A year has passed since the  New Orleans City Council passed a law requiring owners to clean, gut and board up flood-damaged buildings. The following report in the Times-Picayune discusses the progress of the City's clean-up efforts.

Gutting law getting few results

Only 175 homes approved for action

A year after the New Orleans City Council passed a law requiring owners to clean, gut and board up flood-damaged buildings, the city's program to get owners to comply with the law is finding it hard to make a dent in the problem.

For some council members, what they see as the program's lack of success is as frustrating as the slow pace of the state's Road Home program of financial assistance to homeowners.

Some community activists, however, think the gutting program is moving too swiftly.

Officials of Mayor Ray Nagin's administration gave the council a report Thursday on the progress of what the city has christened the Good Neighbor Program.

Of nearly 11,000 properties identified by city inspectors as violating the gutting law and other laws requiring owners to maintain buildings and lots in good condition, the council was told, only 175 have made it all the way through the city's complicated administrative review procedures, meaning they can be expropriated and either gutted or torn down by the city.

Winston Reid, the city's director of code enforcement, said the owners of almost 3,000 properties have voluntarily remediated them since getting violation notices from the city, leaving 8,000 still in disrepair. It is not known how many owners would have gutted or cleaned their properties on their own if they had not received notices.

Councilwoman Shelley Midura, who has been critical of the Good Neighbor Program for months, said neither she nor her constituents have seen evidence that it is producing the results the council had in mind when it passed the gutting law in April 2006.

One of her constituents, Lakeview resident Suzanne Kling, said a house next door to hers has never been touched since Hurricane Katrina, although she reported its address to the Good Neighbor Program seven months ago. Its mold, rats and untouched refrigerators pose a hazard to neighbors, she said.

"The property rights of people who are doing everything possible to get back are not being respected," she said.

But Brandon Darby, operations director of the relief organization Common Ground, told the council that his group is concerned about the rights of displaced homeowners, who he said have not taken care of their property because they have yet to receive insurance or Road Home money and are not yet able to return to New Orleans.

Saying the Good Neighbor Program, even if well-intentioned, "will result in a land grab against low-income people of color," Darby said his group and other activists will "oppose (expropriation) in every way possible."

Darby said the problem of flood-ravaged buildings can be solved through the efforts of voluntary relief groups such as his. "We're available to board up, to do pest control, to cut grass, to paint" and to do other essential tasks, he said.

Reid said city inspectors have made an initial canvass of the entire city except parts of the Lower 9th Ward and Algiers. The first round of inspections found 3,856 blighted properties in council District A, 1,440 properties in District B, 608 in District C, 3,171 in District D and 1,831 in District E. Some had been flooded by Hurricane Katrina; others were in disrepair before the storm.

Of the nearly 11,000 properties cited after the first round of inspections, about 3,000 have been reinspected. Administrative hearings have been held or scheduled for about 1,500.

Reid said the city's 12 inspectors can check 700 to 900 properties a week, meaning it will take about 10 weeks to revisit the other 8,000 properties.

The goal is to finish reinspecting all the properties by the end of July, said Tony Faciane, the city's deputy director of development.

Administration officials have promised for months to put all the data from the Good Neighbor Program on the city's Web site so that residents concerned about nearby untended properties could easily find out whether the properties have been cited and how soon they are due for an administrative hearing or remediation.

Anthony Jones, the city's interim chief technology officer, said the latest goal is to have all the information online by April 23.

The council passed the initial gutting law in April 2006, setting Aug. 29, the first anniversary of Katrina, as the deadline for compliance.

On Aug. 25, it passed a new law that kept the deadline nominally in place but added procedural requirements that in effect gave all owners several more months to take care of their homes. The revised law spelled out the legal protections and rights of homeowners.

On Feb. 1, frustrated with the lack of progress, the council passed a law designed to reinforce the city's long-standing authority to demolish or remediate neglected properties. It said that after a building is judged by an inspector to pose "a serious and imminent threat," the owner will be notified that the city can demolish or remediate the building after 30 business days.

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