrong

And you don't know what you're talking about. All of Nola's problems trace right back to Bush. From the very root of the flooding- Bush stole the money to rebuild the levees to pay for rich friends' tax cuts- to his lie he spoke standing in Jackson Square promising to do what it takes. Remember, FEMA promised Nagin to have help at the superdome with in 48 hours, but they did not one damn thing.Nagin & Blanco took Bush & FEMA's word of help, and they lied to the leaders & people of Louisiana. Nagin has been all over the country trying to get Bushco to actually do something, and all he is getting is words. Blanco is threatening to stop oil leases to provide money to rebuild. Did you know that LA gets 3& commission on oil & gas, while Texas gets 50%? And why did Blanco release every scrap of correspondence about Katrina, down to post it notes, while Bush refuses to release anything, even under threat of subpoena? MS got proportionally far more money & help than NO because of the Repub governor. Nagin is getting help from France, for God's sake, because our own damn country won't help New Orleans.
I got family in MS, and friends in NO,where I once lived, and they all tell me a far different story than the one you are trying to push. I got a friend in NO who was on the 610 bridge with his 87 year old father for two days, who was being told to move by the troops and not being offered any help, food, medical attention at all. he would tar & feather Bush if he had the chance. He saw fist hand how Bush & FEMA screwed it all up and sabotaged the efforts of locals to help. People in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, all see what the media, and you, are doing, trying to push the blame off onto local officials, but, unlike you, they know the fool who caused in all, the fool who ate cake while the Gulf Coast was destroyed, the fool who promises help and lies, and what that is provided is screwed up, and the fool who still continues to act like nothing is wrong down there.
So go push you Repub talking points somewhere else where they don't care about facts (I have a 15 page diary on Katrina, with links), like LGF. Or, better yet, get off your ass and go down there and help.

[PassingThrough]

24. Lol, I live in the area.

My home was destroyed but I am fortunate enough to have the means to rebuild. I hope to be back in my home in 2 months or so. Its hard getting work crews and materials. All Lowe's employees name tags should say, "It will take 2 weeks to get in."


I am afraid you are the one giving out talking points. Nagin delayed FEMA trailer placement. Nagin declared NO a chocolate city. Nagin said God was punishing NO. Nagin delayed the Red Cross. Nagin was giving news conferences from an island in the Carribean months after the hurricane. Nagin did not evacuate the city. Nagin did not use buses at hand. Nagin's commission is trying to take people's land. Etc...

Nagin has failed. I was a Nagin supporter last election but I am afraid he is in over his head. Could I have done a better job? Probably not. The current issues are about facts and not politics. As long as politics are involved nothing will change.

I suggest watching www.wdsu.com Its nearing election time and alot of dirty laundry is about to be aired.

P.S. There is no need for hostility in polite discourse.


Peace Out

[pitohui]

29. slidell is not cryin??? sez who?

you seen slidell lately?

it's fuckin pitiful, excuse my french

[PassingThrough]

36. Been there twice this week.

Yes, like much of the Coast they have alot to do but atleast their mayor isn't on TV making stupid statements and point his finger at everyone and not taking any responsibilty.

[pitohui]

31. and even trent lott is saying it ain't enough

did you see the interview with him a couple of weeks back?

i don't think this fed gov't has a clue as to the size of this catastrophe, they seem to think we are two states the size of rhode island or something

[pitohui]

28. agree that nagin is over his head

i agree nagin was over his head, he thought he could come in and as a non-politician do a politician's job, as a DINO who supported bobby jindal he managed to stab everybody in the back and make everyone dislike him from the get go, how do you trust this guy who never seems to know what team he's on?

i bet he would be the first to be pissed off if a politician came in and said he could sell
cables better than the cable guy but as a cable guy he knows politics better than the politicians

i guess now he knows it ain't as easy as it looks

hell, i feel sorry for the guy, he catches crap from
everyone and much of it for things completely beyond his control

[PassingThrough]

37. True, if it hadn't been for Katrina he would have been a good NO mayor.

[TaleWgnDg]

10. An equally important or maybe MORE important issue is

.

An equally important or maybe more important issue is: are the levees to be fixed to withstand a category 5 hurricane? And, if so, when? In other words, why the hell should New Orleans displaced persons want to locate back into a potential flood zone again w/o proper state-of-the-art levees etc? Would you?
.

[Wordie]

15. You're completely right. That is the MOST important issue. eom

[Bacchus39]

16. I absolutely agree

there is no way that people should even be allowed to move back until the levees are rebuilt.

actually a gut check needs to be taken. should NO even be built like it was before. I wouldn't mind seeing some environmental restoration work.

[Wordie]

19. Good point! Bush refuses to fund critical NO environmental restoration.

My understanding is that experts have said that the best plan to prevent more flooding would be to restore the wetlands, which have been disappearing along the Gulf at an alarming rate.

Curiously, other areas in LA have gotten some attention on this. I wonder what the plans are for NO. This article says that nearly 17 (m) million dollars have been allotted to The Lake Borgne project, but that doesn't address the problems in NO:

Wetlands projects get a green light

NEW ORLEANS A federal-state task force has approved the construction of three coastal restoration projects totaling 58 (m) million dollars, including the strengthening of key stretches of the Lake Borgne shoreline against further erosion.

The Breaux Act Task Force also authorized four-point-six (m) million dollars in design work on four new projects, including the restoration of wetlands adjacent to Venice.

The task force is chaired by a representative of the Army Corps of Engineers and includes representatives of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, U-S Fish and Wildlife Service and the Louisiana governor's office

The federal task force provides about 65 (m) million dollars a year for smaller coastal restoration projects in Louisiana, with the federal government paying 85 percent of their cost and the state the remainder.

http://www.kplctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4477984

Edited to add from the excellent WaPo article I referenced downthread:

The good news is that the damage is reversible under a long-term plan to restore the wetlands using a system of pumps and pipelines. The cost of the plan, which for years has been supported by a broad swath of scientists, environmentalists and oil interests, is estimated to be about $14 billion -- or the same as six weeks in Iraq -- but the Bush administration, apparently under the impression that no one's watching, isn't interested.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101025.html?nav=rss_business/government

[Bridget Burke]

32. Not all of NOLA was flooded....

And people have already moved back to those areas. Some have even moved into the less-damaged areas that flooded. Who should kick them out?

Levee repair & wetland restoration are both needed. In fact, they should not be negotiable. But I'm sure Bush's budget doesn't allow for such "frills."

[rodeodance]

17. KICKYPOO

[Wordie]

20. Excellent article on Bush's failure in NO, from WaPo...

Still Drowning in New Orleans

By Jennifer Moses
Sunday, February 12, 2006; Page B07

BATON ROUGE -- Though most of New Orleans resembles Nagasaki after the bomb, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress appear to have all but forgotten about it. In his State of the Union address, the president mentioned New Orleans only briefly, and at a news conference five days earlier, he declared in reference to promised federal reconstruction funds, "I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot."

Unfortunately, nothing close to $85 billion has been spent, and that's because most of it is tied up with something called the Stafford Act, which restricts the use of federal money for precisely the kind of things that Louisiana needs to recover, particularly housing relief. It's like giving a kid a dollar to spend on anything he likes as long as it's broccoli. In the meantime, most members of Congress -- 87 percent of the House and 70 percent of the Senate -- haven't bothered to come on down to the Big Easy at all.

...In an instance of double bind so mind-numbingly stupid that you have to think that Washington is run by a mob of sadists, the president's point man for Gulf Coast recovery, Donald Powell, recently urged Louisiana to use its share of federal funds to buy out uninsured homeowners living outside the flood plain, rationalizing that those inside the flood plain should have had flood insurance. The only problem is that all of New Orleans, as well as most of South Louisiana as a whole, is both below sea level and within the federal levee system, meaning, again, that New Orleans-area homeowners get diddly squat.

"We will do whatever it takes to rebuild New Orleans," the president promised the nation in September. Really? How about acknowledging that, while hurricanes make the front pages, an even more insidious natural disaster is already well underway? For decades, Louisiana's wetlands -- which greatly reduce the impact of storms -- have been disappearing at the rate of two football fields an hour, amounting to 1 million acres over the past half-century washing into the sea, victim of the human penchant for tinkering with the landscape and exploiting it for profit. At the rate we're going, in a generation or two most of South Louisiana will simply be gone, along with the Louisiana fisheries, gas and shipping industries.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101025.html?nav=rss_business/government

[slide to the left]

22. Help

How do we help this pass?

[Wordie]

23. Well, I'd like to hear more from folks from NO on what they think of the

plan first. But your question's a very good one. I posted a variation of it in the Hurricane Survivors' group. I am hoping that we'll hear ideas on the worthiness of the plan, and who to call or email about it.

Here's the Hurricane Survivors' group thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=360&topic_id=420&mesg_id=420

And here's another great thread on how to help now, by Plaid Adder:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x402832

[PassingThrough]

25. Here is MS plan:

http://www.mississippi.org/content.aspx?url=/page/homeassist&

More info from Sen. Gene Taylor:
http://www.house.gov/genetaylor/


La needs to pick up the pace and get these things going. It takes time to write and pass the state legislation needed plus the Feds have to approve of the plan. MS is almost done.

[Bridget Burke]

33. Yes, we've heard that the Dems in Louisiana are at fault.

Even before your brief Passage.

[PassingThrough]

35. Did you read anything I posted? Its not about politics.

Its about the failure of individuals. Nagin failed pure and simple.

[Wordie]

30. Here's what I wrote to Keith Olberman and Anderson Cooper about this:

I've written to both of them, asking them to look into it.

Here's something about a new rebuilding plan for NO that is being promoted by Mayor Nagin. Note that this is different than the Baker plan.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1139851504244790.xml

It appears good at first glance. There are lots of questions, though. How would this be likely to work? Would it result in actual rebuilding, or would too many take the buy-out, resulting in a lot of property being bought up by city. And what is the city planning to do with the property that it buys? Will this offer more benefit to the citizens of NO, or ultimately will the true benefit go to developers who will buy the property from the city?

Note that this only applies to owner-occupied properties. What percentage of the properties in affected neighborhoods are owner-occupied, and what percentage were rentals? What happens to those rental properties? And more to the point, what happens to all the renters?

The article mentioned that there may be $1B coming to NO in the form of CDBG fund that is intended to be earmarked (a bad word, these days, I realize, but in this case quite innocuous) for affordable housing. Will this housing be provided for the poorest, or, as so often happens in affordable housing, will the most needy NO residents be priced out of even the "affordable" housing. What plans are there to help those who are truly poor and want to remain?

What about wetlands restoration? And for goodness sake, what about the levees??? What plan could be successful in NO without first solving that problem?

The questions could go on and on. As I said, at first glance it appears that the plan has many good features, but there is a lot left out. I hope you'll look into this.

Cordially,

Wordie (from DU)

As you can see, I incorporated many of the comments in this thread into my letter. I hope one or both of them will really run with this.

[bliss_eternal]

34. Great letter, Wordie--

I hope it gets appropriate attention! :hi:

[Wordie]

38. Thanks...I hope so too.

I already got a form response from Anderson Cooper, assuring me that they do read all the letters in time. So... :fingerscrossed: