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Program aims to get bought-out lots sold
A central flaw in the Road Home program was that it calculated grants based on home values, meaning it paid tens of thousands of homeowners in economically depressed neighborhoods far less than they needed to meet the higher costs of rebuilding.
Though it took three years to address that problem, with the announcement last week of additional grant money for low- to moderate-income applicants, the architects of another federally backed effort are trying to address head-on the nettlesome disparity between building cost and home values in struggling neighborhoods.
The Louisiana Recovery Authority got final approval this month to send $52 million to the Finance Authority of New Orleans for a soft-second mortgage program intended as the primary vehicle to get more than 4,500 "Road Home buyout properties" in the city back into commerce. Many of the properties are in parts of town where real estate prices are still depressed.
The state's go-ahead is the culmination of a two-year effort by community organizers at the Jeremiah Group to make sure some of the money in a relatively unsuccessful small-rental program gets spent on turning renters into homeowners.
The process is moving forward: The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority has signed 700 purchase orders with developers willing to build homes to a certain standard. The Louisiana Land Trust, which has been holding the properties bought by the Road Home program, is demolishing houses and slabs by the hundreds.
Developers, including a Pontchartrain Park group led by actor Wendell Pierce and trumpeter Terence Blanchard, are already building about 50 homes on Road Home buyout lots in Gentilly, Treme and the Lower 9th Ward. Many of the homes, once finished, will be purchased only with help from the soft-second program.
--- Devilish details ---
But the devil is in the details when it comes to actually launching a program that will attract participants. FANO and NORA are trying to avoid the pitfalls that tripped up the Road Home in lower-valued areas. But simultaneously pleasing developers, home buyers, banks and federal taxpayers will not be easy....
