U.N. experts, HUD disagree on housing

by The Times-Picayune
Thursday February 28, 2008, 10:10 AM

Two experts from the United Nations said thousands of black families would continue to suffer displacement and homelessness if the demolition of 4,500 public housing units is not halted, but federal housing officials in New Orleans countered that they have units available immediately for former public housing residents displaced by Katrina.

U.N.-appointed experts Miloon Kothari, the U.N. Human Rights Council's investigator for housing, and Gay McDougall, an expert on minority issues, urged U.S. and local government leaders to further include current and former residents in discussions that would help them return home.

"I think this is vindication of what public housing advocates have been saying from day one," said Monique Harden, co-director of the public interest law firm Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, who testified before Geneva-based U.N. experts.

"Recovery must mean the end of displacement for the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast," added Harden, who returned to New Orleans last week. "What we have instead is recovery that demolishes affordable housing."

"The spiraling costs of private housing and rental units, and in particular the demolition of public housing, puts these communities in further distress, increasing poverty and homelessness," said a joint statement by the experts. "We therefore call on the federal government and state and local authorities to immediately halt the demolitions of public housing in New Orleans."

But local officials said the U.N. experts were too detached from the complexities of the post-Katrina city to claim that razing of the buildings was racist. For example, while the U.N. experts called for residents to be included in discussions about public housing, many of those residents appeared at a New Orleans City Council meeting in December to commend architects and developers for meeting with them regularly to solicit their thoughts on the design of modernized public housing.

City officials were riled, but mostly they planned to ignore the finding.

"The past model of public housing in New Orleans has been a failed one. Years of neglect and mismanagement left our public housing developments in ruin," said a joint statement issued by the City Council Thursday. "These are critical times in our city's history. We can choose to continue on the path of progress and positive change, or we can choose to maintain the status quo."

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development also weighed in, calling the U.N. expert findings "misinformed."

"We do not want to relegate thousands of minority and low-income families back into the substandard conditions of New Orleans' public housing, conditions only made worse by Hurricane Katrina," said a statement issued by HUD's press offices.

Officials from the Housing Authority of New Orleans said the agency has 253 traditional units available in public complexes. Eligibility for those units is limited to people who were public housing residents in New Orleans when Katrina struck. HANO has been renovating some units in complexes across the city to provide housing for former residents until the rebuilding of public housing and mixed-income neighborhoods is complete.

The experts' comments did not entail an official U.N. resolution, but they came a day before a larger U.N. racism panel planned to discuss Katrina recovery efforts and public housing in New Orleans. Neither opinion carries legal or regulatory power.

The demolition of the housing developments appears all but assured. Early stages have begun at some developments, and only demolition permits remain for others. The council voted unanimously in December to raze the units.

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Staff writer Gwen Filosa contributed to this report.