Message from our Director:

During the regular session of 2011, the Louisiana Senate passed bill No. 269, establishing the Louisiana Housing Corporation (LHC). So far, only a few details are certain regarding this new entity, leaving it to a special commission to determine the rest in the next six months. The LHC board will take over the Louisiana Housing Finance Authority (LHFA) board and it’s assets at midnight, on December 31, 2011.

One of the reasons listed on the bill to create the LHC notes the need to improve public-private partnerships to ensure decent, safe, accessible and sanitary residential housing. It acknowledges that the State should ensure access to affordable housing for senior and disabled citizens, and that it’s a fact that moderate to low income persons can’t afford conventional interest rates on their loans. It blames the affordable housing shortage partly on the lack of a coordinated approach and clear statewide policy regarding funds for such housing.

The LHC’s target population will be moderate to low income families; a moderate income family earns no more than $34,250 per year for a household of one person. Its programs will be tailored to serve these citizens, who are the ones having the hardest time securing affordable, healthy, efficient housing for themselves and their families. Among the type of programs and grants to be administered by the Corporation are the federal energy efficiency and weatherization services, the management of disaster recovery programs funded by HUD’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) grants and foreclosure prevention efforts. Homeless prevention and rapid re-housing programs will no longer be the responsibility of the Department of Children and Family services; instead it will be transferred as a housing component. As the LHC takes on programs from the State and LFHA which are currently in progress, it will be key to ensure a smooth transition, as to not once again kill the barely gathered momentum—if managed successfully, this situation may even pose an opportunity for improvement in program design and implementation, as well as efficiency in the use of resources.

The Corporation’s programs won’t cater to any specific major “group of low income citizens”, mostly due to the fact that both New Orleans and Louisiana have a diverse population who are moderate and low income citizens, many of whom are striving to build a future. Young entrepreneurs, the brain gain involved in recovery work and small business initiatives, represent a contingent of people who are in need of and able to access the new housing corporation’s programs, ready to love New Orleans and Louisiana and stay for good. When will making less than $34,000 a year will be an advantage for someone? When it helps you receive aid to become a home owner and stay in this wonderful city for good!

The LHC will also establish the Housing and Transportation Planning and Coordinating Commission to advise on how to invest in communities, making them fully integrated, livable communities, as well as effectively spend the funds to better the lives of Louisianans. The challenge for the commission will be having the ability to think and act for both impoverished, rural communities and larger, urban communities facing blight and crime issues.

Access to housing and home ownership are the life blood of communities. Without decent housing, there will be no families and therefore no schools, no public transportation, little to no available fresh food, health and other services. This inability to provide for adequate support in these areas has resulted in increased crime, blight, and the strengthening of a poverty cycle that ravages many neighborhoods in our city.

There is a huge opportunity for improvement with the LHC and the programs that it could and will administer. There will also be challenges. Maintaining the hard-gained momentum in the long-term Katrina community and economic stabilization recovery efforts will be difficult, but vital for the successful start of the new entity. The ability of the LHC to transition services from its predecessor and execute its program in the challenging political-bureaucratic Louisiana environment will result in either a success or a disaster. There is no room for error.

Daniela Rivero
Director
Rebuilding Together New Orleans