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Landrieu, Vitter split on bill for public housing

Section: Politics

Bill Walsh

WASHINGTON -- With crews gearing up to demolish the remnants of some of New Orleans' large public housing complexes, a battle is being fought in Washington over how much of the housing should be replaced.

The flashpoint is legislation by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., that calls for "one-for-one replacement" of the government-subsidized apartments with new mixed-income developments.

Landrieu's Louisiana colleague, Republican Sen. David Vitter, has taken the lead in opposing the bill, saying that with just two-thirds of New Orleans' population back after Hurricane Katrina, the need for public housing has fallen off.

"I can't imagine the need is as much as the need pre-Katrina," Vitter said.

But Landrieu said the need was unmet before the storm when about 6,000 low-income people were on a waiting list for the city's 7,000 public housing units. With rents up 45 percent since the storm, an estimated 12,000 homeless people in the city and low-wage service-industry workers struggling to find housing, Landrieu said the demand is as great as it has ever been.

"One of big pieces of our recovery is low- and moderate-income and workforce housing. It is a struggle for middle-class families to afford rents in the city and in the region," Landrieu said. "It gets down to Sen. Vitter and a few critics objecting to the one-to-one replacement."

Vitter has said the bill "wants to re-create the New Orleans housing projects exactly as they were."

Landrieu said the bill represents a dramatic departure from the isolated, boxy havens for crime and drugs that much of New Orleans public housing had become over the years.

The bill would give developers broad leeway to mix low-income units with market-rate housing or offer rental vouchers in an attempt to move away from failed public housing models of the past. She points to the colorful single-family homes erected to replace the rundown 42-year-old Fischer public housing complex as a prototype for redevelopment.

"We have to rebuild differently," she said.

Her vision for public housing is not unlike that of her adversaries. The Bush administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development, which opposes the Landrieu bill, likewise spotlighted the Fischer homes as a model.

The key difference appears to be in the number of units envisioned.

Landrieu believes that New Orleans should suffer no net loss of public housing. Vitter, the Housing Authority of New Orleans and HUD, which oversees the local housing agency, say 2,000 public housing units were vacant before Katrina because they were in such poor condition, so only occupied units need to be replaced.

Bill is stalled

Vitter's opposition has stalled the Landrieu bill since the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee is loath to consider it with the two home-state senators at odds.

In the meantime, HANO is moving ahead with its plans for redevelopment. Demolition at three of the remaining "Big Four" public housing complexes -- St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper and C.J. Peete -- is slated to begin this week, although protesters sought to delay action at B.W. Cooper on Wednesday. HANO is waiting for City Council approval to also begin tearing down parts of the Lafitte development.

The plan is to raze about 4,500 apartments and build 2,141 new ones on those sites and elsewhere in the city, according to HUD figures. Ultimately, HUD said, there would be 3,343 public housing units in the city and an additional 1,765 properties that low-income people could rent with government vouchers, for a total of 5,108. HUD officials point out that it would be a slight increase in the number of occupied public housing units before Hurricane Katrina.

But Amy Liu, who tracks Gulf Coast recovery for the Brookings Institute, said that compared with the low-income housing before the storm, the HUD plan is a dramatic drop. Liu said that pre-storm, HANO served 14,000 households with public housing and vouchers.

"If HUD replaces 5,000 units of public housing with a combination of public housing and Section 8 (vouchers), they would be serving a small portion of former customers," Liu said.

Louisiana lost about 82,000 rental units in Katrina. The Louisiana Recovery Authority, using federal money, has authorized financing to rebuild about a third of those, with most of the new units to be in Orleans Parish.

LRA Executive Director Andy Kopplin said that 25,000 new units -- half are under construction -- are aimed at low- to moderate-income families making less than $41,760 a year. Some of those apartments will be offered to families making substantially less. But Kopplin said the gap between pre-storm and post-storm supplies remains stark.

"For two-thirds of rental housing that was destroyed, there is no public-sector funding to bring back," Kopplin said. "Every businessperson talks about a shortage of workforce housing."

Suspicious of Vitter

Vitter's opposition to Landrieu's bill has made a few housing advocates suspicious. They say he has a political motive in blocking a bill that would be a legislative coup for her a year before she faces re-election.

"I think one of his strategies is to limit the number of legislative wins that she gets," said James Perry, a New Orleans housing advocate.

Vitter denied that he has any motive except forestalling the re-creation of what he said everyone agrees were poorly developed and managed public housing complexes. He said Landrieu has been unwilling to budge in talks over the bill.

"Unfortunately, I don't think you can call them negotiations because there doesn't seem to be any movement from her end," Vitter said.

But Landrieu said Vitter's list of objections has been a moving target. Once she addresses one of the items, another pops up.

She also said she has been willing to bargain. While the original version of the bill would allow vouchers tied to specific apartments, she agreed to also include vouchers, at Vitter's behest, assigned to individuals. After Vitter said that no more than a third of units in new developments should be reserved for low-income people, Landrieu dropped the figure in her bill from 50 percent to 30 percent.

"It is a stall tactic," Landrieu said of her Republican colleague. "He is trying to torpedo this bill. No doubt about it."

The bill also would authorize $30 million for the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority as well as another $10 million in redevelopment grants that could be tapped by neighborhood groups. The bill would prohibit the Road Home program from reducing its grants to hurricane victims who received other disaster assistance.

Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal appears willing to stay out of the fight for now. Earlier this year, he voted for a House version of the legislation that called for one-for-one replacement, but when asked this week whether he still supported it, he begged off.

"It is important for the availability of housing to match the demand, that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past, and we apply 'best practices' in providing access to affordable housing," Jindal said in a written statement.

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