HOUSINGNEWSREPORT
in families for generations. The storm forced many people to leave. There was a lot of inventory. As prices started rising, sales surged. Now we’ve leveled off somewhat.” Lower Ninth Ward In New Orleans’ impoverished Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the pace of redevelopment has been painfully slow. The Lower Ninth Ward — along with neighborhoods like Lakeview and Chalmette — was devastated when multiple levee breaks forced thousands of people from their homes; many have not returned. Mid City Rebirth In Mid City — along Tulane Avenue, running from the shuttered Art Deco Charity Hospital to South Carrolton Avenue — an explosion of new construction at the new $1.1 billion state-of-the-art University Medical Center , and the $800 million Veterans Administration medical center, is transforming the scruffy area into a hip spot for residential flippers, serial landlords, healthcare professionals and millennial hipsters. The LSU-VA hospital complex has reignited interest in the area. The Tulane corridor used to be peppered with boarded-up buildings and bail bonds offices near the New Orleans Criminal Court system, but real estate investors and developers have snapped up properties and vacant lots and turned them into high-end rentals and condo developments over the past few years. Twentieth-century shotgun double houses, narrow dwellings with rooms arranged one behind the other and a door at each end, are being gutted and converted into upscale
single-family homes for the thousands of health care professionals pouring into the newly revitalized Mid City area.
growing population.
Morris said the city also faces issues with high vacancy rates and blight. “There’s some issues with the market,” she said. “We have a 20 percent vacancy rate that is fueled largely by blighted and vacant properties.” Neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward — east of the Industrial Canal — were hardest hit by Katrina and are still struggling to rebuild, 11 years after the storm. Vacant lots where homes once stood run for miles and miles. Much of the Lower Ninth Ward is still in ruins. It was once a thriving working-class community of 14,000 people,
According to Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Realtor.com , New Orleans was ranked as the No. 6 hottest U.S. housing market for 2016. Job and population growth is fueling the resurging New Orleans market, Smoke said. The Big Easy’s Unfinished Business One big post-Katrina problem is blighted properties. Not only did Hurricane Katrina kill nearly 2,000 people, but it decimated much of the housing stock, too. And tens
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We need more supply. We need about 33,000 new housing units.” Andreanecia M. Morris | Executive Director of Housing NOLA New Orleans, LA
and famous as the birthplace of Fats Domino, but fewer than 3,000 residents are left. Eleven years after the storm, the Lower Ninth Ward is a checkerboard of development, with new and rebuilt homes standing next to boarded-up ones. The Make It Right Foundation , founded by actor Brad Pitt, has built more than 100 homes in the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward. All the homes are LEED Platinum certified, with solar panels that reduce energy use. But on many blocks the only thing that has returned in full are the weeds. Many streets
of thousands of homes, many of them dilapidated, are still vacant. Citywide, there are 53,000 abandoned homes or empty lots, representing 34 percent of the housing stock, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center . The blight problem is a big issue, especially in minority neighborhoods where most of the neglected properties are concentrated. Andreanecia M. Morris, executive director of Housing NOLA , said the city needs 33,000 new housing units over the next 10 years to meet the affordable housing needs of the
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