Renters The most powerless group
“Rental Katrina victims are essentially the most powerless group of all in trying to fashion a recovery,” says Reilly Morse, an attorney with Mississippi Center for Justice, which advocates for racial and economic justice along the coast. “They have to depend entirely on landowners and land developers to make something happen.”
The loss was staggering. In a state where nearly 30 percent of the residents are renters, 72,116 renter-occupied units were damaged or destroyed by Katrina, according to Gov. Haley Barbour’s office.
In Hancock County, where the pre-Katrina number of renters ranged from 20 percent in the county as a whole to more than 35 percent in Bay St. Louis, there are no precise figures on how much rental housing was lost. All 176 public housing units in Waveland and Bay St. Louis were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Hundreds of other apartment units were knocked out of commission either permanently or temporarily. An untold number of additional rental units were among the thousands of single-family homes that were destroyed.
Of the $5.5 billion in federal Community Development Block Grants that the state is handing out to spur post-Katrina rebuilding, a huge share has so far gone to homeowners. According to the state’s latest figures, $869 million was distributed to 12,413 families in a first round of grants. Another 10,000 homeowners will receive funds in a second round that will also distribute hundreds of millions.
When it comes to rentals, however, just $100 million has so far been allocated from the grant pool. It is going to five public housing authorities along the Gulf Coast, including the agencies in Waveland and Bay St. Louis that have been combined since the storm.
But that money, less than 2 percent of the $5.5 billion in federal grants, falls short of the $111 million in losses suffered by the housing authorities. And it will likely be many months or years before construction on replacement public housing units actually gets under way. Precise timetables were unavailable from officials with the new Waveland-Bay St. Louis Housing Authority, who said they were too busy consolidating offices to meet with reporters.
Plan to bolster rental housing unveiled
In late April, Gov. Barbour announced a new plan to bolster rental housing in the hurricane zone. Some $263 million in forgivable loans would be offered to owners of rental properties with four units or less. At $30,000 a unit, the state expects 5,000 rental housing units could be built or repaired under the program, and rented to tenants who meet certain income limits. But the program has yet to win final approval and it remains unclear if and when it could start.
So far, private developers have not shown much interest in building new apartment complexes. Buz Olsen, who currently oversees the Bay St. Louis building department, says no permits have yet been issued in his city, although there have been some applications filed for tax-credit programs that could eventually see about 450 units built. Again, that could be years away.
In Waveland, one developer has begun site preparations for four units on Nicholson Avenue and another has gotten the green light to start work on a 100-unit complex at Waveland Avenue and Highway 90, said building official Otis Sharpe. Other than that, he has merely had “a lot of inquiries” about restoring a number of heavily damaged complexes along Waveland Avenue.
No permits have been issued in unincorporated areas. “It’s all still on drawing table,” said Hancock County building official Anthony Cuevas.
Demand far outstrips supply
The situation has created a rental market that’s tighter than a Waffle House lobby on Sunday morning. Thousands of renters like Theresa James – who is on a waiting list for a Catholic-operated senior apartment and a Habitat for Humanity home -- are still waiting it out in FEMA trailers, according to Olsen.
Others, like welder Nathan Cranmer, 27, who grew up in Kiln and lost his $900-a-month rental home on St. Charles Street in Bay St. Louis in Katrina, bunked in shelters, trailers and with relatives while looking for affordable new digs to rent. A year after the storm, he found one place, but moved out in disgust after five months of living under a leaky roof. Just recently, he was delighted to find “a little bitty apartment” in Waveland for $700 a month.
The shortage “concerns everyone here” Olsen said. “We are a blue-collar community as well as an upscale community. We don’t have that affordable side.”
The lack of urgency and government support to restore rental housing does not surprise Morse of the Mississippi Center for Justice. “There’s an inappropriate moral attitude about renters in some circles that isn’t justified,” he said. In Gulfport and Biloxi in neighboring Harrison County, he pointed out, even when new complexes have been approved through tax-credit financing schemes, they have been blocked by not-in-my-backyard neighbors who fear that “affordable housing” will bring social problems that slash property values.
“I do know that that’s a problem,” said Donna Sanford, disaster recovery director of the Mississippi Development Authority. She said the state has formed a team to work with local governments on some of the NIMBY issues. “I think we are doing a lot of things,” she said, touting grant money spent on infrastructure that could also help foster construction of new rental housing.
In the meantime, Theresa James waits it out in her trailer, happy to have a roof over her head and her independence. FEMA recently extended the time period that Katrina victims can use the trailers rent-free and nobody expects tenants to be forced out of them any time soon.
James does her painting at the senior center in Bay St. Louis, so studio space is not an issue. But she’s afraid to use the propane stove and there are some things that she has no room for in the trailer.
“I certainly do miss my recliner,” she says.
Courtesy MSNBC.com
http://risingfromruin.msnbc.com/2007/05/rentals.html
