The Times-Picayune just informed me that “St. Bernard Parish will go forward with a Nov. 14 special election that includes an option for voters to permanently ban large apartment complexes…”
By “large apartment complexes” they mean buildings with 6 units or more. 6.
6.
If, by some twist of fate, you don’t already know about the housing discrimination hullabaloo down in St. Bernard Parish, avail yourself of knowledge here: Keeping Blacks Out of St. Bernard.
There are those in that parish who would rather shoot themselves in the foot than capitulate to “those people”. Just read the comments at that post.
Who puts a ban on housing?
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October 4, 2009 at 11:40 am
ssurla
“The November referendum would not apply to the four 72-unit complexes at the center of the most recent court dispute with the fair housing center.”
So, basically, they are trying to prevent a glut of apartment complexes AFTER this one. I can see where that would be an advantage. The rental section of the nola.com website lists several pages of vacant rentals and there are many homes for sale, some already rehabilitated, some that aren’t. There doesn’t seem to be a need in St. Bernard for more housing at this point. It’s not like people are chomping at the gates to move to an area that had 99.9 of the structures flooded by a cat. 3 hurricane.
Also, it seems that the general demographics of St. Bernard Parish has changed some since the storm. Some black families have gotten disgusted with the city dragging their feet with recovery efforts and have moved to St. Bernard where the recovery is much further along. Next year’s census numbers should prove to be interesting I think.
October 4, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Havlová
@ssurla:
I agree it will be interesting to watch the demographics of the areas hit by Katrina and Rita as time goes on.
“The rental section of the nola.com website lists several pages of vacant rentals and there are many homes for sale”
I thought we covered this in the thread on my first SPB post. Low-income, non-land-owning people can’t afford the rentals that are available. Did you notice that the NYT article mentions rents have increased 35%? People who couldn’t afford market rate before most certainly can’t now.
October 6, 2009 at 1:50 am
ssurla
“But, in part because the houses that were destroyed were disproportionately for low-income renters, market rents in the city are 35 percent higher than they were before the storm, out of the reach of much of the city’s work force.”
St. Bernard Parish and the City of New Orleans are not the same thing. Yes, they touch, but they are two different worlds entirely. This is what a lot of people from outside of the area just don’t seem to understand. This is why market price in the city is very different than market price in St. Bernard Parish. St. Bernard pricing is well below city pricing just as it was before the storm and there are rentals available now that accept Section 8 that are sitting vacant. There were plenty of people who wouldn’t live in St. Bernard before the storm and the fact that the entire parish flooded, there are less that want to move there now. Half the residents that used to live there won’t come back.
I know all of this because I used to live in Chalmette and have family that still live there. Its where grew up and where my family’s history goes back well over 100 years with the bulk of that being in St. Bernard Parish. I live in Tampa now because jobs in the fields my husband and I work in are quite scarce and very underpaid in the New Orleans area. I’ve been in Tampa for over 10 years now and would love to go back, but a lot of things would have to change and I highly doubt that it’s going to happen.
Before we moved to Tampa, we had the back end of a rather large duplex that we only paid $400 a month for. I looked it up, the area were our duplex was are going for $500-600 a month now. I don’t even think that’s a 35% increase over 10 years. I’d be willing to bet that the rentals that are going for $1k and higher are owned by people from outside of the area who don’t know the market or the area very well.
I still agree that there is a LOT of racism in St. Bernard and until the people recognize it and try to abolish it in themselves, it won’t change. I personally think that having black families move in and the kids all playing and interacting is probably the best thing that could happen at this point.
This still doesn’t change the fact that, to a lot of people in the New Orleans metro area, St. Bernard isn’t seen as the most desirable area to live. I could go on for hours explaining how much BS I’ve had to put up with just because I happen to have grown up in an area of a specific zip code, but it’s something I can “hide” from others until they know me well enough to get past their own issues about people from St. Bernard.