Mixed-income housing brings fresh air to New Orleans
on November 21st, 2007 at 12:02 amIn New Orleans, a Test of Mixed-Income Housing
By TERRY PRISTIN
nytimes.com
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 15 — Despite the havoc wrought by Hurricane Katrina around this city, one slice of the devastated housing market is showing resurgence. The multifamily sector is more active than it has ever been, with nearly 5,400 units being created or undergoing major rehabilitation, according to a recent brokers’ report covering rental apartment complexes with 100 units or more.
In a long-neglected neighborhood near the central business district, for example, the 183-unit Preserve will replace a plant where Crystal Hot Sauce, a staple of Cajun cooking, used to be bottled, and the 228-unit Crescent Club is rising on the site of a former car dealership. Nearby, the century-old Falstaff Brewery complex — shuttered for three decades — is being transformed into 147 rental apartments.
“People have come to the conclusion that there is a viable market here,” said an author of the report about the city’s multifamily housing market, Larry G. Schedler, a principal of a brokerage firm in Metairie, La. “It might be a little smaller than it was, but they’re not going to close the place down.”
To be sure, all this development is hardly likely to compensate for the rental housing wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. Before the storm, renters were 53 percent of the population, most in homes with one to four units. In all, 51,681 rental homes, about half the total in the city, were destroyed or damaged, the Louisiana Recovery Authority said. Efforts to replace four battered public housing projects with mixed-income developments have stalled.
The report, which surveyed 27,000 apartments, found that rents had climbed an average of 27 percent since the storm. Rates have since stabilized, Mr. Schedler said.
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Real estate specialists predict that these projects will serve as catalysts for the neighborhood’s revival. “The Tulane corridor will transform into something it hasn’t been for 50 or 60 years,” said J. Mark Madderra, a principal in Madderra & Cazalot, a mortgage banking firm, who is a co-author of the multifamily report. Domain is also planning a third apartment house, with 72 units, in the neighborhood, on Jefferson Davis Parkway.
There is concern about whether market-rate tenants in New Orleans will accept the idea of living with poorer neighbors. But John McIlwain, a senior fellow for housing at the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit research group in Washington, said the timing seemed right for these developments because of the scarcity of rental housing and the spike in rents. Since market-rate tenants in such projects can expect to pay less than they would in a conventional building, the mixed-income buildings may be welcome. (more…)
New Orleans has such a great opportunity before them right now—it just doesn’t make any sense. What other major U.S. city in recent years has the opportunity to literally start over again? Crime and political corruption are going to be its two greatest hurdles if the city is to get a clean start.
