St. Bernard delays decision on rentals

After months of escalating complaints from St. Bernard homeowners about the number of single-family homes being converted to rentals, the Parish Council on Tuesday deferred consideration of more than 70 rental permit applications.

The council tabled the permits with the hope of ironing out the tangled bureaucratic process -- several parish entities are involved -- that has developed for rental applications.

The rental issue has become a thorny one in St. Bernard, with many longtime homeowners frustrated to see their single-family neighborhoods flipped into rental zones by out-of-state investors or former homeowners unable to sell their properties.

The Parish Council is operating under an ordinance that would cap rentals at 20 percent of the housing market in each political district across the parish.

Councilman Wayne Landry said Tuesday he is uncomfortable approving droves of rental permits without knowing whether certain neighborhoods already have exceeded the limit set in the ordinance.

"I'm not sure where we are, and I'm uncomfortable making votes not knowing if we're at that saturation point," Landry said. "I don't want to take any steps to devalue property in the parish."

Landry said if the administration finds that too many rental permits have already been issued, the delay would not punish property owners who already applied to convert homes to rentals.

One property owner, Nancy Bain of Sioux Falls, S.D., complained that people applying for rental permits should have been informed earlier that the parish might be maxed out.

She said she bought four houses after Hurricane Katrina with the intent of rehabbing them and selling them. Market conditions, however, have forced her to rent them out.

"We're all somewhat stuck here, but in the meantime it only seems fair to me that if you were at a 20 percent margin, and that was your rule, you should have known about that prior to forcing me to spend $400 or some amount of my dollars to apply for this," Bain said. "I followed all your rules, all your laws. . . . I'm just asking that you consider the fact that here's a very small opportunity for you to bring some of your people home."...