Decree requires New Orleans demolition system be spelled out

NEW ORLEANS – The city has signed a federal consent decree to tell homeowners with properties deemed public health and safety threats what they can do to avoid demolition.
The decree, which also calls for establishment of an appeals system, was signed Friday by the city and fair housing advocates. A federal judge approved it.
This comes months after complaints about City Hall’s process for declaring properties imminent health and safety risks and eligible for demolition. At least one lawsuit was filed – it would not be affected by the decree – and some residents complained they had never received notices or that their properties were wrongly targeted or razed.
Activists have long called the process confusing. The decree calls for an overhaul, requiring, among other things, that the city keep a list of so-called “imminent health threat” properties on its Web site, with addresses and the date on which the designation, a step toward demolition, was first made. It also requires the city establish a system for receiving written appeals and holding appeal hearings.
The effect on the pace of demolitions and neighborhood rebuilding isn’t clear.
City leaders have said they want to raze about 1,800 properties damaged by the 2005 hurricanes and floodwaters. Contractors have been hired to take over the program, but city officials have refused to say how many buildings, if any, those contractors have torn down in recent months.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Ray Nagin did not immediately respond to an e-mail Saturday. The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported Franz Zibilich, the associate city attorney who signed the deal, did not respond to its request for comment.
Davida Finger, an attorney at the Loyola University Law Clinic, representing homeowners, believes the agreement requires the notification process begin anew for about 240 properties now on the city’s Web site as candidates for demolition under city ordinance.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has agreed to reimburse the city for demolition costs through February. However, the City Council this week asked for a one-year extension.
Language in the consent decree language mirrors that laid out by the council last summer to guard against unwarranted demolitions and to allow the city to tear down the worst properties. That ordinance was revised to require the city give people specific information on how to get their properties off the list.
The consent decree requires a demolition notice be mailed to property owners’ last known addresses, to an address recorded by the Register of Conveyances or an address provided when the property owner objected to a previous demolition order, whichever is newest. Notification via the Web site is also required.
It also says that notice must explicitly state steps for avoiding demolition, an owner’s right to object to the demolition in writing and before “an impartial, non-city employee hearing officer” during a public hearing.
The decree calls for an indefinite moratorium on the demolition of any properties for which owners made written objections while the order was being drafted.