A Less Than Perfect Storm?

Excerpted from: Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law (Summer 2007 Issue)

By the Forum Committee on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law

That's according to the recently published symposium issue of the Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law, in which academics and practitioners examine the full implications of the hurricanes on the local economy, community housing, and affordable housing. 

Contributors include:

• Professor David D. Troutt (Rutgers University Law School) concludes that the "racial and economic fault lines were inscribed many years before Katrina revealed them to such devastating effect."He examines the factors and legal decisions that contributed to de facto segretation, not only in New Orleans but throughout the country.

• Tricia Jeffersson (Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law), Kevin Curnin (Stroock, Stroock & Lavan), and David Goldberg (Citigroup), analyze Louisiana's failure to spur economic development, despite the infusion of $12 billion in federal aid.

• Kristin Carlisle (Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service) looks at the 251,000 hurricane survivors who left Louisiana and remain in Texas more than 30 months after the storms. She notes that Katrina and Rita survivors have vastly different housing needs that are rarely acknowledged.

Several authors also identify potentially viable solutions.

• Carole Brown (University of Alabama School of Law) and Serena Williams (Widener University School of Law) suggest that the "smart exercise of eminent domain and housing tax credits, is necessary to rebuild the rental housing market in New Orleans and elsewhere.

• Betty Weiss (Institute for Sustainable Communities) recounts what she calls "a quietly powerful collaboration"among public officials from Vermont and Virginia to help their counterparts in Moss Point, Mississippi, develop promising economic development plan.

• Finally, Derrick Johnson (Mississippi State Chapter of the NAACP) takes the Mississippi state government to task for not sharing information on how redevelopment funds are being spent and suggests that one unfortunate result is an overemphasis on housing stock designed for homeowners as opposed to affordable rental housing.

The symposium issue presents a fascinating look at the interface among the law, economic recovery, and affordable housing. It is must reading for lawyers in real estate and economic development, and for everyone with an interest in the Gulf Coast.

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